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Wayne Brown in a t-shirt and Wayne Brown in a suit, wearing sunglasses and hats, imposed on background of the pool at Karanga Plaza under five large yellow stars.
It’s bloody Browny’s pool innit (Image Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

PoliticsJanuary 25, 2025

Browny’s pool was a gamble and it’s paid off

Wayne Brown in a t-shirt and Wayne Brown in a suit, wearing sunglasses and hats, imposed on background of the pool at Karanga Plaza under five large yellow stars.
It’s bloody Browny’s pool innit (Image Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

The pool is a summery delight for swimmers and a smart move from the mayor.

Last week I walked through Auckland’s Wynyard Quarter, commando and braless.

After smugly setting off that morning for my second swim at the Karanga Plaza pool, dubbed Browny’s Pool by mayor Wayne Brown, I realised I’d made the mistake of leaving my underwear for the day in the car after driving there with my togs already on.

I had a brief panic in the dinky red-speckled changing shed that alarmingly resembles a magician’s closet in which one might be made to disappear, then decided all I needed to do was match the audacity of the pool itself. Heeding the warnings about seabather’s eruption, I peeled off my wet togs, pulled on my shorts and t-shirt and marched confidently to my car past morning commuters sucking on their coffees.

Despite being surrounded by water, it wasn’t until late last year that Auckland got its first open-air seawater harbour pool. After years of nurturing the small amount of pride the beautiful Parnell Baths allow us and looking over the ditch jealously at Sydney, a city of many sea pools, Auckland has finally added the couple of inches in stature that come with getting something ambitious, attractive and decidedly urban, done.

Left side: A small red wooden changing shed with a slatted roof. Right side: a towel and pair of women's togs hanging inside a the red speckled changing shed, with light casting shadows.
Inside and outside the magician’s closet changing shed at Browny’s pool (Image: Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

In full view of a city alive with people, industry and marine activity, swimming in the pool exposes you in the best way. I felt very free swimming in Browny’s pool. My first trip to the pool was on Christmas day with my family. We trekked over Te Wero on that overcast day and threw our bodies, stuffed full of ham, into the water. While there has always been plenty to do in Auckland, the idea of being able to cool off without a trip to a beach on Christmas day felt like a redefinition of leisure in the central city and our relationship with the water surrounding us. The water was warmer than it had been in the sea over the summer, which I assume is science, and while it’s not crystal clear, it’s perfectly pleasant, and I didn’t emerge slicked or smelly.

An outdoor swimming area with lane dividers is set in a harbor, positioned adjacent to a modern building and a white pedestrian bridge. The water is calm under a lightly clouded sky.
The 33-metre lanes in the Karanga Plaza Harbour Pool for lap swimming. (Image: Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

Swimming laps in the pool was a revelation. I debated whether to wear goggles and a cap for fear of looking too much like an indoor swimmer. In the end, with no qualms about swimming in the harbour despite having never done it before, I decided I didn’t need to see clearly in it, just in case.

In big cities worldwide, people walk down the street with their laundry. They find the green spaces they don’t have because they live in apartments in communal spaces like parks. With its sprawling suburbs, in some ways, Auckland has locked the communal, mundane and necessary parts of life out of view and out of the central city. Amenities like supermarkets have only been added to the central city in the last two decades, finally recognising that people live there and like to make and eat food occasionally. To have a place where it’s free to swim for exercise, another sometimes mundane necessity, in a city where you’re unavoidably among other people feels like an extension of that recognition. Being in your togs in the middle of town and walking to the car braless is completely normal, actually.

A woman (the writer) with short, light hair smiles while standing outdoors. Sunlight beams from above. They wear a casual shirt. Behind them is a palm tree and other greenery, with modern buildings in the background.
Braless and fancy-free after my swim at Browny’s pool (Image: Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

The mayor has claimed the pool as an achievement, ostentatiously lending his name to it. He was inspired by Aarhus Havnebadet, the world’s largest seawater bath,  after a visit to Denmark. He no doubt returned from his Scandi sojourn and cracked the whip on getting something…anything…done that shows he means it when he says he wants to give more of the waterfront back to Aucklanders.

There’s some risk to tying himself so closely to the pool, especially when your last name is Brown, your city is prone to multiple warnings about water quality, and your constituents frequently grumble about having to swim in poo. When the pool was declared unsafe for swimming on Boxing Day, Brown shook his fist at the clouds by doubting the accuracy of Safe Swim’s modelling, invoking the dreaded spectre of the Auckland floods, which he says he was blamed for.

There are other risks in attaching your name to something as a politician, too. What if it’s a flop, and no one uses it? What if someone is injured or drowns there? What if you’ve misjudged how you’re perceived and how much affection people have for you and can not get away with colloquially naming the thing after yourself? Few politicians can get away with that. Chippy’s pool or Luxo’s pool would sink like a cringe-covered stone to the bottom of the sea. 

Wayne Brown, wearing sunglasses smiles by the Karanga Plaza Harbour Pool on the left; on the right, Wayne Brown wearing a safety harness, stands with arms outstretched smiling inside a stadium.
Better watch out Browny, we’ve now got several photos of you looking very happy.

