A year out, the money, politics and numbers are against run

John Tamihere will not stand for mayor in next year’s council elections. To be clear, I don’t know this for sure. But it’s not likely. With the election due on October 12, just 12 months away, the numbers are against him, so is the money and so is the politics.

Even so, he’s right about social and affordable housing and it’s time the council got serious about it. When he told a council meeting yesterday they should build social housing on the Remuera golf course instead of “rating poor people out of the city”, he was thrusting quite a big stake into the ground.

I’ll come back to that. Whether Tamihere stands or not, the elections next year will not be business as usual. There’ll be retirements and probably a few upsets too. With large-scale transport and housing projects under construction, or soon to be, all over the city, the vote will be a plebiscite on the council’s vision for a more compact, busier and safer city.

Penny Hulse won’t be there. Deputy mayor for two terms from 2010, but not now, and deputy mayor of Waita¯ kere City before that, Hulse is one of the West’s favourite daughters. She topped the poll citywide in 2016. Now, she says, “It’s time to move on”.

You don’t have to be a partisan to recognise Hulse’s skills. She’s so good at promoting the council’s programme for Auckland, the West has been afflicted with almost none of the blowback that surfaces in other parts of town.

What’s her secret? Hulse is an expert at community engagement. She was a local activist before she was a councillor and she knows how to listen, how to consult from the ground up and how to inspire confidence. Unlike some of her colleagues, she does not view leadership as a licence to foment discontent for the sake of votes.

She’s a moderate change agent, an incrementalist not a radical, but that doesn’t dent her commitment. She will be missed.

Why won’t Tamihere stand? First, the numbers. In the three mayoral elections for the Super City an average of 340,000 votes have been cast for the leading candidates (it was 350,000 in 2016). Very