An 85-metre Christmas tree in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the largest floating tree in the world in 2015 and opened with a fireworks show. Photo / NurPhoto via Getty Images
OPINION
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s new weekly newsletter, Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. To sign up, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
You better watch out, you better not cry, better not pout, I’m telling you why.
Yep, Santa Claus is coming to town, Sunday week. Just nine sleeps to go till the parade rolls through Queen St, though you may have noticed a group of grumpy Grinches is here already.
“Auckland’s getting a million-dollar Christmas tree!” they cry, pouting away for dear life. Other cities apparently have low-budget trees.
Some people really do spoil all the fun. It might even be the same people who complain that no one’s trying to restore the life of the central city.
The big tree, to be called Te Manaaki, is happening because central-city businesses want it as the central attraction in a Christmas shopping campaign. And they, not the council, are paying for it.
Most of the money comes from the targeted rate paid by central-city businesses and residents, on top of their other rates, specifically to enhance the safety, recreational appeal and commercial viability of the inner city.
About $27 million a year is raised through that rate and spent on inner-city improvements, on the advice of a panel whose members come from business, resident, university and other groups.
They all know events are critical: this week’s Coldplay concerts are expected to generate about $20m in consumer spending. And Christmas is the most important event of all: if the downtown retailers don’t have a good Christmas season, we risk losing them. The purpose of Te Manaaki, along with the feelgood qualities of every Christmas tree, is to be a magnet for shoppers.
It’s the difference between a tree that just happens to be there and a proper visitor attraction.
The rest of the money for the tree comes from Precinct Properties, which owns downtown Commercial Bay, and Heart of the City (HOTC), the local business association.
“We’d love to see it become an enduring Christmas tradition,” says HOTC’s Viv Beck.
Precinct’s Scott Pritchard, who also chairs the city centre advisory panel, talks about “encouraging Aucklanders and visitors to rediscover what makes the city special”.
This, in other words, is what everyone says they should be doing. Making the city centre thrive. And not relying on general rates to do it.
Wonderful Christmas trees are a thing in many cities that take pride in themselves.
Rio de Janeiro launched an 85m one in 2015, floating on a raft in a lagoon. At the Rockefeller Plaza in New York, the lights are switched on in a nationally televised pageant. Murano, in Venice, has a tree made entirely of tubes of the island’s famous blown glass. In Martin Place in Sydney, there are so many baubles you can’t even see the tree beneath them all.
It is true that some cities take a weird approach. Last year, Wellington made a tree from road cones; Shenyang in China once made one from 2021 wine bottles. Me, I’m for a proper festive wonderland.
Auckland’s tree will be 18.4m high, steel-framed and decorated with 10,000 LED lights, 4000 pōhutukawa flowers and more than 200 giant stainless steel baubles. Symbolically, Beck hopes it will replace the creepy old Farmers’ Santa that is with us no longer.
Well, she doesn’t say creepy, I’m just thinking of the way his finger used to beckon to little girls and boys.
Te Manaaki will have its lights turned on for the first time at 7pm next Saturday, November 23, as part of a free show with entertainment by Anika Moa, Tami Neilson and the Auckland Youth Choir. Singing carols in a crowd in a public square: that’s one of the best parts of Christmas, isn’t it?
And, hey, just for Christmas, could the authorities maybe join in the fun? Auckland Transport (AT) could:
1. Stop using punitive fines on drivers who make honest mistakes in the new inner-city layouts.
2. Put up much, much better signs to direct unfamiliar drivers where to go.
And the CRL could:
3. Host tours of the underground station at Te Waihorotiu.
Cordon off a safe section. Take bookings online. It’s astonishing what they’ve achieved down there and what a good drawcard for a city visit that would be. Make the price of admission a donation to the City Mission’s Christmas fund.
It could be the CRL’s gift to the retailers and citizens it’s been disrupting all these years. No ifs and buts, just do it.
The tree will be placed in Te Komititanga Square, at the bottom of Queen St. The name was gifted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and refers to:
A: The place where council committees have their lunch.
B: The place where all modes of transport – ferries, trains, buses, cars, bicycles and pedestrians – come together.
