What Efeso Collins would do as Auckland's first Pasifika mayor

Efeso Collins wants to be Auckland's first Pasifika mayor. So how is he planning to win votes? By Russell Brown

It's a sunny Easter Saturday in Auckland and Shanan Halbert, the Labour MP for Northcote, has organised a cafe meeting for his old friend Efeso Collins. At the age of 47, Collins wants to be the first Pasifika mayor of Auckland and has already begun traversing the city, even though the postal vote doesn't open until September.

Today, he's a little late coming from his stop at the farmers' market at Hobsonville Point, but he eventually arrives in shorts and sandals, along with his wife, Fia, and their two-year-old daughter, Asalemo. He recognises me and greets me with an embrace, although we've met only once before.

That was in 2016, at a local body candidates forum at a Ponsonby bar. The candidates ranged from first-timers to old hands, but two stood out. One was 23-year-old mayoral aspirant Chlöe Swarbrick, who seemed to have a coherent, thoughtful answer for every question. The other was Collins, who was standing for Auckland Council in the Manukau ward. He was compelling as much for the way he spoke as for what he said. His tone and his bearing seemed to demand attention.

Collins, who is of Samoan-Tokelauan heritage, was famously the first Polynesian to be elected president of the Auckland University Students' Association. Photo / Bastiaan Beentjes

Collins, who is of Samoan-Tokelauan heritage, was famously the first Polynesian to be elected president of the Auckland University Students' Association. He worked as a youth education mentor and lecturer, but in 2013 steered back into politics and was elected to the Ōtara-Papatoetoe Local Board on a Labour ticket, immediately becoming its chair.

Nevertheless, Collins was critical at the forum of Labour's selection processes, and referenced a blog post where he'd lamented that its previous leadership contest was a battle between "four white men". The party took Pacific Island support for granted, he claimed. As for himself: "I'm still critical from within – but they've kept me," he observed. He also took a swipe at outgoing mayor Len Brown, who had been delivered as the Super City's first mayor by voters in the south. "I think perhaps the south expected more of his ear," he suggested.

At the time, current mayor Phil Goff was looking highly likely to be Brown's successor. "I expect him to be out south, listening," Collins told the forum.

Six years on, Goff is retiring and if Collins wants his job, he needs to be more than the champion of the south. He remains an effective and engaging orator – centre-left political commentator Shane Te Pou calls him "the best stump speaker in Auckland politics" – but the tone has changed.

In 2016, Collins said of outgoing mayor Len Brown: "I think perhaps the south expected more of his ear." Photo / Dean Purcell

The crowd at the Birkenhead meeting hears a uniting message. He wants to "grow a movement of people who care quite deeply about this city … I want this city to be the beautiful city that we've all longed for, dreamed of and continue to build today."

He talks about the shame of the city's homelessness problem and touts the endorsements of the Labour and Green parties "and the unions", but also tells what seems likely to become a well-worn story about shifting his seat at the council table to be next to Ōrākei ward councillor Desley Simpson, the wife of National Party president Peter Goodfellow, to understand her perspective better: "I said, 'If you and I can't work stuff out and agree to things, then we're going nowhere as a city.' The key here is to be collaborative with people."

He talks about "people'"a lot. The campaign's provisional slogan, he reveals, is "#ForThePeople".

The vision thing

His only explicit policy so far, fares-free public transport, is in the zone for this crowd. Fully half the questions are about transport; from nearby ferries to the electrification of the southern rail line out past Papakura.

No candidate in Auckland is ever going to lose votes by giving Auckland Transport a serve, but Collins' criticism of the embattled council-controlled organisation (CCO) is nuanced: he was among the councillors who voted to send the city's controversial parking strategy out to public consultation, he says, but it would have been easier if AT had competently explained what the plan was. He would restore the two council seats on the AT board and place more emphasis on section 92 of the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, which requires each CCO to act consistently with and "give effect to" the council's Long-Term Plan.

