Commissioner feels city is in a better place as she moves on
Just over three years ago, a group of commissioners, led by former National Party Cabinet minister Anne Tolley, took over running Tauranga City Council after the Government sacked the elected council. As the commission’s extended term now draws to a close with an election looming, Tolley looks back on her experience.
Anne Tolley says there have been times she’s come home from her role as chairwoman of Tauranga’s commission and cried. Not that the seasoned politician would let anyone know it.
“That’s my armour. I never let it . . . let them know that they’ve actually got to me because they may win.”
The former Cabinet minister is speaking about some of the vitriol she’s received since taking on her role as chairwoman of the commission running the city council.
In 2020, then Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta sacked Tauranga City Council’s elected members, after “significant governance problems”.
The decision came during a tumultuous start to the council term that saw three of the 11 elected members resign, including firstterm mayor Tenby Powell.
In February 2021, Tolley, chairman of growth-focused
Western Bay sub-regional organisation Smartgrowth Bill Wasley; adviser to Smartgrowth with strong iwi links Shadrach Rolleston; and former Infrastructure New Zealand chief executive Stephen Selwood were appointed to replace the elected council.
Just over three years later, from her fifth-floor office overlooking the newly revamped Cameron Rd, Tolley, 71, says she feels mixed emotions — anticipation that the commission’s time is almost up, pride at what it achieved and horror at what it originally faced.
Her tenure as a minister had helped her develop a reasonably thick skin, but she says there were still times she would go home feeling “rotten”.
“You know, I never expect the community to always agree, or even understand why we’ve made a decision that we’ve made because they have a completely opposite view, but you don’t need to be nasty about it.”
‘I’m a bit of a sook, really’
Tolley doesn’t do social media but she regularly encounters people in person and receives emails.
She insists that, for every bad email, there are at least two of a positive or supportive nature.
“I get some particularly rude ones but look, it’s part of the job, I try not to let it get to me. I’ve learned over the years that you’re still human … you’re still a person.
“I’m really lucky that my husband [Allan] is really, really good and he can tell the minute I walk in the door when I come home — because I go home most weekends — and he’ll know what sort of a week I’ve had.
“He makes me cups of tea and he’ll sit down and let me unwind and sometimes I can talk for an hour, an hour and a half, just letting a whole lot of stuff out that I’ve been really frustrated with.
“I’m a bit of a sook, really,” she says.
The couple celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in November.
Tolley has served more than 30 years of those years in politics, starting in 1986 in Napier as a councillor, then deputy mayor, regional councillor, and National Party MP for Napier.
Her portfolios included education, police, corrections, social development, children, and local government.
These days she is chairwoman of anti-corruption coalition Transparency International’s New Zealand board and a director of Horizon Energy Group, in addition to her commission role.
Tolley says she had retired from politics when she decided to make an exception for the council commission role but, despite her political pedigree, her first days as chairwoman were “a shock”.
Tolley says she had previously visited Tauranga but was staggered when she saw the state of the city in 2021.
‘So much worse than I thought’
“I remember, we walked up Devonport Rd and I, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. It was dirty, it was neglected, it was empty.
“I rang my husband that night and I said ‘you have to come and see, I just cannot believe how bad Tauranga is looking’. And as that first week unfolded and we saw more and more of the city and talked to more and more people, everyone was just, everyone was really down, people were grumpy and it, it just was not a good feeling to come into.
“I remember going home at the first weekend and saying to my husband ‘I’m just not sure what we’re going to do’. You know, this was just so much worse than I thought it was because, really, I just thought it was, I guess, a dysfunctional council.”
An independent review had recommended intervention after months of infighting, Code of Conduct complaints and “poor behaviour”.
In March 2022, Mahuta controversially extended the commission’s term to July 2024, delaying elections until then. The move sparked protests calling for restored local democracy.
Tolley admits she wasn’t prepared for how much the community was hurting.
“You had people who’d lived here for a long time who were grumpy that it wasn’t the city that they knew anymore, all these other people had come in and wrecked their city.
“Mana whenua were grumpy because no one took any notice of them, no one recognised that they were here first and no one recognised the amount of their land that had been taken up by providing for this new growth with traffic and roading.
“And new people moving here were grumpy because they thought