A few suggestions for Phil Goff about the underused talents on Auckland Council

Councillor Fa'anana Efeso Collins, who represents the Manukau ward. Photo / Michael Craig

COMMENT:

What's Fa'anana Efeso Collins going to do now? And what's Phil Goff going to do with him?

Collins is the charismatic, youth-adjacent councillor from Manukau, now in his second term. He's a leader in the Samoan community, in his church and in the Labour Party, where he chairs the Auckland local body committee. He's the best orator on the council and an unwavering spokesperson for the poor.

He also has the lowest attendance record of all councillors and he declares his absences as "official business" at least six times more often than most of his colleagues. Even the mayor doesn't come close.

Collins has a tell: a thing he does which reveals what he thinks of the council perhaps more obviously than he intends. He's always late to meetings.

I asked him about it. He said yes, frankly, he doesn't much like being there.

I asked him something else. This term, does he want to get things done, or will he just continue to sit on the sidelines and make speeches about how people are missing out?

Fa'anana Efeso Collins giving his maiden speech in 2016. Photo / Michael Craig

There's a big issue here, for Collins, for Goff and for the council as a whole.

Collins has not fully committed to being a councillor. By the same token, have Goff and the council as an institution fully committed to Collins?

Goff says his door is always open. But if you want someone to walk through your door and they don't, you have to go and find out why, don't you? People are included when they feel included, not when you think you've done enough to welcome them.

Let's put it this way. Auckland would benefit enormously from having a committed Councillor Collins. He has many talents. But he has to want to use them, and those who can help with that have to do their bit too.

Collins should not be content to remain on the outside. It makes him ineffective. Why consign yourself to opposition on a council where the mayor says he wants to build consensus? Why not become part of that consensus? Why not create a set of goals and set about ticking them off?

Not unrelated: What's the biggest issue facing the council this term? Yes, traffic congestion, and yes, climate change and infrastructure development. Getting more homes and new communities built. The America's Cup and APEC in 2021 may be great for Auckland but they will also be extremely disruptive.

There's also this: how about fixing the South?

Manukau councillor Fa'anana Efeso Collins, with Alf Filipaina on the left. Photo / Michael Craig

The poorest suburbs in the city have some of the worst public transport and traffic congestion, the fewest and most threadbare amenities, the longest tail of educational underachievement, the worst-quality housing and highest levels of homelessness, the lowest standards of health and the most under-resourced healthcare. It's a much longer list than that.

"The South" is not limited to a geographic place. Big parts of west Auckland are similarly impoverished, as are the flatlands of east Tamaki.

The councillors who represent these areas, Efeso Collins among them, speak often of their despair: at how much their constituents miss out; at how hard it is to get the institution of council to take their needs seriously.

It's the shame of the city. Auckland is relatively prosperous. The sense of dynamic progress is palpable in the Wynyard Quarter and the city centre: bold urban planning and more cranes on the skyline than in any North American city. If you live in the isthmus, the eastern suburbs or on much of the Shore, you're probably benefiting in all sorts of ways from real progress.

And the South hasn't been neglected. Manukau's new bus station, Papatoetoe's AUT campus, the nearby Manukau Institute of Technology which is built over the railway station: all speak of a commitment to raising up the lives of the people who live there. The new Puhinui bus station, now being built, will be the fulcrum for a whole rapid transit system that runs from Manukau to the airport, to the city centre, to the south and to the east.

The Southern Initiative coordinates and leads a whole bunch of terrific community programmes and enterprises. Many of the local schools have exciting programmes, with their students and in their communities. There's much more happening. But there's also much, much more still to do.

Mayor Phil Goff on election day, October 12, 2019. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

So how about this, Mr Mayor. You could create a supervisory body with oversight on everything that affects "the South". Give it real power. Give some or maybe even all of the relevant councillors key roles in making it work. That's Collins and his Manukau colleague Alf Filipaina, Daniel Newman and Angela Dalton from Manurewa-Papakura, Josephine Bartley from Maungakiekie-Tāmaki, Tracy Mulholland from Whau, Linda Cooper and Shane Henderson from Waitākere.

It could be a council committee. It could be a taskforce that reports directly to the mayor. It could be an individual, either a councillor or an official, perhaps in the mayor's office, who reports to the larger body. A body with the authority to tell Auckland Transport, or the budget planners, or whoever it is: you haven't thought properly about us. A body that can say: let's do this.

A Commissioner for Closing the Gaps. A Superperson of the South. The key is to make the task someone's specific responsibility. That's how things get done.

While you're about it, Mr Mayor, do the same thing for climate change. The council has unanimously agreed we have a climate emergency, and that all council proposals should be assessed in the light of it. But what does that mean?

We need a Climate Change Superperson too. Possibly in the mayor's office, or perhaps it's a job for a councillor.

Goff has difficult decisions to make with all this and is currently talking to councillors about what they want. He has to decide whether to change the committees he set up last term, who he wants as their chairs and deputy chairs, who his own deputy should be, and what other special roles he might fill.

He needs to shake it up and he needs to shake himself up. His last term was nearly derailed by councillors angry at how they felt left out. He got the relationships wrong. He finds this hard to accept, but he has to fix it.

The chair of the finance committee is vacant and several councillors will have their eye on it. The chair of the environment and community committee is vacant too, but should those two things stay together?

Councillor Alf Filipaina: the next deputy mayor? Photo / supplied

Goff's deputy, Bill Cashmore, has said he wants to keep his job but would understand if the mayor had other plans.

He should have other plans. Goff has a younger council, with several now under 50, and with nine women, up from seven. Three councillors (Bartley, Collins and Filipaina) are Samoan and two (Filipaina and Richard Hills) are Māori.

Goff says often how much he loves the diversity of Auckland: he has a chance now to show it. The city can't continue to be run solely by older Pākehā men from the most comfortable parts of town and, with all respect to Cashmore, the deputy mayor role is a good place to signal some intent.

In that list of southern councillors, there's one who is wise, likeable, highly experienced, dedicated and respected. How about giving the job to Alf Filipaina?

As for Fa'anana Efeso Collins, how ambitious is he? The answer should be: very. Ambitious people make a difference. We need that.