John Banks: He's our Big Apple mayor

Auckland's new mayor plans to stamp his mark on the city in a similar way to New York's Rudy Giuliani, writes SIMON COLLINS.

If you ask John Banks if he has a role model for his new job as Mayor of Auckland, his answer is perhaps more apt than he realises.

"I suppose it would be churlish of me to say Rudy Giuliani," he says. "He is the epitome of leadership."

The New York mayor has been a hero for conservatives ever since he cut his city's murder rate by 75 per cent in the early 1990s. His policy was "zero tolerance" of minor offences - he argued that cracking down on petty crime would help catch criminals and stop serious offending.

Banks promised voters in a pre-election letter that he would show "zero tolerance of graffiti and vandalism".

"He took the zero tolerance idea from me. I had the idea in 1990," jokes Banks, who became Minister of Police in that year.

Like Banks, Giuliani is a moral conservative. He campaigned to "clean up" Times Square, closed bars that allowed people to dance to juke boxes and established a "Decency Commission" to monitor art in public places.

And like Giuliani, Banks has been elected, above all, for his decisiveness. "He's a go-getter," says Mt Eden property manager Anne McCarthy. "I think he will bring a lot of positive things to Auckland City. He's anti-graffiti."

First-time voter Caroline Kelly, aged 18, says: "I like the fact that he's provocative. I think we'll see more of him. I think with Christine Fletcher, we didn't see her."

Tour leader Peter Fischer, 52, says he backed Banks because his house had been broken into three times in the past two years.

Banks' win is remarkable. He came from the far right and ousted Fletcher, his former National ministerial colleague, without allowing the split Tory vote to let in the left. Instead, the main left group on the council, City Vision, opted out of the mayoral race to help Fletcher fend off Banks.

Moreover, he did it as an individual, without any official party backing. Auckland Citizens and Ratepayers Now (ACRN) chairman John Collinge says Banks sought his advice late last year and he advised him not to stand on the ACRN ticket.

"We haven't nominated a mayoral candidate for 20 or 30 years," says Collinge. "If you have an objective of trying to get a majority on the various councils, the voters don't like voting for someone from your ticket for mayor as well. They always like a counterbalance."

But Collinge encouraged Banks to stand as an independent. "I felt the general feeling was that there was a lack of progress in advancing the fundamental matters, such as the roading."

When Banks sounded out other friends in business - and he boasts that "I would know most business leaders in this city" - he found similar frustration.

The Auckland Business Forum, led by Chamber of Commerce chief executive Michael Barnett, was created in 1999 in direct response to a city council decision not to build a new highway down the eastern rail route linking the industrial area of East Tamaki to the port.

Asked why Banks stood, Barnett says: "Eighty per cent of it would have been John's passion that this isn't good enough. But there would have been a seed in behind that, and those seeds would have been some of his associates - business people who probably said to him, 'You can do it'."

Peter Hilt, the former Glenfield MP who has been a friend of Banks for 30 years and is now his office manager, says: "I can remember John saying on Radio Pacific years ago that he was going to stand for the mayoralty."

Banks left the National cabinet in 1996 because he had accepted a job as a Radio Pacific talkback host, and left Parliament in 1999. He says Auckland "has been very kind to me" ever since he started in business collecting bottles at the age of 16.

"In a small way I always thought I would take the opportunity to give something back if it came my way."

His campaign has drawn supporters from every stage in his career, dating back to one of his earliest campaigns for National in Roskill in 1978.

Brian Nicolle, a former Labour and then Act organiser, who was Banks' mayoral campaign manager, says: "John had people helping him from his 1978 campaign - he had his old colleague Graeme Lee who did a lot of work in the Christian communities; it was a very wide network of people."

While Fletcher was still wondering whether to stand again, Banks and his team were busy, as Nicolle puts it, "paddling under the waves" - old-fashioned door-knocking. Banks says he knocked personally on 7700 doors, and spoke at 149 meetings and on 89 street corners.

"He worked for every one of those votes. Seldom have I worked with a candidate who worked harder," Nicolle says.

And now Banks will have to work just as hard as mayor, because he has set himself the task not just of running the council, but of providing leadership in fields in which the council has only limited powers, such as tackling crime, traffic congestion and economic development.

He starts with a surprising breadth of goodwill, built up by the same decades-long networking that has won him the mayoralty.

