By Maria Slade – Fairfax/stuff.co.nz – 9 November 2015:
Long-time Auckland mayor Len Brown has announced he is bowing out next year, admitting his extramarital affair with a council adviser has cast too long a shadow over his 2016 election chances.
But there has been far more to his three terms as mayor – once of Manukau City and then twice of the merged Auckland Super City – than salacious revelations about his sex life.
We look at the some of the highlights and lowlights of the Brown administration.
HIGHLIGHTS
LEN THE CHEERLEADER
It’s no coincidence that media archives contain far more pictures than is necessary of Len Brown giving the thumbs up. The cheesy pose sums up the ebullient mayor perfectly.
He has been an untiring, glass-half-full advocate for Auckland.
“He was an extraordinarily talented enthusiast in terms of the civic role,” Councillor Chris Fletcher said.
“The ribbon cuttings, the talking up of issues, he has a very nice manner… He’s gifted in that regard.”
LEN THE PEACEMAKER
The first mayor of the merged Super City was always going to cop the fallout from trying to bring eight warring councils under one umbrella.
But Brown more or less managed it, his political colleagues say.
“I think he did really well to bring everyone together into one municipal authority and part of that was his lively, upbeat persona where he was able to gently prod people into heading in the right direction,” Councillor Cameron Brewer said.
Fletcher said she’s had her political and philosophical differences with the mayor, “but it has never interfered with the ability for us to come together and debate and discuss and move issues on”.
Remarkably he never held grudges, she said.
IMPROVED PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Under Len Brown’s watch patronage of Auckland public transport patronage has shot through the roof, particularly on rail which is up around 43 per cent.
This has been helped by the introduction of the electric trains, providing a more efficient and pleasant service.
Brewer believes Brown was at the peak of his powers in mid- 2013 when the Prime Minister announced an accelerated package fast-tracking some of Auckland’s major transport projects.
Since then the council has signed the Transport Alignment Project, a kind of memorandum of understanding with central government on Auckland’s transport needs over the next 30 years.
“That has been an enormous coup,” Fletcher said.
The government wouldn’t have taken Auckland seriously if it hadn’t pushed through improvements such as the single ticket HOP card system.
LOWLIGHTS:
THE MOMENTS OF WEAKNESS
It’s hard to go past Brown’s two-year affair with council advisory board member Bevan Chuang as the most embarrassing event of his mayoralty.
Regardless of the moral rights and wrongs and whether it had any effect on his ability to run a city, he was never able to shake off the stigma of the affair.
But it was not the only time we saw Brown the man.
In 2010 he cried and slapped his face in a Manukau City Council meeting as he apologised for putting personal items including a Christmas ham on his mayoral credit card.
At the height of the port expansion row earlier this year he walked out of a council meeting after blocking further debate on the matter.
Brown and Chuang were allegedly intimate in the Ngati Whatua Room at Auckland’s Town Hall. Photo: David White / Fairfax NZ
COUNCIL SPENDING
While Brown has been focused on developing a united Auckland community, many say the Super City has failed to deliver on promised economies of scale.
Auckland Council has around 200 more staff than it did last year, spending an extra $63m in staff costs.
Council officials say it’s due to the city’s rapid growth, with more resources needed to do things such as process building consents and provide infrastructure.
Meanwhile rates have gone up by an average 10 per cent this year, including a new transport levy.
But Brewer believes it’s Brown’s greatest failure.
“At the end of the day we’re rating, spending and borrowing more than ever before.”
THE POWER OF THE CCOS
Many believe the Council-Controlled Organisations (CCOs) such as Auckland Transport and Auckland Council Investments wield too much power.
They may have been created by the laws setting up the new Auckland Council, but there is a view that the political wing hasn’t governed them as strongly and tightly as it should have.
This was seen in the furore over Ports of Auckland’s proposed container wharf extensions.
The Auckland Council Investments-owned port quietly applied for a series of resource consents and didn’t bother to tell the mayor about a project it surely knew would be controversial.
“With mayoral leadership it’s not so much what you’re statutorily able to influence, it’s that behind the scenes leadership and having meaningful input and control,” he said.
THE MASSIVE PROPOSED AUCKLAND UNITARY PLAN
The huge task of setting the blueprint for Auckland’s growth going forward is well underway and hearings on the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan (PAUP) have been going on for months.
It involves looking at contentious issues such as protecting view shafts, whether to lift the pre-1944 heritage overlay guarding many of the inner suburbs, and plans to allow greater housing density.
Fletcher has criticised Brown for being too detached from the process and delegating responsibility to Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse.
One of the mayor’s favourite sayings is “pace and momentum”, but the PAUP is trying to do too much too quickly, Fletcher believes.
“Slowly and surely can also sometimes play a part.
“He could have staged the Unitary Plan and rolled it out to enable us to have had a less rocky road.”
– Stuff.co.nz