This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
Auckland’s deputy mayor Desley Simpson has announced ... that she is going to announce in early June whether she’s standing for the top job.
“Timing that works for me,” she says.
Back in February, when incumbent Wayne Brown declared he was seeking a second term, he didn’t want to talk about Simpson. At the time, it was generally believed he would give her a couple of weeks to decide if she was standing too, and they’d take things from there.
Simpson has drawn that out for three months. Was she waiting for private poll results to tell her if she had a chance? Probably.
Is she trying to build a sense of expectation around her intentions? Perhaps.
Did she want to make life awkward for Brown? Possibly. There’s not much love lost between them.
Did she want to make sure there wouldn’t be any other heavyweight contenders? Very likely.
Simpson is a high-profile member of the National Party. If she had announced early in the year, that would have galvanised Labour and the Greens to find a high-profile candidate of their own. In a three-way race, they’d all stand a chance.
In the interim, Whau councillor and Labour Party member Kerrin Leoni has announced she will stand. As a younger, wahine Māori candidate, Leoni has pitched herself as the kind of person the city needs. She has received support from some Labour MPs but, unlike Andrew Little in Wellington, she doesn’t have a high-profile and has not been endorsed by the party.
Whatever Simpson announces, it seems unlikely now that Labour will field another candidate. Nominations will open on July 4 and close on August 1, with postal voting in September and early October.
Will Simpson stand? I asked her last week and she gave me a perfectly inscrutable smile. Of course she did.
I asked her again yesterday and she said, still with the smile: “You’ll be surprised.”
All I know is that drawing out the announcement this long isn’t normal if your decision is no. Other potential contenders on the right, like Paula Bennett and Simon Bridges, have made a point of saying no.
Could she win? Brown’s the frontrunner, by virtue of being generally regarded as “better than expected”. Simpson will want to convince us that’s not good enough.
If Desley Simpson does stand for mayor, Brown is likely to sack her as his deputy straight away. She won’t mind and nor should anyone else. Leaders have the right to demand loyalty and Simpson has given him that, but she has to be free to criticise if she’s going to campaign against him.
Who will Brown appoint to the role?
The answer will be highly political. Simpson represents the Ōrākei ward, which includes Remuera and the beach suburbs of the Waitematā. Brown is an independent but in the last election he made no secret of his strategy: win the eastern suburbs.
That’s because the overwhelmingly centre-right citizens in the suburbs of Simpson’s own ward dominate much of the political debate and vote in higher numbers than everyone else.
But Simpson is their queen and she won’t be giving up those votes in a hurry. If she stands, expect a right royal rumble in Remuera.
That suggests the mayor will appoint a deputy on the right. One possibility is Franklin’s first-term councillor Andy Baker, recently promoted by Brown to chair the powerful Transport, Resources and Infrastructure Committee.
Baker has no obvious enemies, is non-disruptive and quietly loyal: qualities often valued in a deputy.
But if Brown wants to court National voters more obviously, he could pick Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa’s very popular four-term councillor Christine Fletcher. She’s a former minister in the Jim Bolger Government, a former one-term mayor in the old Auckland City Council days, and in 2019 was John Tamihere’s running mate when he stood unsuccessfully for mayor against Phil Goff.
Fletcher is not at all close to Desley Simpson, despite their both being in the same party.
She’s given to making angry or “deeply disappointed” speeches and she and Brown have had a testy relationship, but that may have faded.
She does say the wildest things. Once she predicted “civil war in Auckland for the next 20 years” if planning disputes weren’t resolved. In 2021 she offended many of her colleagues by calling Labour and National’s joint housing policy “gang rape”.
Mind you, there’s not much evidence that people who say offensive things will offend Wayne Brown. Conversely, Fletcher lacks a certain quality that Brown rewards in almost all his appointments. Simpson excepted, he chooses men.
The name that comes up most often for a new deputy mayor is three-term Rodney councillor Greg Sayers.
Policywise he’s not an obvious fit with Brown. He’s against rates rises, where Brown has won the debate for moderate rises each year, he argues for sprawl not density and he’s against “nice to haves” far more often than Brown.
But he’s not angry or disruptive and Brown has told me he likes the way he chairs the council’s Budget Committee. Sayers is the frontrunner.
Counting against him, though, he’s in deep with the campaign to reverse the council’s decision to move speedway out of Western Springs. This is said to infuriate the mayor.
The speed rules debate in Auckland rumbles on, with the coalition of road safety groups All Aboard having written to Mayor Wayne Brown asking him to “talk sense into Auckland Transport at this critical timer”.
As reported previously, AT has decided the Government’s new Speed Rule requires it to undo all the lower speed limits it has introduced over the last few years. Hamilton and Dundedin city councils have taken a different approach, which appears to be sanctioned by Transport Minister Chris Bishop.
