OPINION
Auckland, thanks to years of economic incompetence from left-wing mayors, is in a $325 million dollar financial hole full of the brown stuff, that Mayor Brown (no relation to the other stuff) wants to extricate Auckland from. In order for this to happen, unpalatable decisions will have to be taken. At his press conference last Thursday the mayor made some very sobering and pertinent remarks but, before going there, it is worth exploring Wayne Brown’s persona.
Mayor Brown is an interesting person. He is from the old school. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly. He is as far from woke as you could get and let’s face it, he wasn’t elected to sit in his office and eat lunch, but to get Auckland out of the financial mess it’s in. If you don’t like him, grow up. He’s not there to be liked, he’s there to do a job. If that means he might look as though he’s running roughshod over his opponents to get the job done – so be it. It goes with the territory.
Wayne Brown calls a spade a spade and, like many who do that, he can come across as blunt to the point of rudeness. But that is how he is.
In this age of wokeness you may find Wayne Brown objectionable. Tough luck I say! The current Government is a great example of how being woke severely hampers getting real work done (though their mental incapability is of equal hindrance). Mayor Brown is totally committed to, and entirely focused on, getting Auckland back to financial stability.
Most of those who voted for him will agree with his position that the best and only way to begin the process of getting the city’s finances back on track if we don’t want significant cuts in other areas, is for the Council to divest itself of its airport shares.
At the moment it appears the majority of the Council disagree which of course means they are refusing to recognise the Council debt elephant in the room.
Sean Plunket on The Platform asked Mayor Brown if any of the councillors who were against the idea had brought forward a suitable alternative. Predictably, the answer was no.
Right from the beginning of the process Mayor Brown put forward a number of cost-cutting proposals for consideration, some affecting arts and culture programmes. Of course, that didn’t go down well either. The question councillors who don’t want budget cuts or shares sold must address is this: how are the books going to be balanced?
As the mayor has stated, borrowing is not the problem: it’s paying back the debt and the cost of interest. Do these councillors really want to impose a heap of debt on their grandchildren? Because that is the only possible outcome.
What Wayne Brown is telling his councillors in his usual direct way, is you can’t have your cake and eat it too: ‘I’m happy to take the cuts off the table but the consequence of that is the selling of the airport shares’.
Surely there is nothing difficult to understand about that unless you’re one of those councillors the Mayor calls “a Labour politician in waiting”. In that case you’ll be economically illiterate and heading for your spiritual home. Hopefully there’ll be a decade or more on the Opposition benches awaiting you.
Wayne Brown made the point that the Council owns land around the airport that, if managed properly, would bring a greater return than the shares. Selling the shares saves $100 million in interest annually and while the airport is digging itself out of a post-Covid hole, it actually offers no significant short term return anyway.
Unlike the government, Wayne Brown wants to get Auckland out of the mire as quickly as possible. He’s not interested in endless meetings, working groups and announcements. He has a job to do and he intends to get on with it. When they vote on the budget, Councillors have a clear choice. Let’s hope they have the sense to make a sound decision.
The most alarming to some, but definitive statement the mayor made was that “Auckland needs to be run as a business”. No wonder Simon Wilson left the room. I say, hear! hear!