Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has reupped his "drongo" complaint. Photo / Alyse Wright
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland.
It’s election time: for mayor, council, local boards and licensing trusts. Until voting ends on October 11, Love this City will focus on news, issues and personalities from the campaign trail. This week:
A mayoral candidate has called on Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to submit to “a neuropsychological brain function examination”, and the mayor has responded by calling him a “complete drongo”.
Brown’s comment echoes a remark he made after the Anniversary Weekend floods of 2023, when he referred to “media drongos”.
The candidate in question is Ryan Pausina, who has not declared any previous experience in politics. He says he works in “frontier engineering as a product developer”, and he lists “technology and retro-adaptation” at the top of the key issues facing the city.
Pausina has written to the chief electoral officer, his local MP Simon Watts and Minister of Internal Affairs Brooke van Velden, complaining the mayor is not “fit to serve”. He believes it is “constitutional for mayor Wayne to pass a brain function test to stand democratically”.
He told Watts, “I am executively running a campaign in representation of the left brainer’s and the intellectuals. I am holding this huge target ... I have no interest to bounce above other mayoral candidates inorganically. The only psychology is for me is to (in theory) squeeze in shoulder to shoulder with a panel of other high functioning and well experienced mayoral candidates, highly suitable and very well put together mentally and also somewhat physically for this extremely demanding role.” (Sic)
For this to happen, he says, “I need mayor Wayne Brown to pass a neuropsychologist brain function examination. This test measures the executive functions including speech fluency, capacity, memory, processing speed, computation, speech coordination and more. This is a field of science that I know ...
“On top of this, due to extreme age, I also request a physician’s medical [from] his GP, cleared to go for the next three years.” Brown is 79.
Pausina, who says he is 47 and has 20 years of “able service” left in him, says, “I have waited until the last moments in good faith for Wayne to come to his senses. But the problem with this complaint timing is now that I am about to erupt over this matter.
“Please get me a medical and brain function neuropsychologist’s test soon. He is almost of the age we need to care for our mayor about how we exit him from his hard working three years of public service, if need be. He needs to be treated very well and be given kudos for the good work given, landslide management and skill.
“I am going to (do my best) to provide 5 days to get the results of the tests completed and disclosed, before I engineer and then swing a giant hammer on this matter.”
In one email, Pausina also said he would stage a “public intervention” on September 8 or 9.
That didn’t happen. I asked him what he meant, and did he still have something planned? He replied, “No I haven’t, was too busy, hadn’t eaten in a whole day and chose in a very slight favour to eat a meal instead.”
Wayne Brown says, “Mr Pausina is clearly the one who would fail a brain function test, and he scores 100% on my patented Complete Drongo Examination.”
Pausina responded: “Well OK the mayor is fundamentally correct, but that is on his own scale, also a drongo exam isn’t generally accepted as a full function examination.”
Kerrin Leoni, the councillor who is standing for mayor, came out against apartment blocks this week. Her LinkedIn post displayed a photo of a new social housing complex in Pt Chevalier with a big red “not allowed” symbol over it.
“People are angry and upset by the rapid intensification happening in Auckland city,” said the copy accompanying the photo.
“Infrastructure first, then intensification – ensuring growth is supported by transport and services. Right now it is a FREE for all, and Aucklanders have had enough! ... Housing yes – but done in ways that are fiscally responsible and ecological.”
Councillor Julie Fairey, standing for re-election in the Albert-Eden- Puketāpapa ward, which includes Pt Chev, was quick to respond. The photo showed the building under construction, she noted. The bright green is moisture-protection builders’ paper.
The apartments “were built by Kāinga Ora for people with mobility and health needs so they could live in low-maintenance apartments near the Pt Chev town centre”. They don’t shade other housing or block views because they’re next to the shops, a big intersection and the start of the motorway interchange.
“Two frequent cross-town buses stop directly outside, with a short walk to the frequent 18 [bus route] and a bunch of other buses that head out west and into the city. Residents have easy access to two supermarkets, a pharmacy, doctors, physio and dentist ... and will soon have a decent interim library.”
There is also, she added, a “well-activated community centre” and “good walking & cycling connections”, and she might have added that there is also a beautifully planted wetland and park area with walking tracks through it. It’s “a 10-minute walk to the Buchanan clinic, which helps folks with outpatient mental health and addiction issues”.
