The following is a condensed version of the Mayor’s speech at the 2025 inauguration ceremony this evening at Auckland Town Hall.
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
It is a great honour and privilege to be here at this rather long and weirdly organised event, but it's an important one, thank you. So, settle in as this is my chance to outline the next three years.
Tonight is a celebration of Auckland! And tonight is a welcome back to my fellow councillors and first-timers – good luck! It’s not an easy job.
I want to thank my wife Toni and family, my generous supporters, and the voters of Auckland for their vote of confidence in me.
I’m humbled to have received such strong support to finish the job.
I see your vote as an endorsement to carry on fixing Auckland, and prepare it for the future.
It was a grand total of 180,000 votes, or four and a half full stadiums at Eden Park.
That’s over half of all votes received in Auckland by the 12 mayoral candidates. It is extremely rare for a government to get that! That’s more than the percentage of votes collected by the National Party!
The lesson from that is if you have clear policies, clear direction, and speak the unvarnished truth at all times, voters will support you.
It’s a general election year next year, the Government would do well to understand that, and the importance of Auckland.
Today isn’t just for those in the hall here of our beautiful city, or for those online, and it’s not just for the lucky people who live in our city…
It’s also a message of hope for the rest of the country, including a message for the people in Howick South, commonly known as Wellington.
We are only just emerging from the economic and fiscal storm I foreshadowed in my speech at the start of last term.
I didn’t realise it would be quite so serious…
You’ll remember shortly after I was elected last term, we endured the major flooding events of Auckland Anniversary weekend and Cyclone Gabrielle.
The city wasn't prepared. Auckland Emergency Management wasn't prepared. Weather forecasters weren’t prepared. Council wasn't prepared, I wasn't prepared. The pipes and stormwater system of Auckland weren't prepared; the media weren't prepared. But as usual, they blamed everybody else…
But we weathered the storm in more ways than one…
…And we got on with it.
Three years on, we've made improvements. Weather forecasters have now improved so much so that they have predicted 11 of the last three downpours! Our Emergency Management is now better. Under the leadership of Craig Mcilroy, our Making Space for Water programme is underway and diverting overland waterflows to safer places.
Our new plan change will stop the building of homes on flood plains, and we have a future fund to provide help for the next disaster. I see the idea is now being copied by Labour.
It's nice to see that my philosophies are showing up in all kinds of places. I’m encouraging people to first find out what the problem is that you are trying to fix, before you do anything. Once you've worked that out, you ask: Can we do it better, faster, cheaper?
I'm now hearing those words from all over council, it's wonderful.
In the next three years I’ll be introducing some more philosophy and new words: perspective, judgement and wisdom. A lot of what we do here is box ticking and it’s really annoying for the public.
And we're going to change that. I’m going to ask staff for perspective, in the scheme of things, does stopping this really matter? And that leads us to the second word, which is judgement. We're going to introduce the idea of having some judgement. If we get those together, it's quite possible it might lead to the third word: wisdom. These are all good things to aim for.
I was elected based on five policies, and we've made progress on all of these.
The first one was to stop wasting money.
I’ve got the books in order, and that will continue. We’ve plugged debt holes, exceeded savings targets, enforced Capital Spending Rules and launched the Better Value Projects programme to scrutinise capital projects. We now take seriously the idea of wealth creation with public money.
My deputy mayor Desley Simpson is leading a committee which will look for more savings, and the prevention of further waste of money.
The next one was to finish off the big infrastructure projects.
So far, we have strengthened Auckland’s physical resilience by fixing the basic functions of a city region that people expect of us.
We’ve redirected funds and spent record amounts on infrastructure.
A new arrangement for Watercare’s finances means we can now properly fund depreciation and prepare for growth.
Within the next few months, the New Zealand International Convention Centre will open with busy doors, and the game-changing City Rail Link will have passengers next year, an important breakthrough.
My third policy was to take back control of the CCOs.
My CCO reform has put Eke Panuku and the economic development arm of Tātaki Auckland Unlimited back in-house at council. Auckland Transport will soon be stripped of its decision-making power, and this will be returned to elected officials, where it should be.
