Breaking: Wayne Brown finally had a beer with Chris Bishop

Auckland’s mayor took the chance to offer the transport minister a post-election job in the increasingly likely event he doesn't make it back into parliament.

Wayne Brown has recorded some wins this term. Auckland’s mayor just wound up his 100 days of startups initiative, which saw him filming promos for half the businesses in the city. He realised a long-held dream to bring Auckland Transport back under council control, and has immediately taken advantage of the situation by personally painting over individual car parks.

But there have also been failures. In defiance of his efforts to destroy them, road cones remain stubbornly material across the city. His "Cave", or “consistently against virtually everything”, councillors are an evergreen source of frustration. Most of all, despite months of increasingly desperate pleading, he has been unable to get a beer with transport minister Chris Bishop. 

Texts revealed via the Official Information Act show a single pale ale has been Brown’s most elusive policy goal. “You owe me a beer,” he wrote last September. “Got there, that was a tough day, you owe me a beer, Browny,” he repeated two weeks later. “We’ll try and do that beer soon,” he added in October. “We should have a beer and invite The Spinoff,” he reiterated in March this year. “Well done, we should have that beer in public sometime,” he restated in April. 

All the texts were met with silence. That is, until a few weeks ago. Following The Spinoff’s story on Brown’s miserable, lengthy, desperate quest, Bishop finally relented and made room in his calendar for a drink. The pair met at Hotel Ponsonby with The Spinoff present, and it quickly became clear why Brown had wanted this meeting so badly. He needed to harangue Bishop about politics, the election and most of all, the damn stupid roads National keeps announcing.

Take the Warkworth to Te Hana highway for one. Brown thinks it’s one of the biggest wastes of time and money since Labour spent six years not building light rail to the airport. It started with a discussion of fireworks policy. NZ First wants to ban private sales of the mini-explosives. Brown thinks that’s dumb. Bishop can see both sides. “It literally is like vaporising money,” he tells the mayor. “Or you could build a motorway up in Northland and vaporise even more,” Brown replies.

At this point, the pair are on beer two and Bishop’s not backing down. He points out the road has a positive benefit-cost ratio. Brown says it shouldn’t cost $9bn to speed up a journey from Kaitaia to the city by seven minutes. “How do I get any money out of that?” he says. “I hate it.”

It’s tempting to think these remonstrations might not be all that fruitful. But Bishop seems to appreciate the disagreement. “He and I are on the same page on 90% of it. There’s going to be constructive tension. That’s healthy. It’s a healthy thing,” he insists. Besides, there’s precedent for Brown changing the minister’s mind. Bishop confirms he adjusted the legislation setting AT’s new structure after the mayor complained via text about it retaining too many of its powers. “Yeah,” he says, when asked if the texts prompted a rethink. “That was good stuff,” says Brown, before adding a trademark aside. “His advisers are all bureaucrats with no fucking idea at all.”  

Beer three. They both want to bring back Tangy Fruits but they’re not aligned on the Opportunity Party. Bishop thinks they won’t make it into parliament. Brown thinks they’ll crack 7%. He goes on to describe himself as a “floating voter”. He likes some people from a bunch of different parties and hates a lot more from across the spectrum. Bishop is one who’s on the nice list. Kieran McAnulty is another. He’d be happier with Winston if it wasn’t for that fireworks ban. 

Though it doesn’t seem like it right now, Bishop is in the fight of his political life. He’s National’s third-ranked politician, but on current polling there’s a decent chance the party won’t be able to bring any list MPs to parliament after the election. That could leave him out of a job if he doesn’t win his Hutt South electorate. In the past, he’s acknowledged that it’s a long shot; that Labour’s Ginny Andersen is likely to win. But now he’s putting on a brave face, saying it’ll be close. “I’d probably be doing a lot better if I was down there rather than here,” he says, slightly ruefully. National has a leaderboard tracking its MPs' door-knocking efforts and he’s ranked number one.

Another round, everybody? The Spinoff brings up a rumour that Bishop has been seen applying for jobs. “That’s a scurrilous Labour Party rumour,” the minister says. Maybe there’s no truth to it, but if he could get a job, what would it be? “The mayor’s chief of staff,” Bishop replies. Brown’s eyes light up. “You never know. Everybody’s got a price, mate,” he says. “I’ve got a job. I’m quite keen to keep it,” says Bishop. Now everybody has to go, Bishop back to Wellington and the mayor to a function at a secret venue on Karangahape Road. But a fuse has been lit. For now these two are apart. In four weeks' time, everything could change. If Bishop was in Auckland working for the mayor, at least it would be easier to get him to agree to a damn drink.