Auckland mayoralty: Wayne Brown's long list of fixes

Voting papers for this year's local elections are making their way to people's mailboxes. In a two-part series to sum up the months-long campaign, 1News spoke to Auckland mayoral hopefuls about what Auckland Council, and therefore the mayor, can influence - transport, housing and climate change.

Auckland mayoral hopeful Wayne Brown had just come from a meeting with Sea Cleaners when he met 1News at the back of a café on Karangahape Rd.

Brown, an advisory trustee of the non-profit organisation and a keen surfer, spoke passionately about the organisation's work to clean rubbish from waterways. He wants Aucklanders to take responsibility for the environment they live in and "not just blame the council or the Government".

The engineer - a self-described "fixer" because of his track record leading electricity providers and DHBs - said part of it also comes down to making sure the council's pandemic-delayed sewage interceptor projects are completed.

Another thing Brown wants to fix is his bus trip through Queen St on the way to Karangahape Rd.

If elected mayor, in three years' time that same bus trip will have more passengers "because it would be quicker" and the traffic signals would no longer be "as dumb as a post", Brown said.

He's promising to install transponders to trigger green lights for buses, helping them get ahead of general traffic.

He claimed Auckland Transport (AT) bureaucrats "somehow or other… conspire to not give us a good system". If elected, Brown said he will sack the organisation's board and replace them with public transport users, bus driver union representatives and people who have run bus companies.

As for light rail, Brown claims it is an example of central Government telling local communities what they need, instead of the other way around. In fact, AT has been considering light rail since the mid-2010s, before Labour and the Greens campaigned on it in the 2017 election.

"The question I would ask for light rail is, no one has been able to explain what problem it is fixing. Until they can come up with a good reason for it, it's not a good idea."

Some of the justifications the Government has offered for the project are to improve South Auckland's access to the central city via public transport and to unlock the development of denser housing along the light rail route.

Asked what his alternative to light rail is, Brown said there are more "sensible things" that need to be completed first, like City Rail Link, the Eastern Busway and improvements to northwestern buses.

Brown also wants to build a new freight railway line through the southern part of Auckland's isthmus. It will connect Avondale to the Southdown industrial suburb, allowing freight to bypass Newmarket. The route was mooted as early as 1946 and endorsed by a Brown-led working group looking into supply chains.

Council should set examples when it comes to climate change, Brown said, adding: "The Government have got to provide a bit of leadership there. If we do have a climate emergency, why can I go and buy a Dodge Ram?"

He said some of the funds raised through Auckland Council's Climate Action Targeted Rate in this year's annual budget should go towards protection measures, given storms are getting more extreme. The council has indicated the rate will go towards new bus routes, low-emissions ferries, more trees and cycling infrastructure improvements.

Asked if he has any particular adaptation plans, Brown said work is already underway on it, and he wants to hear from communities before suggesting specific measures.

"I'd like to just provide some sensible overview of what we've done, where have they sorted it out, where are the most likely damages going to occur, and have we thought about what we're going to do about that?"

As for council's targets of halving emissions by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050, Brown said it is "time we had some actions, rather than plans".

One of Brown's policies to help reduce congestion and carbon emissions is to move freight off the roads and onto rail. But an estimated 70% of Auckland's transport emissions are from light vehicles, such as cars and vans.

As for reducing emissions from light vehicles, Brown said: "We'll comply with whatever strong directions we get from the Government, but I don't know whether we have to be the leader in that one."

Council is currently proposing that the city should reduce its transport emissions by 64% before 2030 to meet its climate targets. A large part of achieving it comes from reducing car trips substantially.

Brown said once public transport is more convenient than driving, people will naturally move away from cars without having to be forced to.

So will those public transport improvements come in the form of more frequent or comprehensive services? Brown said he will go to experts and public transport users for advice.

"It isn't about the price, it's about the speed," Brown added, making reference to mayoral candidate Efeso Collins' policy of fares-free public transport.

Brown said housing affordability is largely in central Government's hands. But the council could do its part to transform central city office spaces left empty because of the pandemic.

"To liven the city up, I would like our planners to develop more user-friendly ways to allow, of allowing the office buildings to be converted into residences. That's a good thing for everybody, a win-win-win really."

He said while council also has a role in deciding the types of houses that can be built and where through planning zones, MPs meddled with the city's Unitary Plan by introducing the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS). MDRS allows up to three houses of up to three storeys high on urban sites, with some exceptions for things like natural hazards or what Auckland Council is defining as "special character", without the need for additional resource consent.

As for the debate about council's protection of 'special character' areas from higher-density urban planning policies, Brown said "we've got that about right".

An independent hearings panel is considering Auckland Council's response to the planning policies and whether its application of blanket exemptions to intensification is consistent with what the legislation intended.

Of Auckland's mayoral candidates, Brown argues he is the most experienced at leading organisations. Throughout the campaign, he's spoken of guiding Vector to fix its electricity reliability issues, delivering the Auckland Hospital redevelopment on time and budget as DHB chair and his success in business.

Opinions on Brown as Far North District Council mayor vary among council staff. While some told Newsroom in August he was rude and arrogant, others admired his work ethic and straight-talking nature.

Brown said people should judge him for his achievements and not his leadership style.

Asked if it is important that Auckland's mayor be liked, Brown said his directness was a "very important thing" and that ratepayers "couldn't afford to have waffle" while their rates were going up.

Brown, who developed property in the Far North while he was mayor, also got into a years-long dispute with councillors over the amount he had to pay in rates and development charges on a Kerikeri subdivision.

A subsequent Auditor-General inquiry in 2012 found the council had overstated what Brown owed and had gone outside of its normal processes to help the development proceed. It told Brown - who wrote to the council's chief executive about the rates issue using a mayoral letterhead and used his council EA to follow up on the dispute - to "separate his personal and official roles more carefully in future".

Ten years on, Brown told 1News his disagreements with the council were "as a ratepayer, not as a mayor".

"The ratepayers need to have a mayor who is prepared to have an argument, sometimes, with some of the members of the council."

Asked if he learnt anything from the experience, and if it would impact his mayoralty, Brown said: "Be careful about using letterheads - that's what it came down to."

He also said at numerous public candidates' debates that similar issues were unlikely to surface in Auckland, where he has established commercial properties and hadn't run into issues.

See the full list of Auckland mayoral candidates here. Information about other local body elections can be found here.

1News has interviewed candidates that have reached at least 10% in at least three scientifically conducted and publicly available polls.

Voting documents, including candidate bios and voting papers, will start appearing in your mailbox from September 16. Voting closes on October 8 at midday.