My fourth one was speeding up traffic. I was most disappointed with the progress here but through the transport reform we will now be able to do this. We will get things like smarter light systems and will be able to make the most of dynamic lanes. AT will become a public transport service delivery provider alone, which they’re actually quite good at. CCO reform is about making council operate as a single, joined-up organisation.
My fifth policy was to get more from our harbour. I’m delighted to say that the Port of Auckland will now be returning 100 million annually to ease the burden on rates. And we’ve opened Browny’s Pool in the viaduct, last week the All Blacks used it for training! The pool is a sign of things to come. There’ll be more cheap Browny’s Pools in our harbours!
This leads me to my future five policies!
We're sitting on the cusp of some of the biggest decisions this supercity has ever had. These decisions will greatly affect how and where we live and move about in our city and region.
The first of my future five is finishing the upgrade of transport in Auckland from appalling to quite good. We will make the absolute most of a newly reformed Auckland transport!
The second is formalising a consensus on the plan change we have on the table. Plan Change 120 will enable us to stop building homes on floodplains and will focus intensification where it makes sense, along major transport hubs and where we have already invested significantly in infrastructure.
This is an important thing to get right. The Government is pushing us to have more greenfields, but other than Drury, that's not going to happen.
We must change Auckland from the world’s largest suburb to a global city. It’s already embarrassingly known as the city of sprawl. It’s not economical and it’s not environmental. I want an efficient, green city. Sadly, staff got off to a bad start here with a poorly written letter to residents, but they’ve assured me they won’t do that again.
The third thing that I'm pushing for is to lift the economic performance of the city. You will now see a sharper focus on economic growth from my leadership. You will see a continued effort to strengthen Auckland’s financial resilience.
First thing, I'd like to thank our rural New Zealanders for their contributions to our economy in agriculture and horticulture. Without them, we'd be in trouble. Auckland has to lift its game here and help our rural New Zealanders.
That’s where the lifting of the economic performance of our city comes in. I’m priming several sectors here where I see the most opportunity for economic growth.
In the Technology and Innovation sector we’ve stood up the Auckland Tech Alliance to be a conduit between the public and private sectors, better connecting industry with universities. We advocated for the establishment of the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Technology to be based in Auckland, and it will be.
It will also be backed by the Government with an initial $231 million over four years. Just last week we had Startup Week which attracted over 4,000 attendees, thanks to Pam Ford and her team in the Economic Development Office now at council. It’s events like these that utilise the ecosystem of innovation already in Auckland to do great things. It’s the alliance and the institute that will make sure ideas don’t ‘die on the vine’. We need more Rocket Labs and Halters.
We’re really just beginning our work in the Tourism and Hospitality sectors, but this is also an area I want to prime for the economic growth that is coming. Auckland is stunning, people want to come here and share in our harbours, native bush and active lifestyle, we need to be ready for when the domestic and global economies pick up again. That’s why I’m advocating for a USER PAYS bed night LEVY. And we will get it; it makes sense for a global city. I had a chuckle yesterday when Andrew Little announced that he wants one for Wellington. Watch this space.
The fourth policy I’m looking at is how we can improve our city centre, make it more inviting for both businesses and leisurely activities for Aucklanders. I’ve already noted some plans for the waterfront, but there will be another focus on the city centre. I’ve already poured some money into this, from my own budget.
I’ve brought some of the safety initiatives already happening together in a unified approach, but I’ll also be making it clear to government where the responsibilities lie here and that brings me to a city deal…
So, without further ado my fifth policy is getting a city deal across the line. We do places, the Government does people and behaviour rules. I thank Minister Simeon Brown for picking up this issue and coordinating the major government departments involved here.
We are a third of New Zealand. Given the size and scope of Auckland they should be returning more our way. This is an opportunity for the Government to start treating us as such, as a major party, with the respect it is due.
I welcome the discussions here to detail exactly what this looks like in a city deal, and I look forward to signing this with the Prime Minister, as my counterpart.
Thank you for that ladies and gentleman, I look forward to this term and I welcome again my fellow councillors, and my Deputy Mayor to another term of getting things done.
Thank you once again for your vote of confidence, Auckland.
It’s a privilege and an honour, now let’s get on with it.
