Friday, March 18, 2022

Can Wellington rediscover its lost mojo?

I spent a couple of hours wandering the streets of downtown Wellington this week. What a dismal experience.

Actually, it was worse than dismal. It was profoundly depressing. The city where I spent most of my working life looks as if it has lost the will to live.

John Key got into a lot of trouble in 2013 for saying Wellington was a dying city. It seemed a preposterous statement then, but if Key said it today, I could only agree.

Absolutely Positively Wellington? That was the city’s confident – you might say brash – slogan in the 1990s. Now it sounds like a black joke. Ditto the phrase “Coolest little capital in the world”, which is how Lonely Planet (not an authoritative guide, even at the best of times) dubbed the city in 2014.

I’ve banged on about this before, here and here, so I won’t repeat myself. Suffice it to say that downtown Wellington resembles the urban wastelands of North American cities where you venture at your peril.

Lambton Quay on Tuesday was like a ghost town, Willis St only marginally better. Cuba Street, which once had an appealing raffishness, now looks just plain grotty. The CBD as a whole looks and feels tired and moribund.

Everywhere you look, businesses are closed or empty – a state of affairs documented in last Saturday’s Dominion Post. Beggars are ubiquitous, sometimes obtrusively so, and Cuba Mall is owned by derelicts.

Of course the city’s decline can partly be blamed on Covid-19, but the key word here is “partly”.

Many of the public servants and suits who normally patronise the city’s cafes and shops are working from home, and more worryingly may continue to do so even after the pandemic eases. The streets are also largely free of tourists – an absence for which Wellington should probably be grateful, since it would do the city’s image no good if word got out that downtown Wellington resembles the less salubrious parts of Flint, Michigan.

But Covid-19 has merely accelerated a decline that was already well advanced. For years the city has been in the grip of scaremongers and control freaks who used the hypothetical risk of earthquakes as an excuse to declare supposedly dangerous buildings off-limits. Risk-averse engineers, perhaps intoxicated by the power the Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes unexpectedly bestowed on them, keep raising the bar. Compliant bureaucrats fall into line.

The Reading cinema complex, which once generated a needed daytime buzz in Courtenay Place, remains closed. The public library and town hall, ditto. Oh, and the St James Theatre too. And now I see that the Michael Fowler Centre, which has already been strengthened once, is getting another earthquake-prone sticker “because more documentation is required to verify the building’s seismic status”. The wording says it all.

These are institutions that collectively help define the city’s identity. As long as they remain closed, Wellington will remain in a state of inertia, if not paralysis. By the time the buildings reopen, it may be too late.

Even the Asteron Centre, an architectural showpiece opened as recently as 2010 and presumably built to state-of-the-art standards, was hurriedly evacuated last year for fear of imminent collapse. Yet the Railway Station immediately opposite, built on reclaimed land in the 1930s, has remained opened for business throughout. Can anyone explain this apparent paradox?

What’s astonishing is that this wretched state of affairs seems to be stoically accepted as inevitable. Perhaps the fact that the city’s decline has been gradual over many years resulted in the people living in its midst not noticing. The frog-in-boiling-water analogy comes to mind. Alternatively, the citizens of Wellington may have been browbeaten into submission and become simply too demoralised to resist.

All of this brings us to the matter of the city’s leadership, or lack thereof. From 1992 till 2010, Wellington had a succession of mayors – Fran Wilde, Mark Blumsky and Kerry Prendergast – who were energetic, capable and ambitious for their city. That was the Absolutely Positively era.

The rot set in under Celia Wade-Brown and since then, things have gone from bad to worse. Wellington in 2022 is cursed with the worst possible combination: a weak, ineffectual mayor and a council of fractious activists, several of whom treat their office as a licence to pursue ideological agendas.

So while the city’s infrastructure crumbles and its social and commercial vitality inexorably wastes away, the council sprays money on pet causes such as  cycleways (cost: $334 million) and virtue-signalling gestures on climate change – to say nothing of the comically misnamed Let’s Get Wellington Moving, which has become a synonym for expensive and futile dithering.