George Hawkins, the right-wing Labour Police Minister who visited Banks yesterday, says: "I think John will make a big difference to Auckland, because he will provide some leadership. He knows, probably better than most, that law enforcement is a partnership between the community and the New Zealand Police."

When Hawkins was Mayor of Papakura he had a close relationship with the local police, and found that the police were always keen to listen to what the mayor said.

In Wellington, he says, outgoing Mayor Mark Blumsky got more cops on the downtown beat by providing a city office for them, installing security cameras and developing joint plans for lighting in black spots.

Banks wants to stop "hoons" drinking on the footpaths and racing their cars up Queen St. "We have some ideas on how we can help there," says Hawkins.

"I want to work in a cooperative way with John and I think he will be easy to work with," he says. "It will be two boys from Struggle Street."

The Heart of the City group, representing inner-city businesses, offered this year to put up $20,000 to operate roadblocks barring traffic other than buses and taxis from Queen St between 8.30 pm and 4 am on Friday and Saturday nights. Council staff refused to put the idea to councillors.

Banks says while such a measure should be a last resort, he will propose "a myriad of initiatives" to Police District Commander Howard Broad to make the central city safe.

"Every lout that staggers down the street drunk, holding a bottle, will be committing an offence and looking for trouble," he says. "That is zero tolerance."

Transport Minister Mark Gosche says the Government is also willing to work with Banks and the other Auckland councils on building roads to solve the city's congestion.

Gosche, who is MP for Maungakiekie, says: "There is a strong recognition throughout the country that Auckland has been under-developed and that planning for projects that do take a big lead-in time just didn't happen and it's our job to try to catch up."

Banks says he would have "no problem" selling the city's $330 million stake in Auckland Airport "and putting that money up as a contribution to a lot of those crucial roads". He also supports tolls to pay for new roads.

"I don't have an issue with putting a toll on the eastern corridor to make sure that that happens."

Under existing Government policy, such regional contributions to roading costs would not help. Transfund's acting chief executive, Peter Wright, says national roading priorities are fixed strictly by the ratio of benefits to costs of each project.

"Each should be assessed on its merits, not on the depth of the pocket of the particular community," he says.

But Gosche says this policy is being reviewed as part of a long-awaited transport strategy, on which decisions are due shortly.

On the proposal that regional contributions should be counted as reducing the cost to taxpayers, and therefore lifting a project's benefit/cost ratio and so its place in the queue, he says: "I personally have no problem with it, but the Government has to make that decision."

As to the third main element in Mayor Banks' policy - economic development - Barnett believes the greatest change that Banks can make is simply to give the council a business-friendly attitude.

"Manukau is the best model - the way they do their planning, the inclusive role that they have for business and business agencies," he says.

Banks himself wants to be "the cheerleader" for local businesses and says Whangarei, where he used to be the MP, provides another good model for attracting investment and granting planning consents quickly.

"Why should those things take 12 to 18 months? We are desperate to attract investment," he says.

He wants the council to facilitate a new conference centre next to the Aotea Centre, and to accelerate the seven-year timetable to phase out a rates surtax on downtown businesses.

Revenue lost from axing the surtax should be made up through cost-cutting, he says. He has allied himself with the nine ACRN councillors, whose election policy proposed cutting $25 million (6 per cent) from the council's $404 million budget.

Collinge nominates "public relations, representation and all of those support things" for potential cuts.

Banks and ACRN are already chopping through the web of 17 council committees, 17 subcommittees and 14 working parties, which allowed all but three of the former 19 councillors to draw salaries as committee chairs.

Banks' swearing in next Thursday comes at an ideal time, says Barnett, just after the business-led Competitive Auckland project has identified growth sectors such as tourism and boatbuilding and suggested ways for the region to encourage them. "We are on the cusp of change."

And Banks' "personality" is a positive, he says. "That colour is good for a city like Auckland, it gives it some character."

On September 10, Giuliani's character was described by the Herald's Roger Franklin as "an irritable and overbearing disciplinarian, the sort it's all too easy to imagine in an intimidating dark uniform and tall, shiny jackboots".

On September 11, while President George W. Bush hid from terrorists after the World Trade Center attacks, Giuliani was transformed into a caring father-figure who spoke for all America.

Already, just assuming the mantle of leadership has begun to alter public perceptions of Banks, too. Although it may be churlish to ask whether Auckland actually wants its own Giuliani, there is no doubt that Banks now has a real chance to make a difference.