The apartments are on the John A. Lee Corner and have replaced an earlier collection of very rundown retirement homes. Lee was a leading member of the first Labour Government in 1935, and Fairey added a PS, noting that Lee had been “a crusader for state housing for the vulnerable”.
She imagined the people who live in the new apartments, and the people who built them, don’t appreciate being dragged into a war against density.
“It’s a good eg of density done well,” she wrote. “Why don’t you support this?”
Leoni took her post down. I asked her some questions about it.
Did she know anything about those apartments? Did she think Kāinga Ora tenants with high needs shouldn’t live in Pt Chev, or in apartment blocks?
What did “infrastructure first” mean in places where it was already excellent? What did her criticism of “rapid intensification” mean when it will happen over 30-50 years?
Leoni is standing as an independent, but she’s a member of the Labour Party and her votes at council are consistently centre-left. I asked her, “Why aren’t you providing leadership on this, helping people to understand why the city needs density?”
She replied that the post was “put up without my authorisation”.
She now has a new post, which says, “Just to let everyone know that I am absolutely in favour of density done well in our city. We need affordable homes, close to amenities and public transport ... We also need to plan very carefully in terms of livability, public transport, environment and retaining green spaces.
“Apologies from our media team about the Kāinga Ora apartments featured in our post. That was a mistake. That development is the sort of public housing we need. It’s about homes, good dry homes, apartments and houses for all our people, full stop. Let’s get planning, building and moving. Come on Auckland, let’s go!”
Awkward? Fairey and Leoni sit next to each other at council.
Wayne Brown has a track record now. He’s the frontrunner in the mayoral campaign, and there’s a list of specific achievements, with plans in place for more. He’ll need support from councillors to achieve them, but many candidates for those roles are vague about where they stand on Brown’s plans.
Even Brown, in his election campaigning, prefers vague statements. Brown’s supporters and critics alike talk, as he does, about “eliminating waste”, “getting value for money”, “holding the council and its agencies accountable” and “making the city I love a great place for everyone”. Is it meaningful or just hot air?
Most also talk about building more essential infrastructure, especially for transport and water services, and caring for the environment. But who wouldn’t want these things?
I’ve been at meetings where candidates and the audience seemed quite unclear about what Brown proposes to do. It’s not helped that he doesn’t show up to some of those meetings to explain himself.
And I’ve seen so many Facebook posts where candidates for council say they support him, while also arguing, for example, for lower rates. Wayne Brown does not plan to lower rates. Or they support his complaints about road cones, which is a trivial issue in the larger field of transport planning.
For the record, here are some of the big things Brown has actually done or proposes to do if he gets a second term. It’s worth asking ward council candidates if they support him.
Rates rises
Brown wanted a slightly lower rates rise than the 5.8% residential average we got this year. But there was a big public blowback to the community services cuts in his draft budget, and in the end, a compromise was reached.
His 10-year budget includes a 7.8% rates rise next year and 3.5% in each year thereafter. This budget, called the LTP or long-term plan, is renegotiated every three years: it’s on the agenda for 2026.
Local use of rates
In Rodney, in Howick, in North Shore and Waitematā, I’ve heard ratepayers argue that most or even all of their rates should be spent locally. Brown opposes this.
He says the critics don’t seem to grasp that “rates are a tax on land and buildings, and not a payment for services”.
Housing density
Brown is not opposed to the new residential zoning plan. He wants it to be “notified”, which means endorsed for public consultation, during which modifications to the plan will be made. As chief council planner Megan Tyler says, they are a “normal part of this process”.
The mayor is explicitly opposed to rejecting both the new plan and the existing plan (Plan Change 78), which allows for the same growth capacity by enabling three-storey buildings on small sections over most of the urban area of the city.
In a council meeting last month, he pointed out that “rejecting” both options, as some councillors and local boards want, will mean PC78 remains in place. He also fears it could invite the Government to intervene.
Brown has been scathing of city-fringe opposition to density. “So they want to build out in Pukekohe so they can get re-elected in Epsom?” he said last week. “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?”
Managing floodwaters
I’ve heard election candidates say they want the drains kept clear. While obviously valuable, that is not the key to flood management. However good the drains, they will never be able to cope with serious flooding on their own.
The council’s approach is based on a programme called Making Space for Water, developed by Healthy Waters, the stormwater division of the council. Brown is a big fan.
