Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent.
An earlier version of this opinion piece inferred Tory Whanau relied on the Single Transferable Voting (STV) system to win the mayoralty. While there were seven iterations of counting to reach the threshold to win, she did receive the largest number of first preference votes.
Celia Wade-Brown has finally made it to where Tory Whanau would like to be, in Parliament for the weird and wacky Greens. Whanau may have blotted her copybook though, initially rejecting her previously held Green credentials until she won the mayoralty and then embracing them afterwards.
This is the first citizen of the country’s capital who lacks the intellectual rigour to remember what she said at the beginning of an interview, only to contradict it later. Whose understanding of governance is as deep as a puddle.
Is there any wonder then why Simeon Brown, a Cabinet Minister who looks young enough to be Whanau’s son, has decided to lend her a helping hand with a Crown observer to watch over her?
Essentially the observer is Brown’s nark. If the council under Whanau’s stewardship is as shambolic as we’re told it is, then the role will eventually be taken over by a Commissioner.
Even Brown tripped over his tongue in an interview by calling the observer a Com..., before correcting himself, which is probably a good indication of where it will end up.
After the Government intervention, Whanau’s response was to welcome it, saying she hopes the council will finally agree to the elusive long-term plan for the troubled city.
Despite earlier saying she will happily work with the Crown observer, Whanau signalled she liked the damning comments on the account about one being appointed, that is until the ghoulish media noticed them and suddenly the likes became unlikes.
And that’s the inconsistency that’s become the hallmark of Whanau’s leadership. The cost of the observer overseeing the way the council operates, comes at the expense of the long-suffering Wellington ratepayer.
But if this madness is allowed to continue, perhaps getting rid of the mayor will be a small price to pay.
Sign up to The Daily H, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
A driver could be seen delivering a digger to the property, where 80,000 chickens must now be culled due to the highly pathogenic virus. Video / Ben Tomsett