Auckland activist Penny Bright 'will battle to the last second'

Thursday, 6 September 2018

Long-time activist Penny Bright is fighting her last battle in hospital.

Activist Penny Bright - the woman with a 'heart of a lion' - is making her last stand against terminal cancer.

Fellow 'banner girl' Jacquelyne Taylor said she felt privileged to sit with Bright in hospital on Tuesday, stroking her hands.

Taylor said Bright had been put in hospital because of her diabetes on top of having stage three ovarian cancer.

Long-time activist Penny Bright outside her Kingsland home. She has been a tireless battler on the Auckland political scene.

'Penny will battle to the last second and she is doing it exactly as she did everything else,' she said.

* Auckland activist Penny Bright fails in last-ditch attempt to stop the sale of her home

* Activist Penny Bright secures last-minute respite from forced sale of her home

* Penny Bright says she has 'incurable and inoperable' cancer**

Bright's stomach 'roared up and inflated' causing a doctor to rush her to hospital, she said.

Once she got to the hospital, Bright was told she wouldn't be leaving, Taylor said.

Bright referred to herself only half-jokingly as 'Her Warship'.

The self-styled anti-corruption campaigner has been a colourful figure on Auckland's local body scene for two decades, but is now in Auckland hospital where she has just marked her 64th birthday.

Well-wishers have flooded her Facebook page after the news that she has passed the six-day mark that doctors told her she still had to live.

'A woman with the heart of a lion and the backbone of a steel beam,' wrote one.

Bright called an end to her last campaign in May, agreeing to strike a deal with Auckland Council over nine years of rates she had refused to pay.

At the same time as Bright was dealing with a cancer diagnosis, the High Court ruled her Kingsland home should be be sold so the council could recover $89,000 in unpaid rates, penalties and legal costs.

'I've been going through the stress of this process as well as trying to fight stage three ovarian cancer - I just need to settle this so I can focus on my health,' she said when the court decision was released.

Bright had withheld rates payments, demanding the council routinely publish the details of all external contracts it lets.

She has been a tireless battler on the Auckland political scene, coming to prominence in the late 1990s leading the 'Water Pressure Group' which campaigned against practices of the Metro Water company, set up by Auckland City Council to run the city's water network.

The group publicised ways to reconnect water meters, turned off where consumers failed to pay bills.

Bright has been a constant and vocal presence at council meetings, famously being physically evicted from one by security guards on the order of then-mayor John Banks.

Post-amalgamation, mayor Len Brown took a new approach and Bright was regularly allowed allocated, uninterrupted speaking time at the start of meetings.

Her sometimes borderline views on the closeness of relationships between council executives and the business world, were heard politely.

She took an unsuccessful defamation case against Auckland Council's chief executive Stephen Town, having taken umbrage at a comment in a media statement.

'Ms Bright has made wild and inaccurate accusations about the Council and its probity,' Town said in the statement.

The High Court threw out her claim.

Long-time fellow activist Jim Gladwin said he first met Bright at the Bastion Point occupation in the 1970s, where they sat up until dawn discussing politics.

The pair were a couple for three years throughout their time protesting and remain good friends, Gladwin said.

They last saw each other three weeks ago where they caught up with friends for dinner at the Avondale RSA.

'Penny is one of the people who I most admire,' Gladwin said.

He said he had received a call from Bright on Thursday evening with her saying she was 'too weak for visitors'.

Kevin Hester said he had been on the frontlines of activism with Penny Bright since the anti-apartheid days in the 1980s.

'Penny was a dedicated activist then and that has never changed,' Hester said.

Hester had known Bright had been in and out of hospital for some time. Because he was providing hospice care on Rakino Island, he hadn't had the chance to visit her, he said.

Hester said he 'absolutely' considers Bright a good friend and would 'shed an enormous tear when this country loses this warrior'.

'Penny has done an amazing amount of community work over the years and I think that New Zealand will be a lesser place for her loss.'

She was a regular political candidate, running repeatedly for the Auckland mayoralty and in by-elections including the Mt Albert electorate last year.

Bright's claims have often been highly-debatable, but she has garnered considerable respect for her commitment, and tireless energy on causes she believes in.

A Facebook tribute from one supporter said : 'God bless you on your journey towards the light.'