Making Space involves opening up streams previously diverted into drains and creating temporary flood detention sinks in parks and reserves.
In places like Northcote and Oakley Creek in Mt Albert, it proved its worth in the Anniversary Weekend floods of 2023. It is the reason part of the Takapuna Golf Club land will become a wetland and general recreation area. Brown supports this plan (see Golf Club latest in this newsletter).
Brown also points out that the new plan change (see above) increases the council’s ability to prevent construction on flood-prone land. Councillors who want that should support the plan change, he says, because “this is the chance to do that”.
Flood planning will be one of the biggest issues facing the new council when it updates the long-term budget next year. How much funding should it give to Making Space for Water? Brown wants it to be substantial.
Empowering local boards
The mayor supports the Government plan to delegate some roading authority powers to local boards, so they can decide local street issues, including speed humps and cycleways. But he has not yet said how much funding he wants to devolve for this work.
Brownie’s Pool
The mayor went to Sweden and saw outdoor seawater pools, and when he came back he made the now-abolished agency Eke Panuku build one here. The very definition of cheap and cheerful, the Karanga Plaza pool, next to Te Wero Bridge and the Viaduct Events Centre, is a great success. Now Brown wants more.
A new harbour crossing,
The mayor wants a bridge, not tunnels, and he wants it from Meola Reef near Pt Chevalier to Kauri Point near Birkenhead. The Government is investigating tunnel and bridge options close to the existing bridge.
Brown calls this “drilling holes under the harbour for the most ludicrous project of all time, a tunnel from an existing traffic jam to another one”.
The Government is extremely unlikely to support his Meola Reef idea.
Transport spending
Much of the Government’s transport focus in Auckland is on the Roads of National Significance (Rons), including a motorway extension north from Warkworth, a new “East-West Link” from Penrose to Onehunga and a new four-lane highway from Takanini to Drury.
Brown is not impressed. He calls them “roads of National Party significance” and “over-expensive vote gatherers that [will] do nothing for the economy”. He wants spending to focus on making the existing roads as efficient as possible. That includes more dynamic lanes, clearways and smart traffic lights.
The home of speedway
Speedway has moved from Western Springs to a new home at Waikaraka Park in Onehunga. A completely new racetrack and race wall have been built, along with upgraded facilities for the fans. The Grand Opening Night is scheduled for November 29.
Despite this, many council candidates want speedway returned to Springs. Brown calls this a “fantasy” and “a ridiculous waste of council time”. He voted for the move.
The central city
Brown wants underused central-city buildings converted for apartment use, but has not proposed any mechanism to speed up the process.
On the whole, he supports the street realignments and planting of recent years. He does not want a four-lane road reinstalled on Queen St.
Bed-night levy
The mayor wants the Government to allow the council to impose a “bed-night levy”, better known as a “bed tax”. He says the money should pay for the city’s attempts to attract big events, creating a virtuous circle, and notes that the hotel industry now agrees with him on this.
Rubbish collection,
The council has introduced green bins for food waste, and in three parts of the city is trialling less-frequent rubbish collection. The mayor voted for both these initiatives.
The future of the port
Critics say the mayor lacks vision, but supporters admire his pragmatic, get-a-better-fiscal-deal approach to running the city. There’s no better example of both these things than the unfolding saga of the Port of Auckland.
Brown used to want the port moved, to help modernise freight logistics and to make way for beaches, other public facilities and commercial developments on the most valuable land in the country. Whether you agreed with it or not, that was his vision.
As mayor, he abandoned all that. Instead, he negotiated a tripartite agreement with the port company and the Maritime Union, which effectively locks most current operations in place, and he insisted on the port paying a greater dividend to the council.
He’s negotiated the relocation of the imported-vehicles operation from Captain Cook, Marsden and Bledisloe wharves to other parts of the port. But while those wharves will revert to public use, he has not yet proposed any budget for this.
Earlier in his term, Brown was interested in an “opco/propco” model: separating the port into an operating company, which could be sold, and a property company, which the council would own. The tripartite deal and larger dividend appear to have killed off that idea.
Hauraki Gulf
Brown is a patron of Seacleaners and at a personal level is deeply supportive of efforts to clean up the Hauraki Gulf. The council is engaged in many initiatives related to this. But there’s a pressing demand for more funding, and Brown’s position on this is not clear.
