A “confidential” council document about the night of the Auckland Anniversary Weekend floods in 2023 reveals a senior executive visited the mayor’s office twice to find staff having Friday night drinks.
The draft response by council lawyers to a rapid inquiry into the storm response that night by former police commissioner Mike Bush has been obtained by Newsroom.
It said the now chief executive Phil Wilson went to the mayoral office at 4.15pm and 7.45pm on the night of the most severe flooding in modern history and reported “the mayor and staff at Friday night drinks”.
Last year, the Herald revealed that Brown swiped his key card to enter the basement car park at the council’s Albert St headquarters at 4.08pm on the fateful Friday with his adult son to show him around.
The father and son were going to have a drink from the dedicated beer fridge in the mayoral office and admire the stunning birds-eye panorama of the Hauraki Gulf and downtown Auckland.
At 4.06pm, the then chief executive, Jim Stabback, texted Brown from within the building to say Auckland Emergency Management was supporting Fire and Emergency and response agencies regarding “some flooding in Swanson and Ranui”.
He added that the “weather is expected to abate”.
It did not, and there was little time for Brown’s small team to have a beer, the Herald reported last year.
Brown told Newsroom yesterday that some drinks had been consumed in his office before the emergency became clear.
“Early in the evening, before the emergency response, was activated, a very small group of staff were socialising over drinks in the office. As soon as staff were aware of the unfolding event, there wasn’t further consumption of alcohol.
“By the time the director of governance returned, all those present in the office were drinking non-alcoholic beverages,” Brown said.
The Herald asked Brown today what time mayoral staff stopped consuming alcohol on the night, to which he replied that it had been addressed in his response to Newsroom.
The draft response said: “We understand that … the Director of Governance [Phil Wilson in his role at the time] physically went and checked in with the mayor’s office around 4.15pm that afternoon, at which time the mayor and some staff were having Friday drinks.”
Wilson left and was offsite for a while, remaining in contact by text and phone, and returned to the mayoral office between 7.45pm and 8pm.
“When he joined the mayoral office for the second time, the mayor and staff were still at drinks. [Wilson] stayed in the mayoral office until approximately 1.30am,” the document said.
Wilson told the Herald today he visited the mayor’s office twice, as the response said, and might have had a drink – likely non-alcoholic – the first time, but did not recall this with certainty. Mayoral staff were not consuming alcohol when he returned at 7.45pm, he said.
Bush’s damning review found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response, in which “much of the damage was done” before Auckland Council or Brown had taken any action.
Four people lost their lives during the record-breaking downpour in Auckland beginning on the afternoon of January 27.
Brown was widely criticised for the slowness of his public response to the downpour and the eventual decision to place the Auckland region in a state of emergency after 10pm, when flooding was already widespread across the city.
The council’s emergency management system was unprepared, and there was a communication failure from senior leadership during “critical early stages” and an emergency management team that “appeared to lack the command, crisis, and leadership skills to cope with the event”, the Bush report said.
The council’s draft response strongly defended staff, challenged some of Bush’s preliminary findings, and said council staff were not given full access to the draft Bush report.
It said:
Wilson said he had been asked to review between the draft and final response any factual statements relating to his experience, but there had been no issue of downplaying the “drinks” comments.
“The references to staff drinks were in the final council response to the Bush review, with further context added confirming that the Mayor and his staff were calm and monitoring the situation when Phil Wilson returned at around 7.45pm,” he said.
He assumed Bush had not mentioned the office drinks in his report, as he did not consider it relevant to the events of the evening, a view shared by Brown.
Wilson said: “Neither the Mayor nor any of his staff were intoxicated at any time during the evening.”
The chief executive declined to release the draft response to the Herald, saying the document was “legally privileged and confidential”.
The emergence of the internal council draft response comes weeks out from the mayoral and council elections. Voting papers have gone out this week ahead of the postal elections closing on October 11.
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