C: A place for shoppers to meet up and decide what to buy.
D: The place where Waihorotiu Stream, running under Queen St, meets the Waitematā harbour.
Answer at the end.
#1: Whaka Round, Find Out: Te Hikoi mo te Tiriti
By my count, about 10,000 people marched over the harbour bridge this week, part of the hīkoi heading for Parliament to protest against the Treaty Principles Bill. Māori, Pākehā and many others crossed in a friendly family atmosphere and then found their way to Takaparawhau (Bastion Point) and Ihumātao.
One problem: quite a few other people had to wait in their cars for a bit.
Another problem: the footsteps of so many people made the bridge sway. It’s an issue they’ve known about for 50 years and it even has a name: synchronous lateral excitation. The same thing happens during the Auckland marathon. Rest assured, it doesn’t mean the bridge is about to collapse.
Favourite sign: Whaka Round, Find Out.
#2: Viva La Vida: Coldplay at Eden Park
Two Coldplay concerts down, one to go, with 50,000 fans each night, and on Wednesday there was no transport chaos in sight anywhere. Bus and train travel is included in the ticket price, just like at the rugby. There’s a walking fan trail from downtown, plus special train and bus services, a zone for taxis and Ubers and bike parking a block from the park at Kōwhai School.
Bit of bother at the airport on Tuesday, apparently, when the number of inbound passengers almost doubled and one of the security screening lanes malfunctioned. Hurts like Heaven, eh.
Major events? Bring it on, the more the merrier. Eden Park is good at them and AT is very good at doing them there, too.
#3: If you build it, etc: The Western Express
The Western Express (WX1) is a year old and, instead of the 3.5 million rides AT expected, they’ve had more than 5m.
The service, which includes the 11T and 11W buses, connects Westgate, Lincoln Rd and Te Atatū with the city centre, running in both directions every 5 to 10 minutes, 7am to 7pm, seven days a week.
It’s not a true rapid transit route like the Northern Busway but, because the buses use the motorway shoulders, they beat the traffic. Expansion is scheduled for next year, along with 40 new electric buses arriving in April.
Is there still anyone who doesn’t know this? Rapid transit is the best way to manage congestion. More now, please.
A few personal favourites:
With the COP29 climate summit mired in conflict in Azerbaijan, Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future provides a heady dose of horror, politics, science and history, with enormous lashings of humanity and hope, all folded into a novel set in the 2030s, 40s and 50s about a plan to save the world from global warming.
As it happens, it’s also the perfect antidote to any despair brought on by a certain election in the United States.
The white bikes
To mark World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims, Bike Auckland is organising an installation of 58 ghost bikes at St Patrick’s Cathedral Square, Wyndham St. Sunday, November 17.
Boris is coming!
Boris Johson will be in town next month for a “long lunch”, organised by the Auckland Business Chamber, with Winston Peters, Kerre Woodham and Paul Henry also on the menu. I mean speakers list. December 3.
The dinosaurs are already here!
Dinosaurs of Patagonia, an “immersive experience” with skeletons and fossils, opened this week at the Auckland Showgrounds.
Use your bankcard on the bus
From this Sunday, Auckland’s public transport network will be accepting eftpos cards. You won’t need a HOP card to travel, unless you use it for a discounted fare.
“It’s amazing to be a British person in Eden Park and not having the sh** kicked out of you by the All Blacks,” said Coldplay singer Chris Martin on Wednesday night.
He invited This is Our Home on stage to sing We Pray. The Pacific-based band is a project of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and has sung with Coldplay before – in Lyon, France, in June.
“What the world needs right now is love from New Zealand,” said Martin. He wore a T-shirt that said, “We’re all aliens somewhere,” effortlessly underlining his reputation as the nicest man in the universe.
- Quiz answer: D. Te Komititanga is a transliteration referring to a committee, so has a kind of office worker vibe, but the word dates from the 19th century and in this instance refers to a place where the waters meet and mingle.
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.
Reporter Martha and friends are in Minginui introducing us to their favourite four-legged neighbours, wild but friendly horses that have had free reign of the place since 1870.