David Hay a man driven by own principles

By MICHELE HEWITSON

A few questions cannot be lobbed at people without expecting some sort of explosive response.

"Are you a prude?" would be one.

David Hay, deputy mayor of Auckland, millionaire father of four, scourge of the homosexual community, high-profile conservative Christian, the man who once declared Mt Roskill a pornography-free zone, does not so much as flinch.

"No, I am not a prude," he says, grinning.

No doubt, after 18 years in local body politics, he has been accused of worse.

So, no prude, but not the life of the party either?

"I'm not the court jester, but you'd have to ask others about that. But my kids wouldn't say I'm a prude.

"I can't be too bad; I wouldn't have four kids living at home."

This is a matter of some pride to Hay. He does not think it amusing to be told he may never get rid of them and that he should kick them out pronto before they settle in for life.

Family is a serious business.

Being part of the family, and the family firm, is serious business, and it is kept firmly in the family.

The children start learning it, and learning the "value of a dollar", emptying the rubbish bins at the company office after school on Friday afternoons.

"Too right," he says of them having to work for it.

Local body service is a family business, too. His father was Keith Hay, mayor of Mt Roskill for 21 years. Hay jun says there was no family pressure, or even expectation, that he follow in his father's footsteps.

It was simply "that we were taught if you don't like what's happening, get on the committee and fix it".

This is common sense, says Hay. He talks a lot about common sense. You cannot imagine this man following a flight of fancy.

He did his apprenticeship as a chippie, his father's trade, as did his own son.

There is more to the family business than the housing empire (now extended into commercial and industrial property investment) and local body politics.

Keith Hay was often described as a morals campaigner - he was a prime mover in the campaign against the Homosexual Law Reform Bill introduced in 1985.

Son David became almost famous, or infamous if you prefer, for his opposition to the annual gay Hero Parade, on the grounds of taste.

His argument is well-worn, and, in a year where there will be no parade because of the financial woes of the Hero Trust, sounds a little worn out.

"If it was the Girl Guides behaving like that, well, I'd object. So I don't know if you'd call that a moral campaign. I just think there are certain standards to keep up."

When you have standards, he says, "you get boxed. I think the media have tried to box me".

We have certainly made a few attempts over the years to get him to declare that he is the deputy mayor who would like to be mayor.

He is still saying, as he has for years, that the sitting mayor has nothing to worry about from him.

Les Mills didn't have to watch his back; neither does John Banks.

"I have faith, God's in control - it'll sort itself out."

Most things eventually sort themselves out to Hay's liking. He has just spent what he calls a frustrating three years in the wilderness.

Out of the wilderness then, and straight into a hornet's nest of angry, placard-waving pensioners.

When new mayor John Banks announced that the council should not be in the business of providing low-cost pensioner housing he, and Hay who agrees with him, became overnight, in the public's eye, nothing more than pensioner bashers.

Now there's a not-so-nice irony: that the son of a man who kickstarted the family fortune filling a gap in the market for low-cost kitset housing should be thus reviled.

And this is the man who once opened an extension to the Stoddard Rd pensioner village - which his father bought for the now-amalgamated Mt Roskill Borough Council.

Did he cut the ribbon into pieces and hand out portions to the residents? "I probably did."

And did he say: "This secures your tenancy forever?"

"No problem with that at all," says Hay.

Does he stand by that handing out of the ribbon? "No problem."

The real problem, he maintains, is with the media again.

"We have made it quite clear that they [residents] are going to be protected."

But pensioner housing should not be a council responsibility, he says. "My position is that it is really a central government function."

Which is a position this council will argue for. The council will gradually sell off its 1641 pensioner units.

In the meantime, he wants to assure those angry, not to mention worried, pensioners that "no one is going to get evicted. We will honour the obligation we have to people."

He does have standards.

And Hay can't complain that my saying this constitutes putting him in a box - because I can't quite get him to fit into one.

He is at once complex and straight-forwardly what-you-see-is-what-you-get. He manages this contradiction while doing a good impersonation of a man who is not in the slightest bit interesting.

The photographer finds it difficult to get a photo: Hay sits so solidly in the armchair in an office that has as much personality as a motel room that he scarcely moves as much as an eyebrow in an hour.

When he poses in the stairwell later, the resulting picture is that of a chameleon. The man in the grey suit, with grey hair and a grey tie, all but vanishes into the grey-walled stairwell.

I don't think I'd know him again if I saw him in the street.

You could not, in fact, tag Hay with any of the labels that attract themselves to politicians like pins to a magnet. He is confident, but not cocky.

He can talk his way around a question all right, but you couldn't call him glib.

He says he's not a Scrooge - "I don't sit there counting up my money" - but he is no great expender of words.

Tell him observers call him the great survivor and he says, "I don't know about great."

Tell him he's widely regarded as the power behind the throne - as he was during Les Mills' mayoralty from 1991 to 1998; that he is still - and he'll say, "I don't look at it that way."

Ask him about the family fortune - a low estimate puts it at $25 million - and he says, simply, "We've been blessed."

Which is as big a clue as anything to what makes David Hay tick. That aura of confidence, so all-encompassing that trying to peel it back proves irresistible, comes from inner serenity: an unshakeable belief you are one of the chosen.