Brown hard-launched the pool to the public, and it was deemed Browny’s pool with an Instagram video of him swimming in it. Wisely, he dialled down the strange sense of intimacy watching the video conjures by wearing swimming shorts and not speedos. In 2023, The Spinoff asked, “Has Wayne Brown ever looked this happy?” after he walked along the roof of Eden Park, kicking a ball, to welcome the world to the Fifa World Cup. His pool video further proves the outlandish theory that Brown might be a happy man. It’s also funny.

He and his team have discovered that the secret sauce to making Brown work on social media is letting him be who he is. His temperament and blunt speech, once a political liability, have been embraced by Aucklanders. His approval rating is high. He’s in step with what feels like a broad pendulum swing away from the safety-conscious years of the pandemic. That’s clever political positioning in the city that copped the worst of the lockdowns. He’s been ahead of prime minister Christopher Luxon in calling for less “nojo” and red tape, and as Luxon continues to struggle with authenticity in a communications era where that’s crucial, Brown seems to have found his way of being. His latest funny Instagram post? A call for a grown-up conversation about safety and risk. 

 

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For Browny, the pool proves he’s more politically astute and attuned to the zeitgeist than many people thought he was when first elected. For swimmers, the pool is just a pool — a summery delight and another reason to feel like Auckland is growing up and making the most of one of its greatest assets. Five stars.

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Yes, prime minister. Christopher Luxon addresses a business audience in Auckland.
Yes, prime minister. Christopher Luxon addresses a business audience in Auckland.

OPINIONPoliticsJanuary 24, 2025

Luxon launches year of growth with a war on nojo 

Yes, prime minister. Christopher Luxon addresses a business audience in Auckland.
Yes, prime minister. Christopher Luxon addresses a business audience in Auckland.

In the pursuit of growth it’s yes to mining, yes to tourism, yes to an overhaul of the science sector, and no to saying no, writes Toby Manhire from the PM’s state of the nation speech in Auckland.

Growth, said Christopher Luxon yesterday. Growth, growth, growth. Growth “unlocked”, he said. Growth “unleashed”. Growth “supercharged” and “turbocharged”. In a speech to the Auckland Business Chamber he used the word so many times – 43 – I feared a beanstalk might spontaneously sprout from the lush blue curtains of the Cordis ballroom and burst through the turquoise chandeliers. 

The theme of the state of the nation speech picked up where Luxon left off in his Sunday reshuffle, which included putting Nicola Willis into the portfolio formerly known as economic development, now rebranded as economic growth. It was a home crowd – which Luxon appeared to relish – but not a wholly contented one. Business confidence is inching up, but stubbornly. More troubling is the wider public perception. Among a range of dismal numbers for National in last week’s Curia poll for the Taxpayers’ Union, the most alarming was the finding that 53% of respondents thought the country was moving in the wrong direction, compared with 39% who said the opposite. That net result of -14 marked a steep drop from +3 a month earlier.

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The prime minister only used his go-to mojo mantra once – half as many times as he invoked, curiously, “the bakers and miners that came before me” – but that was what he meant. Yesterday was about whacking the starter motor with a hammer, of jolting out of the doldrums into a virtuous circle: confidence begets growth and growth begets confidence and somewhere along the way the mojometer goes ding. 

Part of the challenge, said Luxon, to the chorus of clinking cutlery machining its way through roast chicken, was attitudinal, a “culture of no”. “The bottom line is we need a lot less no and a lot more yes,” he said, offering examples ranging from mining to tourism to concerts at Eden Park. The council, he suggested, should bin the limit. A reference to the scourge of road cones generated a one-man ovation from Wayne Brown. “It is about saying yes, instead of no,” he said. In with the mojo, out with the nojo. 

(The war on no, however, appears not to extend to council spending. Luxon’s message to council on funding stuff beyond the “basics” remains a firm no.)

This was more than an exercise in rhetoric, however. Luxon announced a substantial overhaul of the science and innovation sectors, hailed by the minister responsible, Judith Collins, as the “largest reset of the New Zealand science system in more than 30 years”. The existing seven Crown Research Institutes will be rebooted as three “Public Research Organisations” focused respectively on bio-economy, earth sciences, and health and forensic sciences. Callaghan Innovation will be shuttered, with some of its functions picked up elsewhere. A Prime Minister’s Science, Innovation and Technology Advisory Council will be established, while a new agency called Invest New Zealand will be tasked with drumming up foreign direct investment (FDI). The science reforms were almost immediately lambasted by Lucy Stewart, co-president of the NZ Association of Scientists, for being “entirely focused on commercialisation and commercial benefits from science and technology”.

Whether that package of reforms has the catalytic effect Luxon seeks remains to be seen. In the pursuit of growth, factors largely outside the government’s control, ranging from interest rates at home to vicissitudes abroad – not least the spectre of Trumpian tariffs – risk torpedoing the very best of intentions. And in proclaiming, unabashedly, resolutely, that this is the year of the growth, you needn’t look too far back to find a cautionary tale. Six years ago, almost to the day, another new government embarking on its second full year in power pledged that 2019 would be “the year of delivery”. It was not long at all before that stake in the ground had metamorphosed into a rod for its back. 

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