Cycleways
The mayor often says he’s not opposed to cycleways and does not seem to support calls to “rip them out”.
But he also says they should be built cheaply, by which he sometimes means nothing more than a lick of paint. Cycleways on main roads aren’t safe, especially for children and unconfident riders, unless they’re physically divided from the traffic lanes. Brown has been reluctant to grasp this.
Why do we have a postal ballot for the council election, even though it’s been associated with low voter turnout?
The choice was made in June last year, when the council voted to reject the polling booth option and stick with the postal system. Cost was an issue: polling booths could be open up to 20 days before the final election day, and it’s expensive to set them up and staff them to the standard required. And some councillors felt there wasn’t enough evidence that changing the voting method would make a difference to voter turnout anyway.
It’s not only a postal ballot, though: the council did agree to increase the number of places you can drop off your voting papers.
They’re all over. There’s one at Leigh, two in Wellsford, two more in Mangawhai. Down south, there are postal ballot drop boxes in Tuakau, Clark’s Beach and at the Hunua Falls, and even over the Waikato boundary in Pokeno, Meremere and Maramarua. And at 150 places throughout the city, including 65 Countdown supermarkets and 11 transport hubs.
In the council vote, an amendment was proposed by Kerrin Leoni and Julie Fairey to have voting booths as well as postal voting.
Those in favour were Josephine Bartley, Chris Darby, Fairey, Alf Filipaina, Lotu Fuli, Shane Henderson, Richard Hills, Mike Lee, Leoni and Ken Turner.
Those against were Andy Baker, Wayne Brown, Angela Dalton, Christine Fletcher, Daniel Newman, Greg Sayers, Desley Simpson, Sharon Stewart, Wayne Walker, John Watson and Maurice Williamson. Lost, 10:11.
Fairey and Fuli then proposed another amendment to allow booth voting on the day, as well as postal voting. That was lost 9:12.
There’s been talk that the number of candidates is down this year, but that’s not the case in Auckland. The council’s chief executive, Phil Wilson, reported last month that 477 people were standing for office across the elections for mayor, ward councillors, local boards and licensing trusts. That’s slightly more than in 2022.
And here’s perhaps the single most significant data point about Auckland Council elections: in 2022, 62% of those aged 76-80 voted, compared with 21% of those aged 26-35.
Learn more at voteauckland.co.nz
Golfing retailer Golf Warehouse has announced a $20-million proposal to redevelop Takapuna Golf Course and the publicly owned A.F. Thomas Park on which it sits.
The council will be converting part of the park to a wetland and flood retention area, and the Kaipātiki Local Board will soon begin public consultation on what to do with the rest of the land.
The Golf Warehouse plan includes:
Eric Faesenkloet, Golf Warehouse owner and long-term North Shore resident, says the plan has been in development for two years. He calls it “a once-in-a-generation opportunity to redevelop and enhance A.F. Thomas Park into a multipurpose community hub for sports, recreation and entertainment that Aucklanders can be proud of”.
Richard Hills, the local councillor and also chair of the council’s policy and planning committee, says, “It’s great to see progressive ideas coming forward which acknowledge the need to address flooding, improve biodiversity, provide significant recreation space for the community and also invest significant funding into new golf facilities.”
Hills says the proposal “gives the community who feel anxious about this project at least a vision of what’s possible, and I look forward to the local board hearing from the community on what they see is important for this reserve.”
The full story is here.
Paris: The mayor’s ‘school streets’ campaign
How’s this for leading from the front? When Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo won re-election in 2020, one of her campaign policies was “school streets”.
Three hundred streets around schools, where the traffic is restricted, trees and gardens are planted and the area becomes a safe space for children before and after school. Relevant to our interests here, where Auckland Transport, acting on Government policy, has jumped the other way, putting the speed limits up around most of the city’s schools.
As one Parisian planner put it, “People sometimes tell us, ‘But 90% of the people drive!’ I tell them they have an odd definition of ‘people’. Because none of the children drive.”
The campaign has been rolled out in two stages. The first is cheap, cheerful and temporary. They put up fences, splash out with some paint.
If it works, they move to stage 2, which involves permanent planting and street realignment.
AT has done a bit of this in Auckland in the past few years, but then the programme disappeared. Perhaps, now that it’s to be swallowed up by the council so policy and planning can be more efficient and effective, we might see a return.
Any candidates for School Streets Champion?
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