Tory Whanau reflects on Wellington mayoralty after failed Reading Cinema deal
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau has talked about the “brutal” nature of the job, describing it as the most unpleasant role she has ever had, and addressed rumours she is positioning herself to make a run for Parliament.
In a candid interview with the Herald after news yesterday of the failed Reading Cinema deal, Whanau said she went through the worst of her mayoralty last yearbut nothing fazes her now.
Wellington City Council ended a deal to reopen the Reading Cinema complex on Courtenay Place after senior council staff reached a point in negotiations at which they did not believe they could get the best possible outcomes for Wellingtonians.
The council had planned to buy the land underneath the building for $32 million, money which the cinema’s multi-millionaire owners would use to redevelop the site. It sparked a fierce debate over whether the plan was visionary or corporate welfare.
This latest clean up interview follows the collapse of her Reading Deal, her admission to having a drinking problem and her claim last year that criticism towards her absence were gender driven…
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau says attendance criticism is ‘gendered’
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau has labelled criticism of her leadership as “attempts at trying to attack my character”.
Whanau has faced scrutiny for her absence at civic events and meetings, including a meeting of the regional mayor’s forum.
But the mayor thinks the focus on her attendance is undue, and largely because people don’t like what she represents as a young Māori woman in council.
“Actually, I gave an apology to a couple of big meetings for quite serious reasons and now it’s turned into ‘absent Mayor’ when that is absolutely not the case,” she said in an interview with Newshub Nation.
…the moment you start blaming resentment towards your leadership along purely Identity lines, it’s kinda the beginning of the end….
“I’m 40, I’m single, I love our hospitality scene and every couple of weeks I love to head out with my mates and hit a couple of bars and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that,” she told Newshub Nation.
“Saturday night should I be in the office? Well no, that’s just silly.
“I’m entitled to a private life. I’m entitled to have a little fun with my mates and there are some people who take issue with that,” she said.
…As Mayor, she is a public servant and defending her absences from official duties because she needs a social life will antagonise her electorate as much as her claim that any criticism of her is because she is a Māori woman.
If she is making these excuses this early in her Mayoralty, it is a bad omen for the future.
The problem with her steps towards getting the Green nomination to run in National Politics is that they currently have an over abundance of privileged women who know best and that her addition to that line up will start to become a self saucing parody.
The problem with the middle class Wellington Woke that Tory is part of (alongside the Neale Jones’ and the Davey Cormacks) is that many have a foot on the property market and are enjoying the privileges their middle class insulation provides them with, hence a host of middle class pretensions masquerading as social policy that Tory has championed.
Outside the aesthetics of woke dogma, the Wellington Woke have only middle class assumptions pretending to be solutions inside a neoliberal framework that doesn’t feel threatened by them.
David Lange was once said to fill his ashtray with cigar ash all week so that when he left Wellington on a Friday he could dump it out on the motorway north.
Little has changed.
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I suggest that people voted Tory because she is a Maori women, and that was a pc thing to be doing. It wasn’t enough. She glammed up with makeup and a trendy trench coat in a way that men can’t, and that wasn’t enough either. The Reading Cinema deal which she seemed committed to, was a white elephant for Wellingtonians who don’t fork out their rates to be spent subsiding inert overseas entities who may not deliver very much. The Golden Mile project, whoever thought it up, is going to kill off retailers and businesses already crippled by post earthquake restrictions, and make Lambton Quay a promenade for boring politicians and public servants. Courtney Place has already been trammelled on by social housing inhabitants who can be intimidating for ordinary people and passersby, and that’s a shame, it used to be a safe and pleasant socialising spot and meeting place. WCC councillors seemingly having little real meeting time with the Mayor, is decidedly odd. This never happened under Mayor Fran Wilde who anybody could get to meet quite easily, or even inadvertently, on a Sunday at Palmers Gardening World, doing the normal things that everyday people do, just like Mayor Andy Foster and his supermarket shopping. Whanau’s drinking is the least of her problems, it doesn’t cause potholes, sewage overflows and a dodgy water supply.
Diversity hire behaves like diversity hire, elicits shock from those doing the hiring.
It’s almost as if voting purely on identity politics lines doesn’t deliver the best person for the job.
In this case it may have been assisted by the Green brigade from Victoria University’s students who can be easily mobilised, can be transient and not rate payers, while the “hirers” ie the town’s rate payers and permanent residents, bear the brunt of what transpires. But certainly in work places where diversity rules, such as government departments, the best person doesn’t necessarily get the job, so its quite a thorny issue.
Absolutely the Greens have mastered mobilising the youth vote in Wellington (not just to vote but to be out on the street campaigning)
A fact that still seems to elude others running for positions there. Yes young people do vote despite popular belief.
For me, it’s the burst water pipes. Obviously it’s a legacy issue but leaks in the middle of roads are simply being left to waste water.
Ennius – Second that.
Its dumb Wellingtonians.
