The mayor came under heavy media scrutiny last year for a perceived lack of visibility and taking too long to declare a state of emergency after a summer’s worth of rain fell in a single day, resulting in four deaths and the evacuations of thousands of Aucklanders.
Brown would later apologise to Auckland for “dropping the ball”, admitting his communications weren’t fast enough on the day and that he was “too slow to be seen”.
But in an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan that aired on Sunday night, Brown said he now recognises “a lot of that stuff was just bulls***”.
“We had that flood… I absolutely did cause the rain that night and apologise to everybody for that. But this year, we’ve had wonderful weather but no one’s thanked me for the nice sunny days. It’s been a bit weird,” he said.
“I just got on and fixed it. I was out there fixing things and seeing what was happening, but I don’t do weeping and carrying on as much as some people do.”
Brown told Newstalk ZB he was “elected to fix Auckland, not to weep for it”.
He says his engineering brain enabled him to be neutral and analytical, but sometimes prevented him from understanding “why other people are emotional” when a solution seems simple.
“You lack empathy compared to other people, but you get things done. I’ve found that people have had years and years of empathy and nothing happening. We had several years of being kind – well that didn’t do very good.
“Now people actually quite like someone who just comes in and says, ‘That’s a problem. Sorry, I’ve failed to cry and weep about it, but here’s the solution and we’ll fix it.’ That seems to go down quite well.”
Brown says he has turned to surfing to cope with stress – “it clears you, it washes your brain” – but admits his wife Toni worried for him amid the criticism that followed the Auckland floods.
Paturoa Road in Auckland's Titirangi was badly damaged by floods during Auckland Anniversary Weekend. Photo / Brett Phibbs
“Nobody enjoyed that onslaught of ill-informed nonsense from the media a year ago,” he said.
“But a year on, I think that my credibility is a lot higher than the media’s credibility, to be honest. And quite a lot of them have turned around and realised ‘maybe he is doing some quite good stuff there’.
“They’re never going to admit they got it wrong, but some of them actually have quite a different relationship [with me].”
The mayor concedes journalists got “quite pissed off at me” at the beginning of his mayoralty for turning down interviews, but says he was just more concerned “trying to understand what the problems were we had to fix, rather than gratifying them [media].”
“For a lot of elected officials and politicians, the media is kind of like a drug to them – they feel that they have to have it. I don’t see it that way; it’s just something that’s there, another thing you deal with. I don’t seek media attention.”
In a wide-ranging interview, Brown also gave his assessment of how Auckland has coped with population growth, his priorities for the region during his mayoralty, and his council’s relationship with central government.
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7:30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
