Labour breaks up in Whau ward
Tracy Mulholland quits Labour, joins C&R to challenge Labour’s Ross Clow
The Labour Party ticket in the Whau ward has torn itself apart in one of the most bitter rows in Auckland local government for years. The end result is Whau Local Board chairwoman Tracy Mulholland has quit the Labour Party and joined National’s de facto ticket Communities and Residents (C&R) to challenge Labour’s Ross Clow for the ward seat.
The fallout has involved senior members of the Labour Party, including former party president Nigel Haworth, who was brought in to broker a peace.
Other senior party figures privately stood up for Muholland’s hard work, leadership and achievements and criticised the way she was hounded off the Whau ticket.
It has been a bruising experience for Mulholland, the head of the New Lynn Business Association, who was approached by former Labour leader David Cunliffe and encouraged by Clow to stand for the board on the Labour ticket in 2016.
Mulholland she was shocked at being told to the toe the Labour Party line after being elected and made chairwoman of the Whau Local Board.
“My duty as chair was to represent all of our community. I didn’t caucus and pre-determine outcomes,” is how Mulholland describes her response to the expectations placed on her.
Clow is disappointed at how the board has “fallen apart”, saying Mulholland was autocratic, alienated board members and unable to manage the politics.
He said as Whau councillor and de facto leader of the Labour ticket he tried to keep the team together, including a text to Mulholland on the last day of Labour nominations asking her to stay with the party and local body politics.
Clow is appalled at how she resigned from the party on June 17 and launched in a “blue dress” 10 days later as a candidate for C&R.
“I didn’t know she had been effectively scheming and working with Daniel Newman [a councillor devising a strategy against ‘Team Goff’ at the elections] and C&R for some months,” Clow said.
Newman said he actively encouraged Mulholland to stand after she was treated atrociously by the Labour Party, “leaving Clow scrambling after being too complacent for too long”.
Mulholland said Clow was not inclusive and wanted to be the boss of the community. She said on one occasion she stood up to Clow when he wanted her to change a decision by the board and “he stormed out of the office all flustered and angry”.
She also accuses Clow of being a “fat cat” — a reference to his three public roles as a councillor, a member of the Portage Licensing Trust and a member of its pokies division.
The West Auckland Licensing Trusts are another hot issue at the local body elections with a group campaigning for an end to the Portage and Waitakere Trusts’ grip on pub and bottle shop licences, concerns about transparency and a row about paying staff the Living Wage.
Clow is paid $132,579 as the chairman of council’s finance committee. He said he earns $30,000 as chairman of the licensing trust and $20,000 plus meeting fees as a director of its pokies division.
Clow said he worked long hours as a fulltime councillor and in his trust roles — and pointed out Daniel Newman is also standing as a councillor and for the Wiri Licensing Trust.
It is really a beat-up, he said, saying Mulholland had failed to declare as a conflict of interest her contracting role on the New Lynn Business Association at one local board meeting.
Mulholland is paid $88,158 as chairwoman of the Whau Local Board. She still has a contract with the New Lynn Business Association, saying “what they pay is private business”. It is not unusual for local board members to have outside jobs.
There’s a general feeling the inner west ward of Whau is making good progress, particularly after decades of neglect in the areas managed by the former Auckland City Council.
A new $21 million library and community centre for Avondale is in the design stages with construction set to begin next year, and the signs are promising for a $104m swimming pool and recreation centre in the ward, possibly in Avondale.
More than $400m has been poured into New Lynn, much of that into the new rail trench and station that opened in 2010, a new town centre taking shape and the large scale West Edge housing development by the Chinese-owned Avanda Group.
Naturally, Clow and Mulholland are keen to claim credit for progress in the ward and promising to complete these and other projects, including the Whau coastal walkway, a joint project with the Henderson-Massey Local Board and council. Clow, a second term councillor, said he had lobbied very well for Whau with the strong support of successive local boards, and as chair of the finance committee “spread the butter” so every local board gets one big project in the 10-year budget.
For Whau, it is a new swimming pool and recreation centre to serve the west. Clow would like to see the pool built in Avondale, possibly on 15ha of public space set aside on the Avondale racecourse. “The crucial thing we have facing us in Avondale is not enough green space,” Clow said.
Mulholland said her term had been about listening and delivering for the people of Whau, including securing funding for the swimming pool and recreation centre and securing the site and funding for the new library and community centre. For someone who wants to escape from “old-school politicking by oldschool politicians”, Mulholland is standing on C&R’s centre-right platform of “better value for your rates” and the anti-Goff B team platform to change the behaviour of council and council-controlled organisations (CCOs).
“My observation is that there is an A and B team at Auckland Council. This is not an acceptable scenario for our residents. I am a candidate for Whau because I have learnt that at the Government body the power is in the hands of a few who have political associations,” Mulholland said.
The Green Party is standing candidates for the Whau ward and local board for the first time. Ward candidate Jessamine Fraser, who has an architecture practice in Rosebank Rd, said local Greens are interested in getting involved in the area and offering voters a choice with a contest of ideas.
Other ward candidates are Paul Davie, a member of the Portage Licensing Trust who lost his job as a real estate agent this year over social media posts critical of Muslims and multiculturalism; and Anne Degia-Pala, standing as an independent.
My observation is that there is an A and B team at Auckland Council. This is not an acceptable scenario for our residents. Tracy Mulholland, candidate