Auckland mayoral election: Has John Tamihere shaken it up too much?

Monday, 26 August 2019

John Tamihere has announced his transport policy in his run for the Auckland mayoralty. (Video first published in August 2019)

OPINION: When John Palino pledged a 10 per cent rate cut in his 2016 campaign for the Auckland mayoralty, most people laughed.

Three years on John Tamihere expects to be taken seriously when pledging to freeze general rates to the tune of a $180 million hit to council coffers.

Tamihere launched his assault on Phil Goff's mayoralty with the slogan 'Shake it up and sort it out' - but after a series astonishing policy unveils, maybe the shaking-up has become one big leg-pull.

The plan to scrap three years of proposed 3.5 per cent rate rises, comes with no suggestion that Tamihere has thought through how the city would function with shrinking finances.

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His fiscal policy for the biggest political body after the government, appears to be based on a four-paragraph email written by a council official, that Tamihere has then mis-interpreted.

There is no coherent explanation of how the council would manage it's growing infrastructure and service demands without that $180 million.

That lower revenue also reduces by $477 million the council's ability to borrow the additional money it needs for long-term infrastructure and assets. Not a mention of what that means.

Tamihere's camp at the start of his campaign talked of his prowess as a chief executive, yet the budget-busting policy appears to have no business basis.

It was a policy laced with populist rhetoric, the first suggested area for saving being cutting salaries at the top of the council organisation.

Tamihere simply could not deliver that as existing staff have employment contracts and rights, and the prospect of elected politicians deciding how much a highly skilled manager should earn is mind-boggling.

The release to most media in the wee small hours of Monday morning, meaning it would be aired without real scrutiny, was simply cynical.

The previous week was the swap-a-bridge policy in which Tamihere proposed building an 18-lane, double decker harbour bridge and just sliding it across to sit on the existing piers.

This was all based on a two-lane interstate bridge on a much smaller scale, built across the Ohio River in the United States.

Tamihere would scrap nearly five years of work done on a light rail line from the CBD to Mount Roskill and on to Mangere, describing the buses that form a peak-hour congo line along the central isthmus arterials, as 'working fine'.

The former Labour MP launched his bid for the mayoralty after being miffed that the council would not change its well-considered policy on social housing mix, to meet the desires of Tamihere's Waipareira social housing agency.

Tamihere is out on his own on that one, with most in the community housing sector firmly behind new developments for lower income residents, being a three-way mix of social, affordable, and subsidised rental dwellings to avoid building ghettos.

Auckland needs bold ideas in an election campaign, and Phil Goff's ultra-cautious policy commitments do need challenging.

Tamihere's campaign strategy so far makes sense in the classic political way, if you're focussed on making a splash, getting noticed, and trying to make over-simplistic slogans look like carefully-crafted policy.

Tamihere hates his style being compared with that of US President Donald Trump, but the campaign parallels are hard to ignore.

Auckland has challenges unparalleled in this country's history, and voters need answers they can believe in, not attention-grabbing headlines.

If Tamihere really wants Aucklanders to back his mayoralty, he needs to spend the next five weeks outlining how he can make a better city, and the answer can not be simply to shout more loudly at the government.

John Tamihere needs to show that his campaign is about Auckland, not about shaking it up for shaking's sake.