Efeso Collins' only explicit policy so far is fares-free public transport. Photo / Greg Bowker

He talks about establishing a safe cycle route over the harbour. He admits to being "a bit unhappy" with the way police handled last year's Liberate the Lane protest (he told 1 News that "when you're managing people who are wealthy and in Lycra, you've got a completely different approach by the police"), "but we've got to be able to share. Let's allow the cyclists safe passage to and from home."

He also outlines a long-term vision involving a second harbour crossing and more light rail – the latter being something he opposed in 2016.

"I was heavy rail, yeah," he acknowledges later. "And then I looked at what the costs might be and the plans that light rail had with the development of housing. And when we see how interconnected transport and housing is, I get encouraged when I look at the figures – 66,000 housing units along this corridor. That's going to be great for our families, as long as they're affordable. And that's a picture that I didn't see back then. It's going to increase the accessibility of a huge employment hub, which is in my ward at the moment with the airport."

Personality and politics

It's possible that Collins' rarest political attribute will turn out to be an ability to sincerely change his mind. He was publicly critical of Louisa Wall's same-sex marriage bill a decade ago – the concerns of older Pasifika people were being ignored, he said – but feels differently now.

"I want people to know, it's very sincere," he nods. "Look, I was raised in a really strict religious family. And so for many years, the Bible was taught to me in a very black-and-white way, and over the past 10 or 15 years, as a married man, as a dad, I've been able to look back and to reflect on the decisions that I made and what thoughts I had.

Efeso Collins' parents, Tauiliili Sio and Lotomau Collins. Photo / Supplied

"I was taught a very specific way of how to see the world. As I've opened up to other people's experiences and expressions of life, it has given me the opportunity to understand that if I'm going to be true to the deconstructionist theories that I've written about in my essays, that I have to allow people to have their truth shared, too. And it's that truth that now forms the basis of my approach to life. I've apologised to the rainbow community for the hurt that I've caused. That's a genuine apology. If I hadn't been exposed to these experiences and expressions, I'd probably still be living in my very black-and-white world."

Collins revealed other elements of his personal story in a recent Woman's Day feature, acknowledging "a dark time in my life" when the stress of providing financial support to his extended family led to depression and suicidal thoughts – and revealing that he had had bariatric surgery to control his weight in 2012. He made the decision to talk about both, he says, because "it's important to me for people to see that I'm human, that anyone who seeks these public roles is human".

He'll still need to work to establish a perception that he has the skills for the mayoral job, which is both less powerful than its profile would suggest – success is a matter of cajoling a council majority, often across party lines, for everything you want to do – and more complex. Goff has governed for two terms as a technocrat in little danger of raising any public passion. Collins is proposing a big vision at a time when the council's financial scope for visionary ideas is limited.

"Yeah, but it's a vision I think people all want. It's about matching it up. So let's open the conversation to: if this is the vision that we want, if this is the Auckland we desire to have, then how much of it is going to come from rates? How are we going to staircase into there? And how are we going to staircase alternative revenue streams, knowing that less than 50 per cent of Auckland Council's revenue comes from rates? We've been prudent, we've been ambitious in finding other revenue streams. We also know that there are some major financial constraints ahead of us. But we want to build a city. And that's going to cost us and so I think it's important that we have that conversation."

The recent pre-election report published by council officials singled out reducing emissions as the most significant challenge faced by the council. Next came finances. Photo / Dean Purcell

These are questions any Auckland mayor will have to wrestle with. The recent pre-election report published by council officials singled out the challenge of reducing emissions to meet the city's climate targets as the most significant challenge faced by the council. Next came council finances – the officials believed the 3.5 per cent cap on future annual rates increases, championed by Goff only last year as part of the council's 10-year budget, may need a rethink – and inequality, particularly around housing.

While his rivals have at least a set of bullet points, Collins' policy response is largely a matter of generalities to be filled in over the next two months. In part that's because of the unusual way it's being developed. His policy lead, Vanessa Cole, comes from Auckland Action Against Poverty and his campaign manager, Max Harris, has a PhD in constitutional law from the University of Oxford. Harris is best known for The New Zealand Project, a book arguing for a return to a values-based politics hinged on policies that currently sit at the leftward margin of New Zealand politics, including a universal basic income. But Collins says policy priorities are being guided by soundings from the people helping him get elected – his largely young campaign volunteers.