A striking example of the council’s resources being hijacked in pursuit of a radical political agenda – one not remotely connected with the concerns of ratepayers – is the proposed three-day wananga (forum) entitled Imagining Decolonisation, paid for by the council and promoted by councillor Tamatha Paul.

Official Information Act requests reveal that this “call to action” – the organisers’ own phrase – will cost Wellington ratepayers $35,000, including $6000 for something called cultural consultancy services. (That rumbling you just heard was the gravy train passing by.)

The quoted cost of the event should be treated as a starting figure because it doesn’t include time spent by council officials. But how the ratepayers will benefit from discussions about what “an equitable future in a decolonised Aotearoa could look like” isn’t clear.

Councillors who had the audacity to ask why the council was paying for an event that Cr Sean Rush described as radical and subversive were brushed off with bland assurances that different opinions could be voiced safely at the wananga and “held with care”, whatever that may mean. But it’s a fair bet that dissenting voices would have been firmly excluded had  councillors Rush and Nicola Young not started asking awkward questions. That was obvious from a council official’s acknowledgement that the postponement of the event due to Covid-19 would enable “wider participation”.

Whether the event will go ahead now that its true nature has been exposed (no thanks to the mainstream media, which have obligingly ignored the controversy) remains to be seen. In the meantime, there are important questions to be asked – such as, can Wellington rediscover and reclaim its mojo?

It will have an opportunity to at least make a start at the local government elections in October. What the people of Wellington must do is elect a mayor and council who reflect the priorities and aspirations of the city at large rather than those of a vociferous minority.

That won’t be easy, because Wellington is home to New Zealand’s greatest concentration of woke zealots. They are well organised, ferociously committed and have the support of a broadly sympathetic media, many of whose journalists are of a similar ideological persuasion.

The Left has made an early start. Tory Whanau declared herself a candidate for the mayoralty in November and has been energetically promoting herself at every opportunity. Whanau has no local government experience, but the fact that she’s a former chief of staff for the Green Party provides a clear pointer to the type of mayor she would be. It will also ensure the support of the impressionable young and the idealistic New Left from the inner suburbs.

She certainly doesn’t lack self-assurance, judging by a lavish photo spread in Capital magazine (what was that I said about sympathetic media?). But Whanau as mayor would be a disaster – a guarantee that the city would continue on its present wayward course, albeit even faster.

The question is, who will stand against her? Speculation centres on former deputy mayor Paul Eagle, now the Labour MP for Rongotai.  Eagle was generally well-regarded on the council and would have almost certainly been mayor by now had he not been seduced by the lure of Parliament in 2017. But he hasn’t enjoyed a high profile as an MP and might well be tempted to return to local government.

If he does, and stands as an official Labour candidate, he would presumably have the backing of the Labour Party machine, which would help counter the inevitable social media blitz promoting Whanau. And while party involvement in local government is not something to be encouraged, Eagle as mayor could at least be expected to counter the malignant elements who now hold sway around the council table.  

Whoever wins the mayoralty will need to be bold, decisive and visionary, because Wellington is a city that has tragically lost its way. Whether it can get its bearings again is in the hands of the voters.


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

14 comments:

  1. In the 1990s and early 2000s when I went to Sydney I'd go out to lunches with colleagues, but when the same colleagues came to Wellington they'd head out shopping or sightseeing.

    Now even the locals can't be bothered with the city.

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  2. I commented on Twitter yesterday in response to this article in The Herald: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/a-capital-letter-the-covid-elimination-strategy-is-like-a-bad-breakup-we-need-to-get-over/YRCIZ55FUC6YUUNDBTQ3ACK2ZM/ that Wellington was a zombie city - signs of life but nothing behind the facade. I think the decline goes back to before the earthquakes. I grew up in Wellington in the 70s and 80s and have noticed the decline of the significant industrial base that used to exist. The factories and warehouses in Petone, Gracefield and Kenepuru have mostly been turned into recreational facilities and garden centres to serve the remaining economic base of public servants. The wealthy in Wellington used to be successful business people but now they are the double-income senior public servant families. The industrial decline is typical of the entire Western world but it is particularly stark in the suburbs of Wellington.

