The buzz and bitchiness of local government politics

(First published in The Manawatu Standard and on Stuff.co.nz, September 18).

I switched on Radio New Zealand’s Morning Report one day last week to hear a babble of raised voices all trying to talk across each other. It was the sort of cacophony you might hear when a rat appears in a chookhouse.

I realised instantly that it must have something to do with the local government elections. Sure enough, it turned out to be a debate – a euphemistic term in this instance – between the three main rivals for the mayoralty of Christchurch.

It’s always a febrile time, this period leading up to council elections. There’s a peculiarly bitchy quality to local government: a propensity for petty squabbles and personality clashes that can make national politics look almost mature and sophisticated by comparison. It may be a far smaller stage, but there’s certainly no shortage of ego or ambition.  

What motivates people to stand for office? The answer, you’d like to think, is a desire to enhance community wellbeing and contribute to sound local governance, and no doubt that’s true for many candidates. They’re certainly not in it for glamour, money or prestige.

But with some local politicians, it’s hard to escape the feeling that they become addicted to the buzz of power. There’s a hint of that in Auckland’s mayoral election, where two former Labour cabinet ministers, Phil Goff and John Tamihere, are slugging it out in an ill-tempered contest tinged with personal venom.

Admittedly things could have been worse. Former mayor John Banks, another ex-cabinet minister, threatened to have another run but mercifully changed his mind. There are too many political retreads in local government already.

Should we care what happens in Auckland? Too right we should. For better or for worse, it’s the economic engine room of the whole country, with a GDP that exceeds those of Wellington, Canterbury and Waikato combined. How well it’s managed ultimately affects all of us.

Auckland isn’t the only arena where things have turned heated. In Wellington, filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson has waded into a fractious dispute over a murky development deal involving former Defence Force land and local iwi interests.

Jackson, who seems motivated by a sincere commitment to Wellington, is backing a mayoral challenge by veteran city councillor Andy Foster. It will be interesting to see which side has the greater pull – the earnest but colourless Foster, backed by Jackson’s money, or sitting mayor Justin Lester with the formidable support of the local Labour Party machine.

Meanwhile, in Invercargill, Sir Tim Shadbolt – famous for once saying “I don’t care where as long as I’m mayor” – is chasing his eighth term, and I assume he’ll romp back in. Southlanders love him because he’s given their province something it never used to have: a profile.

Shadbolt cultivates a buffoonish image, but there’s a calculating politician behind the goofy grin. He knows he can get away with self-aggrandising behaviour - such as spending ratepayers’ money on “I met the mayor” wristbands - because he’s trained the voters of Invercargill to expect that sort of stunt from him.

Christchurch illustrates another quirk of local government. Contenders who must realise they don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell nonetheless keep putting themselves forward. Their optimism, or perhaps it’s idealistic zeal, is inextinguishable.

John Minto, one of the Christchurch hopefuls, is a case in point. New Zealand voters have an admirable history of rejecting extremists from both the Left and Right of politics, but Minto - a tireless campaigner for radical causes - is undeterred.  Like Mr Wobbly Man in the Noddy stories, he keeps getting knocked down but bounces back up again.

In Christchurch three years ago he won 13,117 votes, or 14 per cent of the total – not an embarrassing result, and certainly a lot better than the 3 per cent he managed when he contested the Auckland mayoralty in 2013. The Left is good at organising, and my guess is that Minto benefited from the highly motivated activist vote. But he was still more than 62,000 shy of Lianne Dalziell’s winning total.

Speaking of Christchurch, mayoral candidate Michael “Tubby” Hansen deserves a special mention. He has contested every election since 1971 and had his best-ever result in 2013, when he attracted 1.57 per cent of the vote.

What makes him stand time after time? That’s a question only he can answer. If Minto represents one type of local government candidate – the committed activist – then Hansen is another: the quixotic oddball. Every city seems to have one.

The depressing thing is that when all the election drama has subsided and the votes have been counted, what difference will it make? In most councils, real power is exercised by bureaucrats over whom elected councillors wield very limited influence and who sometimes treat their nominal bosses with contempt.

This is especially true in Auckland, where so-called council-controlled organisations have turned out to be anything but. The phrase "grassroots democracy" has a nice ring to it, but it has never sounded more hollow.

A rampant culture of entitlement

(A slightly shorter version of this column was first published in The Dominion Post, December 1.)

A pervasive culture of entitlement and self-indulgence seems to have taken root in some of our public institutions.

