The mayor of Manukau was on the island this week to speak at the Rotary Club of Waiheke; an evening that had started earlier with a lively discussion – conducted, he said, at full volume for the whole trip on the ferry to the island – that included the views of a local government official, several home owners and commuters and a green eco-warrior.

In his shirtsleeves, he told Rotary members and guests that his vision was for an Auckland that was the most liveable city in the world. “We have the bones to be something really special. We haven’t really lived up to our potential.”

A city councillor in Manukau for nine years before taking over the mayoralty three years ago, he has the same zesty enthusiasm for the challenges of multi-racial communities that I remember from talking to palangi businessmen in Otara 15 years ago when I was involved in setting up a newspaper in the township with its notorious shuttered shops and urban crime. It was an edgy, exciting and surprisingly inclusive community that made Devonport and even Waiheke seem staid by comparison.

Brown sees the mayoralty of the new Super City as an opportunity for leadership in uniting the hundred villages while building a working collaboration with central government to genuinely address Auckland’s potential and the needs of its people as well as its business powerhouse.

He is also aware that there are huge risks in the changes. He has already asked 1000 workers at meetings around the isthmus who among them support the Super City.  “Not a single hand goes up,” he says. Not least because – whether he is in Otara or points north, south, east or west – the great fear is that they will lose their identity.

“I have a sense of that, too, on the island,” he said.

Not, one gets the impression, that loss of identity would happen on his watch. His promise to electors is for strong local boards and his string of key performance indicators for local government successes all involve successful community initiatives, both in Manukau and around the country. A long-time Waiheke visitor, he says he doesn’t come over as often now he is a busy mayor, mainly because once here, he finds it hard to leave. He is well informed on Waiheke’s Clean Stream waste minimisation initiative and acknowledged Waiheke’s grieving for its loss. “I am not into breaking contracts but I loved what you were doing with Clean Stream and want to follow that through.” He promises “geared up” local boards and local investment. “This is an extraordinarily gifted island.”

He said he regrets the loss of the earlier nerve shown by Auckland leaders like Sir Dove Meyer Robinson who set out to deliver a strong, vibrant city. “I want us to deliver that now,” he said, backing himself to deliver three major outcomes out of the resources of a $3.3 billion annual budget, the fiscal prudence which has kept Manukau’s rates the lowest in Auckland and his own networking skills with national politicians and government agencies.

The Super City, he said, will not be a panacea but it will be a financial organisation with serious clout and an ability to deliver.
His vision for Auckland is strong on final outcomes: A strong economic platform backed by reformed public transport, airport and harbour crossing links, welcoming harbour and airport gateways, ‘powered up’ local boards – “most of the decisions on Waiheke will be made on Waiheke” – and a strong commitment to New Zealand’s clean green vision for itself.

He draws a thumbnail of his vision for the waterfront development: five to ten years focus on the hub at the western end of the Wynyard Quarter with the new “town hall of Auckland, opera house, whatever it turns out to be” after the clearance of the tank farm. A retail promenade to the proposed Te Wero bridge at the Viaduct with light rail links in the longer term and a 30-metre wide pedestrian promenade along Quay Street from the already successful Viaduct precinct past Princes Wharf as the main Rugby World Cup meeting place at the edge of the CBD.  

Queen’s Wharf should be “left fallow”, he says, until the city has focussed on the needs of ferries and their place on the city’s spectacularly beautiful harbour.

The Captain Cook wharf can be a mixed-use terminal to accommodate the doubling of the number of cruise ships in the next five to ten years and that massive economic potential and the port proper can start at Marsden Wharf.

Collaboration is strong in his vocabulary, and so is a staunch belief in communities’ abilities to generate sensible solutions anywhere  where the community itself can point to “something wrong” and generate solutions.

He’s clear we don’t sell the family silver. Airport shares, he said, are sacrosanct (as they have been in Manukau where he has been on the council for 12 years) and success stories in his own city with its challenges of competing cultures trip off his tongue.
Len Brown told Waiheke Rotarians he ‘returned’ after a major health issue last year with a passion for the city and what can be achieved. Close up, it looks very infectious. •