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"We want the volunteers to feel like they've got a complete voice," he says. "A lot of the policy discussions have been around public housing, the rights of tenants, long-term tenure and community facilities. And CCOs have come up a lot. I found that pretty interesting. I guess the ultimate goal we've been thinking about is social cohesion – how do we achieve social cohesion as we reconnect post-Covid?"

While the gaps wait to be filled, there's a slight undercurrent of anxiety about the campaign. Harris has worked as an economic policy adviser in the UK Parliament and clerked for Dame Sian Elias when she was Chief Justice, but he hasn't run an election campaign before.

It's no secret that Labour originally favoured North Shore councillor Richard Hills as its candidate for Auckland mayor. Photo / Dean Purcell

Collins has the Labour Party's endorsement as an independent candidate, but it's no secret that the party originally favoured North Shore councillor Richard Hills as its candidate – Jacinda Ardern met with Hills last year to discuss his standing. But it equally did not relish Auckland's centre-left vote being split the way the right's frequently has been. Hills decided not to stand, citing the demands of raising a new baby.

Collins, so long the party's internal irritant, needs its powerbrokers and its campaign machinery as never before.

Both sides of the house

Party sources say former president Mike Williams and past general secretary Andrew Kirton have now weighed in behind Collins' campaign. An initial one-month fundraising goal of $100,000 was achieved in three weeks. Collins confirms he has had "extremely warm and supportive" conversations with Williams and that Kirton has been in touch.

"I've also been endorsed by the Greens and I think they've got a particular agenda that's going to be useful for the city. And look, I've had discussions with people in the National Party. Because in this role, you can't just keep to your side. We've got to be open to having ongoing, mature conversations with everybody from both sides of the House. The good thing about local government is you're not hamstrung by left-right politics."

But a New Zealand Herald backgrounder has raised some questions about what kind of mayor Collins would be. An unnamed council colleague described him as "incredibly intelligent but prone to laziness". Collins' meeting attendance this year has been relatively low at 86 per cent, but his absence involved council business for a further 6 per cent of meetings. His response in the past has been that he's out working in the community, and it is true that he has taken on voluntary governance roles with five outside organisations since becoming a councillor, including chairing the Ōtara Health Charitable Trust and joining the advisory board of the Manukau Institute of Technology.

Efeso Collins gives his maiden speech as Manukau Ward councillor on November 2, 2016. Photo / Michael Craig

"I think calling on people to make those kinds of comments is lazy in itself," he says. "Anyone can hide behind a screen, but what I think is important for the public to understand is that everything that I've talked about, everything I've done and voted on, is on public record. And I would much rather that if people had some misgivings about working with mayoral candidates that they should reach out to us and talk to us."

The Herald story also gave voice to rumours that Collins has a testy relationship with some council staff. "I can't think of any example where I've had friction between myself and council staff. I can't name a complaint. So there's nothing tangible to the idea that council staff have been unhappy with me."

He'd prefer to talk about his work as a consensus builder. Collins' rhetoric continually circles back to ideas about involving people, listening, seeking a shared vision. His challenge will be to convince Aucklanders in Ōtara, Remuera, Henderson and Takapuna that they do in fact have common cause in the city. It's an ambitious vision for an election that sometimes threatens to be a vote about car parking. But this, says Collins, is the kind of mayor he wants to be.

"I think the role of the mayor is, firstly, to raise the issues, similar to what we're doing now. Say these are the big ideas – and then collaborate to find consensus. Sometimes you're going to get strong majorities, and sometimes you'll get just majorities. What matters is that we've been able to communicate. And it's understanding that this is not central government; that this isn't a right-left. I'm not interested in that politics. I'm interested in a politics that says, 'we'll talk, let's collaborate, let's get the best. And we'll find some middle ground along the way'."