Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown outlines goals before Christmas break, focusing on Auckland Transport and tech
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has a list he wants to tick off before Christmas, including getting back on the tennis court after hurting an ankle.
“That’s really important to me,” said the mayor, who was back sweeping up the crumbs yesterday at the West End Tennis Club, where he plays tennis and where he hosted a party to celebrate a second term.
Speaking to the Herald from his office at council headquarters yesterday, Brown reflected on the new makeup of the council, which includes five fresh faces, laid out his priorities in the run-up to Christmas, and sketched where he wants to take the city before stepping down in 2028.
On Saturday, the often blunt and combative engineer stormed home to win a second term, comfortably beating his main challenger, Kerrin Leoni, by about 90,000 votes.
Brown said that apart from Victoria Short, who stood on his Fix Auckland ticket, and John Gillon (North Shore), he barely knew the three other new faces, Matt Winiata (Manurewa-Papakura), Bo Burns (Howick), and Sarah Paterson-Hamlin (Whau).
He plans to meet each one of them over the coming days and thinks the new council is a “little bit better” than last term.
By this, he meant he was pleased to see Short unseat one of the long-standing “Albanians”, Wayne Walker, and welcomed the defeat of two-time mayoral candidate and “keyboard warrior” Craig Lord, who lost to Paterson-Hamlin in Whau. As for Gillon, he said he plans to work with him, despite finding him “a bit negative”.
“The public voted for me because, unlike governments, they know where they are going,” Brown said.
There would not be any surprises, said Brown, whose focus over the coming months would be on trying to understand what Auckland Transport actually does, “so I can fix it”.
“It’s like a black box. Answers come out of AT all wrong, and no one in there can tell me how they got to those answers. I will continue asking questions and getting stupid answers until I get good answers.”
Another early focus for Brown is pressing ahead with the Tech Alliance, bringing together the public and private sectors to attract capital and boost productivity, which Brown said could bypass lengthy council delays.
“I want to plan for really good offshore trips next year, so the tier two and three firms of Auckland can really benefit. You have to give them a bit of time to prepare. You can’t just say we’re going to China next month.
“The Government tends to do things like that. We will all rush off, and it’s all about the Prime Minister. This isn’t all about me when we go over there. It’s about Auckland businesses making use of me,” he said.
There’s also what Brown called a coronation later this month, when councillors get sworn in at the Auckland Town Hall, and the “bollocks of setting up committees”, giving little away on that front other than “Richard Hills will still run planning because he does such a good job”.
Brown also plans to hand over plans for a bed levy to fund events to the Deputy Mayor, Desley Simpson, who, he said, is keen to take it up and has close connections to the National-led Government.
Asked what he hoped to achieve by the end of his second term, Brown said his priorities included embedding a businesslike approach to council spending, fostering a culture of efficient service, and encouraging Aucklanders to focus more on the city’s future rather than daily frustrations with Auckland Transport.
“And we will be more of an international trading city than we are.
“I know the council will go on forever and there will be more mayors and more councillors, but this is a three-year project. This is my project.”
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Even Australians get it - so why not Kiwis???
“Ten years ago, if a heatwave as intense as last week’s record-breaker had hit the east coast, Australia’s power supply may well have buckled. But this time, the system largely operated as we needed, despite some outages.
On Australia’s main grid last quarter, renewables and energy storage contributed more than 50% of supplied electricity for the first time, while wholesale power prices were more than 40% lower than a year earlier.
[…] shifting demand from gas and coal for power and petrol for cars is likely to deliver significantly lower energy bills for households.
Last quarter, wind generation was up almost 30%, grid solar 15% and grid-scale batteries almost tripled their output. Gas generation fell 27% to its lowest level for a quarter century, while coal fell 4.6% to its lowest quarterly level ever.
Gas has long been the most expensive way to produce power. Gas peaking plants tend to fire up only when supply struggles to meet demand and power prices soar. Less demand for gas has flowed through to lower wholesale prices.”
Full article: www.theguardian.com...
If even Australians see the benefit of solar - then why is NZ actively boycotting solar uptake? The increased line rental for electricity was done to make solar less competitive and prevent cost per kWh to rise even more than it did - and electricity costs are expected to rise even more. Especially as National favours gas - which is the most expensive form of generating electricity. Which in turn will accelerate Climate Change, as if New Zealand didn’t have enough problems with droughts, floods, slips, etc. already.
Time to Tickle Your Thinker 🧠
If a zookeeper had 100 pairs of animals in her zoo, and two pairs of babies are born for each one of the original animals, then (sadly) 23 animals don’t survive, how many animals do you have left in total?
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Poll: As a customer, what do you think about automation?
The Press investigates the growing reliance on your unpaid labour.
Automation (or the “unpaid shift”) is often described as efficient ... but it tends to benefit employers more than consumers.
We want to know: What do you think about automation?
Are you for, or against?
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9.5% For. Self-service is less frustrating and convenient.
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43.3% I want to be able to choose.
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47.2% Against. I want to deal with people.
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