Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown. Photo / Dean Purcell
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says lives lost during the city’s flooding event in January were due to poor planning and is dismissing any suggestion he wasn’t empathetic to the challenges Aucklanders were facing in the hours following the deluge.
It comes after a review into the flood response, commissioned by Brown, found a “system failure” of leadership in the first 12 hours of the response in which “much of the damage was done” before Auckland Council or Brown had taken any action.
A central finding of the review was “senior leaders underestimated the importance of their visible leadership roles”.
Four people died in the flooding.
In a frank and wide-ranging interview on TVNZ’s Q+A politics show this morning, Brown repeatedly defended questions from host Jack Tame about whether his initial response to the flooding was empathetic.
“I don’t think I was elected for that, I was elected to fix Auckland,” he said.
“Perhaps I didn’t go and hug people, I’m not a hugger.
“Nobody died because of lack of empathy, they died because of lack of planning.”
He emphasised this point while restating his position that some houses should not have been built on cliffs or in flood-prone areas - a belief he aired in the hours after the flooding occurred.
Brown made several comments concerning the “very poor preparation” from Auckland Council to deal with such a weather event and accepted its response wasn’t “anything to boast about”.
He also accepted criticism of chair of the council Emergency Management and Civil Defence Committee chairwoman Sharon Stewart who on Thursday told RNZ she only found out parts of the city were underwater on January 27 after her daughter sent her a photo of flooding in New Lynn.
Asked repeatedly if Stewart was competent, Brown said it was “fair to say it wasn’t a glorifying moment of her life, but she’s a good person and means well”.
On Thursday, Stewart singled out Auckland Council chief executive Jim Stabback over the council’s poor response, saying it was his “duty… to carry out these expectations”, not elected representatives like her, because they were “not operational”.
Brown would not be drawn on Stabback’s actions, saying he had written to Stabback requesting the review’s 17 recommendations be initiated within a month.
“We all could have done better and I apologised. Have you heard an apology from the others?”
The Government was currently considering whether areas impacted by the flooding and Cyclone Gabrielle, which hit several regions soon, could be built on in the future.
Asked whether people should get compensated for the value of their land by the Government, Brown didn’t want to state his view as it was not his decision to make.
However, he did say he was concerned about the impact any changes would have on residents who built their homes in “sensible places”.
On whether he wanted another term as mayor, Brown said he hadn’t yet decided but claimed the support he was receiving from residents was stronger than was being portrayed in the media - he described some outlets as “abrasive and corrosive.
“I like a challenge but that’s two years away and I believe the response from the public has been a lot stronger than the response from the media.”
Additional reporting: RNZ