Deputy dust-ups are nothing new
Sir Tim Shadbolt’s Invercargill mayoralty challengers include his present and former deputies Rebecca Amundsen and Darren Ludlow. What does that tell us? Treachery, perhaps? Of the sort that brings to mind the cry of betrayed Julius Caesar: ‘‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’’
(Obviously we’re quoting neither the real emperor nor the Shakespearean version – but Carry On Cleo. A classic of its kind.)
Both Amundsen and Ludlow have cited changing times, Invercargill’s need for a new, invigorated leadership style, and mounting concerns about council governance.
Online there’s been criticism that these are just the words of ambitious deputies.
The perception that the deputy mayoralty is a position that people enter and exit amid high political intrigue is one Shadbolt evidently shares.
Back in 2009 he mightily displeased former mayor Eve Poole’s family with the claim: ‘‘I now understand the policy of my predecessor . . . who changed her deputy each term to avoid any entrenchment of power.’’
Actually, the full council made those decisions, and traditionally it was a simple enough call. The job went to the highest-polling candidate.
The one exception was Bruce Pagan, who had been Bluff’s mayor and had come into the council under local government amalgamation in 1989.
For his part Shadbolt described the sacking of deputies as being only human nature and said it would be a ‘‘fairly brave’’ council to vote for a deputy the mayor didn’t want.
He once privately offered the position to at least one potential challenger from outside the council – Suzanne Prentice, who in 2009 was considering a tilt at the mayoralty.
In a recorded phone message to Prentice, Shadbolt referred to a talk he’d had with Southern Institute of Technology chief executive Penny Simmonds (clearly a close confidante as well as
heading an institution he ardently supports as mayor and, through his private company, has a contract with).
That message went: ‘‘I was talking to Penny the other day and floated it past her that another option might be that you come on to the council next year and become my new deputy and I will show you the ropes and it will make a cleaner transition rather than fighting it out.’’
Prentice declined, stood against him for the mayoralty, and was well beaten.
Shadbolt had a seemingly stable and certainly long-term relationship with councillor Neil Boniface as his deputy. But after more than a decade it had detonated in 2009, when he declared a loss of confidence – citing, chiefly, that Boniface had been too slow to inform him about a drinkdriving incident involving city manager Richard King, and too quick to sign King’s new employment contract.
How accessible the mayor had been during that became a matter of keen dispute between both men. Shadbolt wrote of an ‘‘ongoing subversive relationship’’ having developed and openly warned his councillors that if they didn’t oust Boniface from the deputy’s role there would be ‘‘blood on the floor’’.
Shadbolt said it would be a ‘‘fairly brave’’ council to vote for a deputy the mayor didn’t want.
They didn’t. But Boniface didn’t seek the deputy’s role upon re-election either. Jackie Kruger got it, and when she departed unexpectedly for Australia, Shadbolt recommended first-term councillor Carolyn Dean, stressing that a deputy should always back him on big decisions – which, by the way, he said Ludlow had not.
But the council preferred Ludlow, who had the deputy’s role until it was his turn to depart abruptly, at the behest of a majority of councillors for reasons initially unexplained.
Following an Official Information Act request by Stuff, it also emerged that – as with Boniface – Shadbolt felt Ludlow had been withholding information. Again his deputy rejected this.
Next up was Amundsen. When she declared herself a mayoral contender this year Shadbolt accused her of plotting behind his back while he had been in Wellington ‘‘fighting the good fight’’ for SIT. Amundsen said she’d not known he was in Wellington and had made extensive efforts to confirm with him privately that she would stand.
While the outcome of the election won’t be known until October 12, the question of who sits in the other hot seat – that is, who ends up as the deputy – might be as every bit as interesting as who ends up wearing the mayoral chains.