KEY POINTS:
Auckland City Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker, with his dog Bear, probably wishes he'd held the fizz and chips remark.
It was very nice of Dr Bruce Hucker, deputy mayor, troublemaker and creative intellectual, to let me interview him. I have tried to interview him before when he's
been causing trouble (he would say he was not) and he said, no, not then.
Now, when he's really got the pip with the Herald which is, according to him, running a crusade against him and the council, he says yes.
What he actually says is: maybe, then yes, then no, then yes. I had told him he had to talk to me because last time he'd said he would, the next time. He didn't quite say that, but near enough, and he says he knows he didn't quite, but I'm not sure. And if you think that doesn't make much sense, just wait.
There was much calling him on his cellphone on which you can never leave a message because he never clears them.
Once I got through, to have someone, him presumably, attempt to kill the call but hitting answer instead, and so I got about 10 minutes of an interminable farewell speech. I kept listening, in the hope that something interesting might happen but nothing interesting ever did happen.
I was going to tell him this but he was busy giving an interminable speech, to me, so I never had a chance.
I went to see him because he's been in one of those peculiarly convoluted local body government spats about water bills.
He has been championing a new policy of higher bills and has fallen out with some of the members of his City Vision team over it. He wrote a letter to the Herald in which he said the increases would only amount to half a large packet of chips or a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke. This was a silly, glib thing to say, according to me - according to him it is somehow the Herald's fault - and he has since had packets of chips thrown at him.
He has been accused of being a traitor to the centre-left and has now resigned as leader of City Vision. "Truly willingly." He has been a politician for about 150 years (since 1986) so he might have guessed why I was going to see him.
The minute he walked in (we saw him at home in Freemans Bay where he lives in a vaguely hippy-looking silvered wood house with wife, Judy, and a labrador called Bear) and said he'd just get some papers from his study, my heart sank.
He reappeared with a speech he'd given to the City Vision selection meeting on Sunday, gave me a copy and said, "You might like to just skip through that before the interview - just read it slowly." I scanned it quickly.
It begins: "I am here to repay a debt. I grew up in a state house in Otahuhu. My mother and father's marriage broke up. This was before the days of DPB. I had to use my Herald money to keep food on our table and to help pay the bills for a family of three."
I will make a joke about this later, much later, when he starts reading from it again and when I manage to get a word in.
I say that this is John Key's speech. He ignores this. He doesn't really do jokes. He made a couple. One when I asked him whether he is a megalomaniac. "No. Only a slight maniac." Another when I asked him about having chips thrown at him. "I was glad they didn't throw 1.5 litre bottles of Coke."
He ignored the Key quip partly because he doesn't want me to start on again about how he's being perceived as a traitor to the left. Mostly it's because he mostly ignored my questions. When I say he agreed to be interviewed, what I mean is he agreed to let me come around so he could talk at me.
The first time I object is when he decides to begin being interviewed by reading from the bit in his speech about six pillars. Six!
This is in response to being asked what has happened between him and City Vision. "I'd like to talk about the context first." No, he wouldn't. He'd like to read his speech.
HE has a chance to sell himself, but he says he doesn't do spin, and that being a politician is not about public relations but "community relations." Matt McCarten, a friend, once said about him that he wasn't "a star and didn't possess the leftwing killer instinct" but that he was tough and his "political position was faultless". I wondered whether he took that as a compliment.
"I think it is a compliment to me. When Helen Clark was the leader of the Labour Party, first of all the criticisms of her were that she wasn't charismatic enough ... I'm not a charismatic figure in that sense but I work hard."
When I say he can give one public lecture, and that he has two minutes to give it, he looks a bit hurt and says, "I usually give public lectures. The second level of our comprehensive policy system is that that vision rests on six pillars. The six pillars are outlined in that paper I gave you."
There is an hour and a half of this on a tape. I'm sitting here, looking at this tape and thinking: I'd rather kill myself than listen to that again. Then I think, but Hucker - "I am also an academic and a minister, you need to know that" would probably do the Christian thing: forgive me and insist on officiating at my funeral.
I'll get in first with the Christian spirit of forgiveness and give him the benefit of the doubt and hazard that he addresses people (as somebody warned me he would) like a public meeting because he's been in local body politics for so long.
I asked if he was a team player, which is a pretty simple question, and he answered it like this: "I have consensus roles that I've used and learned through my background in working in different ethnic communities. I've convened that race relations committee for the Presbyterian Church, where I learnt those skills. I've also chaired the shareholders' representatives group for Watercare since 1998. We've had four votes in that time."
"Are you a team player?" I say, loudly, as if speaking to a deaf person. "Would it surprise you to learn that there is a perception that you're not?"
"We'll come to that, and I'll answer that directly," he said [cue hollow laughter] "and I've also chaired the Auckland Regional Transport Network."
"Bruce," I say, trying to not sound like a person speaking through clenched teeth, "I'm not interviewing you for a job."
Actually, I suppose, he is being interviewed for a sort of job: his credentials for being a centre-left politician.
So, what's he going to do about the perception that he's betrayed the centre left? Does he have to do something? "Of course I do. I'm going to be talking face-to-face with people, in meetings. I've been invited to be present at, and speak at, any mosque in Auckland." That should do it.
It is possible that this is not just all political speak, that he talks like this because he's a "creative intellectual".
Never having met anyone who admitted to being such a thing before, it's likely I'm not attuned to the workings of such minds.
I do again ask him what a creative intellectual and he says, "Oh, I'm an imaginative person. You only have to look at my academic record." I ignored this because I didn't want him to start telling me about it; I'd still be there. But, "Yes, I am an intellectual. I'm a senior lecturer at the university. I love the application of ideas."
He doesn't mind being called a troublemaker because it means "you're talking about a person that is prepared to stand up to be counted ... and that's what I'm prepared to do".
He does, I think, regret using the fizz and chips analogy, if only because it might have been misunderstood. Why doesn't he just say so? He could say: "Sorry, I got it wrong but now I've got it right." He might get a bit more flak but that would be the end of it.
I have no idea whether he was, or has, or is considering backing down on the policy of higher water bills. I did ask him. He said: "We had a meeting a few nights ago and what happened in the council over the Metrowater and charges is that it's been referred to the November annual direction-setting meeting for the council. So that decision can be made there if any changes are needed."
So has he changed his mind or not changed his mind?
"Well, to answer that ... "
Yes, or no.
"You sound like a journalist!" No, I just popped around in the hope of a free public lecture, is what I feel like saying, but I am fading. "Yes, or no, or maybe?"
"Well, what we did was to say: what are the principles that we should apply to that review of the policy and those principles have been embedded on the water and waste water policy and those principles are acceptable to me."
There is more, much, much more of this and at the end of it I decide to say that, yes, he has changed his mind. "You're trying to put words in my mouth."
No. What I'm trying to do is get some words out of his mouth that actually mean something, but I know when I'm beaten.
It was, as I say, very nice of him to be interviewed and I'd strongly advise him against ever doing it again.
