Auckland councillors spent an average of 956 hours each in meetings during this term.
That’s the amount of time it would take to watch the entirety of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy more than a hundred times through.
Councillors have many duties - reports to read, letters and reports to write, officials to liaise with, constituent requests to handle, other committees and bodies to sit on and a very large number of community engagements. They’re busy people.
But attendance at council committees and the governing body is listed by the council as the number-one responsibility of every councillor. This is where decisions get made, which is why attendance is required.
The issue burst into the open last month when Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown complained publicly about absent councillors. Some meetings have been abandoned this year and many others have started late, because not enough representatives were there to form a quorum.
The Herald has analysed attendance data supplied by the council, stretching back to late 2022 when the current crop was elected.
The data is a full record of every meeting of the main council body and its committees that councillors are required to attend. It also includes workshops, which are not compulsory, but are regarded as a valuable forum for briefings and detailed discussion (which is why councillors are asked to attend).
The data does not include other groups that councillors might join or sit on. All councillors have many of those commitments as well.
It’s possible to report this information because council staff note attendance in real time, down to the minute. If a councillor leaves a meeting at 11.47am and returned at 11.52, perhaps to make a phone call or take a bathroom break, the times are recorded in the minutes. These are publicly available on the council website.
When measured by minutes spent at the meetings or workshops they were required or asked to be at, the lowest attendance percentage among the mayor and 20 councillors was recorded by Waitematā and Gulf ward councillor Mike Lee, who was there for 75.3% of the time.
Manukau’s Alf Filipaina (78.2%) and Mayor Brown (79.2%) were the only other members of council to attend for less than 80% of their meetings’ total time.
Rodney’s Greg Sayers (82.7%) and Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa’s Christine Fletcher (84.2%) rounded out the bottom five overall.
The average across all councillors and the mayor was 87.4%.
Asked for comment, Lee told the Herald: “Your assumption that hours in meetings ... are key criteria for measuring the worth of an elected member is questionable.”
Serving constituents “is what is important in my view - not seat warming”.
He said the data used by the Herald did not cover all meetings, and because his ward included Waiheke Island, Aotea/Great Barrier Island and “the remotest populated islands in the region”, he had to do a lot more travel than other councillors. He added that he had many other duties not reflected in the data.
Filipaina and Sayers both said their attendance has been affected by health issues that required stays in hospital.
And Sayers and Fletcher both believed there were “anomalies” in the record that were being addressed.
Lee’s overall record was dragged down by a low rate of workshop attendance. At 58.9%, he was present in council workshops for not much more than half the time. This was much less than any of his colleagues, nearly all of whom notched up more than 80% workshop attendance.
Workshops are meetings in which councillors receive in-depth briefings and can engage in detailed analysis of policy proposals. They were introduced as a way to help deepen councillors’ understanding of the issues, before they get to decision-making meetings.
Filipaina (72.6%), Brown (75.7%), Albany’s Wayne Walker (80.6%) and Sayers (80.7%) joined Lee in the bottom five for workshops.
Lee and Walker have both disputed the value of workshops.
“Most of the time,” Walker said, “workshops offer very little chance for meaningful engagement.” He preferred to talk to officials directly.
Eight councillors attended their meetings for more than 90% of their total duration.
Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa’s Julie Fairey had the best attendance record: 93.9%. Fairey was also one of only three, along with Manukau’s Lotu Fuli and Waitākere’s Shane Henderson, to attend workshops for more than 90% of their duration.
Councillors sit on different committees, so the hours they’re supposed to be in attendance differ. Fairey didn’t top the list because she had less to do: she had the second-highest meeting demands on her time, just pipped by Manurewa-Papakura’s Daniel Newman.
It shouldn’t be assumed that councillors who put in fewer hours at meetings are underperforming. A high percentage record with not so many hours in attendance could mean, for example, they are managing their workloads better than councillors who try to do so much, they can’t get to everything.
Recording attendance by the minute also highlights lateness. Most council meetings start at 10am, but there are four habitual latecomers: Josephine Bartley, Fletcher, Lee and Walker.
Walker disputed the relevance of this, too. He told the Herald he might be talking with officials or watching the meeting online on his phone before he arrived in person. And, he said, because the start of meetings was usually given over to public submissions, “I’m not missing anything”.
Bartley said she is sometimes delayed by other council-related business. She also queried the way the data was collected and said she was present for “the main agenda items”.
Lee lives on Waiheke and said he has an unusually long commute.
Fletcher said her lateness is “a bad habit” and “I intend to do better”.
Attendance records don’t paint a full picture of attendance at those meetings. This is because councillors can “attend” meetings in two ways: in-person or online. These days only the in-person attendees count towards the quorum, but in any given meeting there are usually half-a-dozen councillors who choose the online option.
Council official Lou-Ann Ballantyne, the general manager of governance and engagement, told the Herald they “already track online and in-person attendance”. She added, “We are reviewing how these details will be reported, for easy visibility to the public.”
That might not address the key issue. While councillors can be online for legitimate reasons like illness, some have been known to “attend” meetings while on holiday. And if they turn their camera off after they’ve checked in, which is common, there’s no way of knowing if they’re still there.
Councillors don’t get leave like normal employees, because legally they are contractors, not staff. Instead, much like Parliament, council goes into recess during school holidays and councillors are expected to take leave then.
All councillors spoken to by the Herald accounted for their absences by citing other council-related duties. But the rules allow for councillors to be absent “on council business”, so it doesn’t count against them if their job requires them to be elsewhere.
Data for the three months to June shows that Mayor Brown was officially absent from meetings on council business for 9% of the time. During the same period, half of his colleagues were away for 0% of the time on official business and for most of the others it was 4% or less.
It’s no surprise the mayor has more official demands on his time. But Kerrin Leoni and Ken Turner were also away on “official business” for 9% of the time.
The Herald asked them why they were away for this reason as often as the mayor.
Leoni said, “I’m of the understanding that I have a higher workload and am invited to [an] extensive amount of events.”
Turner said, “I take my other council duties very seriously,” and listed some of the bodies he sits on.
The data shows Turner has one of the higher meeting workloads, while Leoni’s meeting workload is a little above average.
The variation in reporting may mean councillors are not all using the same criteria for identifying “council business”.
Councillors earn a base remuneration of $116,100, more if they chair committees or take on some other duties. Since November 2022, they have attended an average 403 meetings. It’s a lot.
Mayor Brown spent the least amount of time in meetings (812 hours); Fairey spent the most (1079 hours).
Deputy mayor Desley Simpson attended the fewest number of meetings (356) and Newman attended the most (432).
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.