    There has been a cultural decline as well, and I'm not talking about the arts so much as the loss of diversity of viewpoints and the robust debate that you always found in the bars and dining rooms of the capital. I find myself having to remind my grown-up children that they live in a bubble and that the rest of the world (or indeed New Zealand) doesn't think as uniformly on every issue as their friends and colleagues. This became a salient topic of conversation during the recent protest at Parliament and, like you, I have expressed my disquiet at the almost universal intolerance shown by Wellingtonians towards the out-of-towners who made up the bulk of the protestors.

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  3. Auckland is probably worse,go downtown at your peril after dark,cycle ways (not a cycle to be seen) and pedestrianization (is that a real word) have driven most out of town.

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  4. Lived in Wellington for the majority of the 80's and 90's. It was a buzz, with a lively and outward looking populace. Business and the government sector interacted and decisions were largely positive.
    Visited Wellington last year in October. As you have commented, what a dismal, unsmiling, dank experience. After 3 days couldn't wait to leave. It has been captured by the civil servants - the socialist Bureaucracy emerging in conversation, their views reinforced by the Consultant Army that sits on the right hand of Ardern's clique.
    A complete overhaul of both central and local governance required, and sooner rather than later.
    Steve Ellis

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    1. Captured by civil servants, sure. But there's more to it, as there is an increasing number of younger civil servants in their 20's and early 30's who are all evangelistic green or socialists.

      That's the real problem and the reason there's no fun in wellington anymore

      Delete
  5. re Kiwiwit: the intolerance shown by some of the protestors was a significant turn-off for many of the locals. With the growth in more anarchic protest and its unwillingness to police the nutters this may be a permanent part of the lkandscape.

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    1. My view of that is that once the real mandate protesters got organized and food started flowing, the ferals from emergency housing and social housing that are all in the city now went there to take advantage of free stuff and brought their angry and selfish attitudes with them.

      That's when the intolerance started showing, after about 2 weeks

      Delete
  6. Huge Bureaucracy. Young foolish Council. Wade-Brown and Lester. Last CEO. Shut out the cars. Cycle and walk. Kill the waterfront and shut the bars. Doom and gloom earthquake experts. Key was right

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  7. You write, "The city's decline can be partly blamed on Covid-19, but the keyword here is 'partly' "

    How true. The city's decline can be mainly blamed on compulsory lockdowns and all the consequences following this. If we had chosen voluntary lockdowns (like Sweden - which thought it more important to keep working and to keep producing) - yes, the hospitality businesses would still have been hard hit. But they would have scraped through - very especially with the help of taxpayers' assistance which we then would have been responsibly able to afford if we had not had compulsory lockdowns!!

    Yes, we would have had many more deaths - possibly my own. I am 87 and physically frail. But I can assure you, I would have been happy to die from Covid - if New Zealand could have been spared from compulsory lockdowns. And most old folks think like I do. We do not want to ruin the economy for our children and grandchildren just to give us a couple more years. But nobody dreamed of asking us - we were forced to isolate and to be isolated.

    In the next global pandemic no country will employ compulsory lockdowns. Humankind will have learnt a very expensive lesson in hubris.

    For a decent, ethically-minded government the end will never justify the means. Machiavelli and Nietzsche thought so - and so did Lenin, Hitler and Stalin.

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  8. Yes Karl, I had the same feeling about the place last time I visited, looks like it's got even worse. After a depressing visit to Whangarei today I suspect the decay is more general. Not surprisingly places with a more entrepreneurial spirit, like my hometown of Kerikeri are much more uplifting no empty shops or no-hopers hanging round, people too busy making things, growing things, inventing things and ideas, selling and buying; living not dying.

    Anyway, perhaps you all might like to read a current, and very good, Democracy Project essay: Labour’s prescription is always more Wellington.

