By Tim Murphy

Copyright newsroom

You wouldn’t call Wayne Brown a sparkling orator, or even an accomplished public speaker. He’s not great at reading his election campaign spiel from small, tightly typed pieces of paper, but he gets by.

His set piece, to use a sports metaphor, is adequate. But when things open up, like they did at a candidates’ meeting on Friday, he becomes dominant in broken play.

Ask him a question about one of his engineering mastermind subjects, or adopt a bit of a challenging tone in quizzing him, and away he goes: loquacious, combative, jokey, dismissive and, most of all, gobbling up the political oxygen and taking time available to his opponents.

The facilitator at the Grey Power meeting tried to keep him to answering the primary questions from the 120 or so people in the North Harbour Netball centre. But the mayor went on and on, moving from subject to anecdote, boasts to promises, even a little bit of invention on seismic standards for buildings.

As he rolled out the key messages in his repertoire, his main challenger for the Auckland mayoralty, Kerrin Leoni, sat behind him on the stage. She’d been asked to go first, and the Grey Power schedule was that each candidate could give a 10-minute introduction, then face questions on their own.

Leoni, a first-term councillor for the Whau ward and former local board member, had started to finish up her opening address a minute or two early, then answered her questions concisely, if a little one-dimensionally. She was relatively low-key, and low on detail, on issues like housing intensification and climate change. And then her time was up.

In fairness there were few questions to Leoni, and three were on the same topic of the planning changes around intensification. Her answer, that she is trying to find a “staged plan” to allow the greater building of high rise homes around transport corridors, was about as far as she went.

Leoni felt the need to say she supports intensification, dismissing online criticism that she opposed the planning change. “It’s a key priority. I do support it but I’m still asking questions around it.”

But going first can be a risk. Up next, Brown took to the floor and crowded out the debate. How Leoni must have wanted to re-engage.

Brown did his thing, talking about roads’ sub-base and tarseal, roundabout speeds, golf course drainage, apartment development, sewerage plants, volcanic eruptions, traffic signals, Brownie’s pool at the viaduct, and disability access at Auckland Hospital.

In full flight, he even projected onto a questioner that she had gone “on and on” when raising her query. All up, he faced six questions, six chances to command the room, to Leoni’s four.

Brown went on the offensive over the housing intensification question, saying the debate had been surrounded by disinformation. His take is that the two million extra homes for Auckland which were to be accommodated under the previous plan from government, and mimicked by its new changes to growup along transport routes instead of anywhere in the city, are theoretical. They won’t happen.

“I’ve told Labour and National: ‘do not cooperate again, because what you came up with was stupid, it’s ridiculous and has to go’.

“They got to the two million thing and that’s where the whole thing went out the door. It’s economics: you are not going to build them where you’re not going to sell them.”

His message to a questioner from Oratia in the west: “Don’t worry. They’re not going to build them where you are… With the Government, we might talk them back off the two million houses, but there is no expectation of two million houses. They’ll be built right next door to the railway stations and the bus stations, and that’s a good thing.”

He sometimes said too much: for example, claiming Auckland would be exempted from seismic building standards in a move to be announced next week by the Government. “We haven’t had an earthquake in 120,000 years, that’s when man was walking out of Africa.” Brown said the removal of the earthquake strengthening rules would mean more disused office blocks could be converted for much needed city apartments.

But Building Minister Chris Penk told Newsroom that while a review had been underway, no such announcement would be made.

Brown also let slip that he gets 85 emails a day from ratepayers, but “I don’t personally read them. I apologise, but somebody does [read them], and I get a trend of what’s pissing people off.”

While he addressed the Geriatric in the Room, by acknowledging at age 79 it was “nice to be among a demographic in which I fit quite nicely”, and saying he’d set up an advisory board for the elderly and “now I’m old people”, this was not a case of a rambling uncle at the microphone.

It was dominating a political opportunity.

And it was emblematic, in a way, for much of the campaign so far.

Voting papers have been out for around 10 days, with just three weeks left until election day on October 11.

Leoni has attended all 14 candidate meetings offered to her. She’s launched policies (reviewing council contracts with multinationals; extending rail to Huapai in Auckland’s west; a rail link to the airport from Puhinui; and to drop rate rises from a projected 3.5 percent average in future years to 2.5 years, but only if savings can be achieved).

It is hard being one person seeking votes from those living between Warkworth to Pukekohe, and having a modest political profile, without big money backers. That difficulty is starting to show.

Brown has been unmissable on ads on the top-rating Hosking Breakfast radio show on Newstalk ZB through the week. He’s got 200 hoardings and many billboards around the city. He has the incumbent’s advantage of continuing to photobomb visiting Cabinet ministers at openings and announcements. He is campaigning on his terms, attending some candidate meetings but also at invitation only gatherings and, on Friday morning, meeting Chinese investors. He says he spoke in Mandarin. Imagine.

Leoni has her own 150 hoardings and two big motorway billboards. She is busy promoting candidate meetings and selling her message on Facebook and other social media. She’ll be on one of the leading music radio stations soon with regular ads.

Getting time and space on mainstream news media has proven difficult and big advertising buys require some financial muscle. The candidates are expected to appear on TVNZ’s Q&A next weekend, so name and face recognition could rise.

But Leoni is going to need to find a way into voter consciousness. At Friday’s meeting she didn’t go on the attack against Brown. There was a mention of him not attending all candidates’ meetings and a clever, glancing reference to his political nadir, the response to the Auckland Anniversary floods.

“It’s such an important role for our city. We need a mayor who is visible, right across the city. We need to be visible when there’s floods; when there’s rates hikes in the city. It’s our responsibility to go out.”

But she might have judged the afternoon audience of elders would be better served by a rundown of her policies on contracting, transport, rates and intensification than criticisms of Brown.

Brown’s camp cites a poll, taken back in July before the campaign started, showing him with 50 percent of respondents’ votes, with Leoni way back on just 8 percent.

Independent mayoral candidate Eric Chuah told the Grey Power meeting he’d seen a poll he attributed to McCann Ericksen putting Brown on 24 and Chuah and Leoni both on 18.

Leoni says informal polling her team has done has Brown about 30 percent with her around 18 and rising.

Just 45,450 Aucklanders had sent in their votes as of Friday evening. For the 2022 election, there were a total of 380,000 votes for mayor, with Brown winning around 181,000 to Efeso Collins’ 124,000.

Leoni wonders if the lowish number of votes means people aren’t jumping at the chance to re-elect Brown, and thinks there is a chance to make them evaluate her platform and leadership style.

“Our city needs strong leadership and somebody who is going to be accountable back to Aucklanders and turn up when times are tough.”

Outside the netball centre on Friday, the Grey Power people had blocked off a parking spot for Brown, ironically using one of his loathed red road cones with his name affixed to reserve him priority access.

Later in the day, outside the Andiamo restaurant in Herne Bay, Brown was seen having selfies taken with drinkers, holding up a road cone – and still hoovering up public attention.