One’s that vote woke and the rest that don’t vote…..
You get what you deserve.!
Martyn – Tory and Wayne Brown top a list of NZ’s worst performing mayors according to a recent poll…while Nick Smith is the top performing Mayor.
I think Mayor Brown is getting on with things which is to his credit while Tory Whanau is completely out of her depth.
Bob the first – 100% correct
Bob the first, Nathan, get a room, oh sorry you’ve had one for a few years, Trev will be jealous.
Yeah, but their intentions were good, and that’s a pass mark in their heads.
Good for whom? If it were that Whanau sought the mayoralty to do a deal for Reading, her intentions may be hard to categorise. If setting a lawyer to act as inquisitor, judge and jury on dissenters is a good use of ratepayer monies, IMO checks and balances may be needed within the council processes.
Wellington has a new theme song:
That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore.
Thanks to Councillor Iona Pannett’s notice of motion to revoke the deal.
Richard Mc. I don’t think that Iona P was the only one, I have their names listed somewhere; there were reasonable concerns raised about the Reading deal right from the start, and perhaps the voices of reason were regarded as treasonous, or sumsuch.
Juicy juicy low hanging fruit…
I mean I think her attempt to further sell off Wellington Airport did the job of proving she was just another left-neoliberal dog like Chris Hipkins and Ardern quite well. I donated to Tory’s campaign because she signaled that even though she was a Green party associate, she had some genuine left wing sympathies. Fool me once, shame on you. I won’t be fooled again.
I won’t be fooled again.
But that’s your status quo; if someone like Tory could fool you then you are going to get fooled again. Every. Single. Time.
” The problem with her steps towards getting the Green nomination to run in National Politics is that they currently have an over abundance of privileged women who know best and that her addition to that line up will start to become a self saucing parody. ”
Which begs the question
” The reason the Left have to be ready is because this omnishambles of a Government could skid off the road uncontrollably in a months time as they present their budget. ”
As long as the imaginary ” left ” has individuals like the Mayor of Wellington seriously thinking about running for parliament under the banner of the Greens, that will do nothing to help confront the current government and the response that’s needed to resist the direction they are taking us.
It needs disciplined people who think before they act or speak and and see their position not as one of entitlement.
Unfortunately for Whanau the position of Mayor of a large city with huge problems demands that sometimes you have to be at the office working on a Saturday night not out getting pissed.
The biggest crisis currently is not the incumbent government.
Its the people like the Mayor and their middle class position thinking they represent the ” left ” of politics in their imaginary indulged world.
The current LINO party , its leadership and the Greens are full of people who are the same.
Hardly awe inspiring is it ?
Mosa. Routine Saturday night partying usually stops with the advent of little bundles of joy. But surgeons, anaesthetists, paramedics, firemen, first responders, etc who are regularly on call at no extra pay, spend their working lives abstaining from alcohol at such times, and the community relies upon them to do so.
So why do certain Bourgeois types feel need to embrace the appeal of left wing policies? Or rather even the leftist image?
Sort of counterintuitive to me.
Is self awareness and guilt of their privilege and entitlement that creates the need to make amends, at least outwardly?
Because politics isn’t a simplistic, Left/Right binary.
It’s all about money, power & resources. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are probably lying.
Take no notice of Bob the First, he’s a complete fucking idiot…
From Len Brown…
“So the Minister for Transport in Auckland, Simeon Brown, who I’m getting on quite well with, has agreed that we will be put back in charge of the Regional Land Transport Plan.
“I’m negotiating that with him and at his request, he said AT are going to have nothing to do with this negotiation.”
An undemocratic government running a dictatorship.
Wayne Brown, not Len Brown NASC.
Both complete fuckwits though.
Len Brown?
The National coalition, an undemocratic government running a dictatorship.
By Bob the first.
Handing over gobs of public cash to Yank multi-millionaires was the thing that was a credibility blow to the Left. Canning the deal is actually good for you guys.
Xenophon Yes, this deal was hardly a left/socialist dynamic, and it’s mind-boggling that a significant chunk of downtown Wellington could have been given to off- shore interests with no guaranteed outcomes.
Imaging Greens in power and running the Ministery of Finance.We would be bankrupt in a year .
Too generous Trevor,within weeks.
True, and pronoun crime would have non-parole.
Like what’s happening already eh?
We’re well down that road already – two quarters into a recession and this governing arrangement imagines austerity is the answer. Even barely competent they are not.
Probably why ACT and NZ First are in power and don’t have the finance portfolio. Though to be fair if you knew anything about New Zealand politics the main parties always hold the main financial portfolio you’d have to be thick as f*** to think anything different. Seems it’s your comment that is bankrupt and thankfully your opinion doesn’t amount to much.
In England’s pleasant pastures green, parts of Hadrian’s Wall are now being attacked as colonialist Roman relics. Fortunately, New Zealand’s brief history provides few cultural icons for zealots to vandalise.