Marie Guerreiro from All Aboard told Brown, “AT’s interpretation of the Speed Rule is idiosyncratic, overly bureaucratic, and is not shared by other councils. AT’s leadership has made the choice to sweep up over 1500 streets for reversal - even though, as we know from the interpretation applied by other councils, these streets are not necessarily “specified roads” for the purposes of the Speed Rule. Minister Bishop has confirmed to us (and AT) only certain categories of roads have to be reversed by 1 July.”
She added, “Since early March ... we have provided options and examples for how AT can keep safe speed zones where Aucklanders want them. We have yet to receive a satisfactory response to any of this work.”
One of the problems with the new Speed Rule is that it is so badly written, it suggests suburbs with low speed limits on some streets have to raise them near schools, except during short times at the start and end of each day.
An example of this is Freemans Bay, as this map shows.
Another problem is that AT’s sign writing skills have been sorely tested, as these photos show.
No word yet from Brown.
Smith & Caughey really is closing, at the end of July, having tried and failed to find a viable way to keep trading. It’ll be a sad day for the city.
Roadworks and the lack of on-street parking have been blamed, among other things. But the larger reality is that there are fewer office workers in the city centre and shoppers’ preference for online shopping and malls has conspired against large department stores for decades now. Smith & Caughey did exceptionally well to hang on so long.
I thought a couple of comments by acting chief executive Matt Harray were surprising.
He said, “You go over to Europe and even Australia and you just see how vibrant these main streets are, and then you see ours here ... it’s just not the same.”
Does he mean like George St in Sydney, bustling and now largely free of cars, with light rail running down the middle? That would have been cool for Queen St, until the plan to do it was sabotaged by both Labour and National.
Harray also said, “We find that when we’ve got a promotion, we can definitely get people in, but ... obviously we can’t be on discount all the time.”
Is it obvious? Briscoes does it, very successfully. And the way Smith & Caughey is organised, with distinct areas for each brand, mightn’t it be possible to have rolling promotions all round the store? Always with some counters on sale, but rarely all of them?
Perhaps I’m an ignorant fool when it comes to retail, but if this idea has merit, for the Queen Shop of Queen St, you can have it for free.
Don’t believe a word of it. That seemed to be the view of a group of blokes muttering away behind me at Wednesday evening’s public meeting on the future of the Takapuna Golf Course.
They didn’t trust the council, didn’t think it could or would produce an effective plan, thought they were being ignored, were sure every decision would raise rates and believed they were being lied to, about everything.
Hard basis to build a working relationship. Especially because the process now underway is almost the exact opposite of all that.
It was a large hall and it was full. Several hundred residents, business owners, reps from local sports clubs and golfers had turned up to the Eventfinda Stadium, a massive indoor sports centre at the north end of the golf course, to hear the council explain what it was doing.
Elsewhere in the complex, hundreds of kids were training: gymnastics, netball, basketball, you name it.
To back up. The golf course, which is public and owned by the council, sits between the largely commercial Wairau Valley and the suburb of Milford. Both areas were badly flooded in the 2023 anniversary weekend floods. Two people died there and Milford now has more Category 3 homes, which can’t be lived in, than any other part of the city.
The floods came again in Easter this year, and again on May 9. Just two weeks ago.
The drains and water management system operated by Healthy Waters, the council department in charge of stormwater, can cope with 60 million litres of rain. On anniversary weekend, 500 million litres fell.
The Government has made funding available for flood mitigation and Healthy Waters has looked at 100 options for spending it.
The chosen plan is to build a wetland on about half the Takapuna Golf Course, which would have general recreational and scenic value and become a flood reservoir when needed. It might also include playing fields.
This isn’t a speculative idea: shortly before the 2023 floods, Greenslade Reserve in Northcote, the next suburb along, was modified to fulfill exactly this role and it worked extremely well.
The golf club is on a month-by-month lease and it’s not Healthy Waters’ job to say if it should remain. That decision rests with the local boards and perhaps the whole council. But if golf is to continue, under the Healthy Waters plan it would be on a nine-hole course.
The golf club is incensed and last month it presented an alternative plan to the council. It retains the 18 holes and uses a “dry basin” approach to create a flood retention zone. The golfers asked that it be assessed alongside the Healthy Waters plan. The council agreed.
That is now happening, with engineers and other experts from both groups working closely together. Danielle Grant from the Kaipātiki Local Board told me on Wednesday there is a series of 15 tests the plans must pass and at this point, deep in the process, both measure up.
Tom Mansell from Healthy Waters told the meeting there were four main criteria. The first is that the chosen project will be big enough to hold 500 million litres of water. Both options will do this.
The other three: they must be affordable, buildable and able to be maintained. A report is due by early July and decisions will follow quickly after.
In my view, despite what the grumpies behind me thought, this is a terrific process. The council has responded to a disaster with a bold management plan, and engaged the community. One part of the community has presented an alternative, and the two options are being seriously considered, side by side, with both parties involved in the process.
