Janet Clews. Photo / Martin Sykes.
CNZM
For services to local body affairs and the community: Janet Clews
Janet Clews, a stalwart of West Auckland local government for 46 years, has been made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
To her, local government should be about serving people.
"It's not for money or to feather your own nest. Whatever you do is a team effort,"
she said yesterday.
Her new honour - she was already a companion of the Queen's Service Order - recalls a time of sad loss for her and husband Ernie.
One of their three sons, David, was part of the team of surgeons who separated conjoined twins at Waikato Hospital in 2004.
He was made an Officer of the NZ Order of Merit in the 2007 New Year honours list. But he was ill with cancer and asked his mother and family to receive it on his behalf. He died the following March.
It was a belief that a council must be accountable to its community that led Mrs Clews into leadership of Waitakere City Council's annual consultations on plans to spend up to $285 million.
Her training was in teaching rather than finance, though she makes light of that. "If you are reasonably good with your household accounts that's a start, isn't it?"
She was a mother with small children in 1963 when she topped the poll to become Glen Eden Borough's first woman councillor.
Rallying cash-strapped organisations became a speciality - organising a fundraising gala to save her local Plunket branch, and taking the helm of the Portage Licensing Trust after it nearly sank in the wash of the 1987 sharemarket crash.
Mrs Clews counts her 35 years as an elected member of the trust as a public service.
"The limited monopoly on liquor and gambling licences has been a saving grace for West Auckland. Millions of dollars of the proceeds have gone to the Trusts Stadium, Olympic Park and dozens of schools and organisations."
Mrs Clews is less enthusiastic about the two sweeping reforms of local government in her time.
She was Mayor of Glen Eden from 1983 to 1989, when she was elected to the then-new Waitakere City Council. Now, in the reformed Super City, her role is deputy chairwoman of the Waitakere Local Board.
She likens the further amalgamation of communities to the Government "forcing ratepayers to pay for their own execution".