    "The core public service has grown by 220% since the turn of the century. Our overall population has increased by only 30% in the same period. That’s pretty astonishing.


    As it is, it mostly nestled inside our third largest city – Wellington.

    It is true as far as it goes that National and Labour have both overseen public sector growth. But it does not go all that far. Of the increase above, less than 10% occurred under a National government."

    "They say governments fall when they lose touch. Labour isn’t losing touch, it’s actively distancing itself from touch.

    It is deliberately surrounding itself with ever-growing and ever-thickening layers of lanyards so that it may better rule over us from the splendid isolation of central Wellington rather than govern for and with its people."

    https://democracyproject.nz/2022/03/16/camryn-brown-labours-prescription-is-always-more-wellington/

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  9. Wellington is living proof of the "Zombie Apocalypse". I have studied and worked here for nearly sixty years. In the last decade the city's soul has been lost to an ever expanding class of Woke apparatchiks attracted to the Ardern regime in particular like blowflies to a pile of ordure. Those few with diverse views who remain huddle together in small groups wary of being outed and ostracized. We are plotting our escape.

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  10. As I had previously posted:-
    "I also lived 30 years of my adult life in Wellington, and still have family there.
    Your article says it all Karl.
    The progressive degradation of what was once a beautiful, colourful, exciting city is very obvious to us all. Closing down the library that was once a trail-blazer in NZ. Followed up by the Left Council and weak mayor.
    Just tragic, and now we have unelected, racially based Councillors."

    Add to that the appalling bus service. When I lived there I could catch a bus from home in Karori to work at the hospital in Newtown !!
    That's all changed. With the new "improved" bus service, a friend of mine tells me that she has to take two bus rides from OK road (Northland) to CBD !!

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  11. Wellington might be looking a bit grimy and dull but that's nothing. You should see downtown Auckland these days. But do it from the safety of a locked car. Don't walk through it as it is now dangerous from dusk till dawn. Full of homeless drug addicts, beggars and drunk or drugged people looking to start fights. New Zealand the way we have it, in Auckland CBD.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300543503/mean-streets-fights-abuse-deter-customers-from-bars-and-retail-in-auckland-cbd

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  12. Wellington has been suffering from a malaise for some time now. The fun has been sucked out of the city. Remember when Wellington hosted the 7's rugby? It was a fun time for the vast, vast majority who came and enjoyed Wellington, locals included. Spending like drunken sailors, but without the nautical know how. The sevens took off as a faux 'carnival' that NZ desperately needs. Over time the moaning got louder and louder. Limits were imposed and the noose of namby pambyism suffocated the event. I bet the retailers and bars would love to have the millions spent back in the city. All gone.

    NZ has a pre-occupation with making events 'family friendly,' which is shorthand for boring.

    Wellington has sadly gone down hill - I have a theory that this is due in part to the cost of rent/leases. It is so stupendously expensive to open a bar/pub that no one except for those who are already running Wellington hospitality already, can try. As a result you get no new blood trying something different. More craft beer places with a lampshade hanging upside down. Edgy! Where are the classic pubs? Once Molly's shut Wellington started going backwards.

    Once these borders fully open the youth will be gone. They wont come back for a long time.

    The respective city councils have focussed on all the wrong things. Cycleways won't improve the weather or flatten out the hills. Wellingtonians don't cycle a lot as it is not a viable option for most people in this city.
    It is patronising to Wellingtonians to assume otherwise. And a massive waste of money that could be used towards water/sewerage issues.

    Last point - parking. I have changed the way I live in the Wellington because it is so expensive to park anywhere. As such I no longer ramble through the city. This used to involve a visit to a café or bar, doing a spot of shopping, checking out an art gallery and spending money. I may not be the only person who has changed their habits judging by the amount of empty parks.

    Wellington was great. It will be again. Just how long that will take is anyone's guess. Given we have had over 2 years of restricted and dull living due to you-know-what, I am not sure I can stay around for Wellington to get back it's mojo. The world is out there and it looks fun!


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