At its most egregious, it can be seen in the case of Nigel Murray, the disgraced former Waikato District Health Board CEO who treated himself to $218,000 worth of unauthorised spending on personal travel and expenses.

By comparison, the extravagant restaurant bills totted up by Peter Biggs and Chris Whelan, respectively the chairman and former CEO of the Wellington Regional Economic Development Agency (Wreda), are a mere bagatelle. But it’s only a matter of scale.

Inquiries by this paper under the Official Information Act flushed out the information that Biggs and Whelan had given their Wreda credit cards a thrashing at some of Wellington’s classiest restaurants.

Is this anyone else’s business? Too right it is, because Wreda is largely funded by Wellington ratepayers.

Biggs has since paid back $4673 – this, after Wellington mayor Justin Lester blew the whistle. Biggs’ restaurant bills included $875 for dinner with New Zealand’s London Trade Commissioner and his wife, a $585 dinner with Wellington City Council chief executive Kevin Lavery and a $318 dinner with Derek Fry, also from the city council.

No restaurants were named in the Dominion Post report, but I think we can safely assume we’re not talking about Burger King.

The fact that Biggs voluntarily repaid the money suggests that after talking to Lester, he had second thoughts about whether his spending was justified. But before his own taste for fine dining became public, he was unapologetic about Whelan’s expenses (which he had approved), and defended his former CEO’s right to bury his snout in the city’s poshest troughs.

According to Biggs, Whelan’s selfless hard yakka over the fine white linen table cloths at Logan Brown, Zibibbo and Shed 5 produced measurable results. It had helped attract a call centre and Singapore Airlines to Wellington and generated business for Westpac Stadium.

When asked whether Whelan really needed to put 36 Bluff oysters on his credit card at Shed 5 (cost: $216) in order to secure that new business, Biggs rather testily rebuked the reporter for taking a “cynical” view.

The spending could be looked at as a way of showcasing Wellington’s “vibrancy and sophistication, and also building collegiality”, he said. “It depends on whether you know how the real world works.” Hmmm.

Here we get to the heart of the issue. In the “real world” that Biggs inhabits (his background is in advertising), it has become accepted wisdom that lavish lunches and dinners are an indispensable part of doing business.

This suits the participants splendidly. They all fete each other and then justify it by insisting it’s generating business or “building collegiality”.

And because everyone does it and expects it, it becomes self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. No one ever questions whether it’s necessary. Why spoil things?

Biggs gave the additional justification that Whelan’s job involved showcasing the Wellington region’s cuisine and wine. Well, of course. That’s all the excuse anyone needs to slurp some of New Zealand’s most expensive wine. “We’ll try the Martinborough Vineyard pinot noir next, waiter.” There’s $155 gone, right there.

But hang on a minute. Biggs’ explanation that it’s all about promoting Wellington unravels when you consider that an $1100 dinner for 10 at Zibibbo was for the boards of Wreda and its subsidiary agency, Creative HQ. After all, you hardly need to promote Wellington to people whose job is to, er, promote Wellington.

Presumably the dinner in this instance qualified as “building collegiality”. But to most people it just looks like an excuse to have a grand time at someone else’s expense.

In the light of Biggs’ previous comments, you also have to wonder what business he generated for Wellington by dining with Lavery and Fry. I mean, he surely didn’t need to convince them – council executives both – of Wellington’s “vibrancy and sophistication”.

Fry, incidentally, is now the interim chief executive of Wreda after Whelan stepped down earlier this year. In this role, Fry will be expected to curb the excesses of which he has previously himself been a beneficiary. It all looks decidedly clubby.

As for Lavery … well, some of us remember an era when town clerks cycled to work carrying a paper bag containing luncheon-sausage sandwiches and a granny smith apple. Now they’re called chief executives and, in Lavery’s case, pocket more than $400,000 a year. Can’t he afford to buy his own lunch?

Part of the problem is that Wreda is one of those agencies that inhabit the nebulous territory between the public and private sectors. And while Wreda has “rules” on how entertainment money is to be spent, they are loose enough to allow very liberal interpretation – which is exactly what seems to have happened on Biggs’ watch. We’re left with a clear impression of a culture where a sense of entitlement was rampant.  

The traditionally frugal public-sector ethos doesn’t stand a chance when it has to compete with the temptations presented by a corporate credit card. To put it another way, what CEO with pretensions of grandeur is going to choose a sandwich in the office over lunch at Logan Brown? After all, this is the real world we’re talking about.