There’s a budget and a desire to get a meaningful result for the greater good. Everyone keeps talking and the public is kept informed. Isn’t this how democracy is meant to work?
Grant told me it’s going to take a long while, because getting consensus is hard. Locals who fear the next flood say it’s all taking far too long. The council has to reconcile those positions too.
On top of that, the Government funding will be withdrawn if nothing happens.
“The challenges after a disaster can be just as hard as the challenges during,” said Chris Mene. He’s a professional facilitator and had been asked to run the Takapuna Golf Course meeting.
Mene has some experience of this: he comes from Christchurch.
“Why didn’t you start from the position of keeping the golf course?” asked a man called Simon. He was clapped.
Council executive Barry Potter answered that the council’s “prime consideration from the start” was to “protect life and property”. He wasn’t clapped.
A man from North Harbour Basketball said damage to the sports centre in 2023 had kept it out of action for seven months. “We have 5000 kids a week through here.”
Another man countered that if the golf course closed there would be 60,000 golfers “with nowhere to go”. He wanted everyone to “work together”, and he was applauded.
But no one has suggested the golf course should close, and the different parties to this dispute are already working together. Closely.
Paul mentioned all the kids training in different parts of the building at that moment. “As a community asset,” he said, “the stadium is far more valuable than the golf course.”
Brian Blake, who runs the sports centre, talked about the millions of dollars that insurance companies had paid out after 2023 and warned that if there’s another event that size, “there won’t be any more insurance”. Sports club trustees will be personally liable for damages and that means “the sports will go”. He says 400,000 people use the centre. He got a big clap.
A woman referred to a newspaper report about Sotheby’s estate agent Ben Mackie, who was quoted saying a wetland could reduce property values by 15%.
Hills disputed that. He said living near a park raises property values but being flooded lowers them.
“Beg to differ,” said the woman.
Matt agreed with Hills and pointed out that if homeowners can’t get insurance because of flooding, that will collapse the value of their properties.
Emma said a wetland would create problems with “midges, deer, litter and crime in the area”. It would require “chemical pest control, but the budget for maintenance is only $34,000”.
Tom Mansell responded that $35,000 is the current maintenance budget for a same-size wetland in Remuera and it works well.
“Everything is moving way too slowly,” said Anna, who runs the Coffee Lab shop right by the stadium. She’s sick of watching floodwaters on the CCTV outside her shop.
“I cannot for the life of me think why you would want to save the golf course,” she said, “when homes and businesses are being ruined.”
She talked about the stress suffered every day by people in the path of the floodwater, and she was applauded too.
“Golf relieves my stress,” said someone behind me.
Auckland Council adopted new, higher limits for buildings in the city centre this week. They’ll come into force within days, and will allow for the current 4 million square metres of floor space to increase to a bit more than 16 million sqm.
The city centre is defined as the area enclosed by the motorways and the harbour, including Wynyard Quarter to the west and the port and Quay Park to the east.
The new rules are expected, over time, to bring more residents and office workers to live and work in the city centre. They do not affect the existing “viewshafts”: legally protected sightlines to the maunga from various vantage points. (I’ll write more on this soon.)
Councillor Shane Henderson said he believed the new rules were good, but not good enough and couldn’t decide which way to vote. “Is perfect the enemy of good?” he asked. “Or are we just not being ambitious enough?” He ended up abstaining.
Councillors Mike Lee and Wayne Walker mounted an attempt to keep higher limits away from the west end of Karangahape Rd, because they believe the area has a special character worth preserving.
This is the site of a proposed 11-storey wooden-framed building for property company James Kirkpatrick Group, which was recently knocked back by an independent hearings panel. The new rules will allow that building to proceed.
Other councillors scoffed at Lee and Walker: the area has a gravel car park, an empty lot and a couple of undistinguished commercial buildings. It includes the Dogs Bollix pub on Newton Rd, but that has heritage protection and cannot be knocked down.
Mayor Wayne Brown, referring to the home bases of those two councillors, twice said, “It this goes through I will be moving to have unlimited heights on Waiheke and Whangaparāoa.”
Tau Henare, from Haukura, the Independent Māori Statutory Board, wanted more big buildings in the centre, quickly, rather than endless suburban growth.
“Smith & Caughey couldn’t manage,” he said, “because the city is dead, and you know why it’s dead? Because we pushed everybody out to Te Atatū, and I can’t drive down the street now, if you want to come to Te Atatū, there’s no more room, there’s just no more room.”
Deputy mayor Desley Simpson said, “Every large city has intensification in the city centre. It is the most natural thing for a city to do, especially as we have great parks like Albert Park. I want the city centre to change and I want it to change fast.”
Lee and Walker’s amendment attracted no support at all and the final vote was unanimous, except for Henderson’s abstention.
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Winter sports-related injury claims have consistently gone up over the past five years.