Meet the Candidates: Ever-optimistic John Palino on why he still wants to be Auckland Mayor

Monday, 24 June 2019

Mayoral hopeful John Palino talks politics with Stuff during his aborted 2019 campaign.(Video from June 2019)

Over the next month Stuff will sit down with four of Auckland's most vocal mayoral hopefuls. Today, we speak to third-time candidate John Palino.

John Palino, brimming with confidence, is quick to compare himself to Jacinda Ardern.

'Think about this – how many times did Jacinda run before actually winning?' he quizzes.

Maybe the New Jersey native has a point – Ardern, like Palino, did spend much of her pre-PM days as a political loser.

* John Palino confirms another tilt at Auckland mayoralty

* 'I would love to': John Palino weighing up another tilt at Auckland mayoralty**

'She lost three times before winning her seat … you have a passion and you want to fix things and you want to get going,' he adds.

Point made.

John Palino says Auckland is being planned wrong and is sticking to his satellite cities idea (file photo).

Even still, when you hear Palino's name in the mayoral mix again you cannot help but ask, 'why, John, why'?

Why is this man, a two-time failed candidate, not to mention a new dad running a new business, doing this?

'You don't give up,' Palino says.

While Palino was runner-up in the 2013 mayoral race, grabbing nearly 109,000 votes, he was well beaten by the victorious Len Brown on 164,000.

Palino's 2016 campaign was disastrous as he limped into fourth position behind sitting mayor Phil Goff, Vic Crone and Chloe Swarbrick.

But he still remains as optimistic as ever, pointing to that 2013 result as a sign of his popularity – 'that's great, that's a good amount of votes.'

And his policies – visionary, imaginative but light on detail – are 'what is needed' in Auckland, he claims.

'My policies are really important. They really are what is needed and the experts actually talk about them,' Palino says.

'They talk about how we're going to fix Auckland and they use my policies to talk about it. I can't give up.'

PLANNING AUCKLAND WRONG

Palino, like in 2016, is recycling his hallmark 'satellite cities' idea.

'If there's one thing I want people to get out of my story [it] is that we're planning Auckland incorrectly,' he declares.

Palino at a memorable 2016 press conference, during which he responded to media questioning about the Len Brown scandal.

'We're planning Auckland as though it's one big super city and you can't do that, you have to plan it as a region.'

The idea relies on creating 50,000 jobs in south Auckland and another 20,000 in the North Shore to help 'grow other CBDs'.

'What does a region have? Well a region has suburbs, it has multiple CBDs, it has areas where people can actually live and work,' he says.

'Our biggest problem is that we're trying to intensify within the isthmus area and we're causing more and more congestion, and by causing that we're causing everything that is related to all the problems that we have today.

'Budgets, people homeless, moving further and further away from Auckland, not being able to afford to live, the expensive housing, that's all caused by the unitary plan [and] by focussing on being a CBD – one big city.'

The petrol tax would also be out under Mayor Palino, who calls it unfair.

'We need to remove the petrol tax because that is really making the people who are less fortunate, who had to move further away, suffer,' he says.

'They're the ones who actually had to move out of the isthmus area because they couldn't afford their rents.

'So they had to find a cheaper rent and now they're driving an hour and a half or two hours transportation to go to work.'

Palino's campaign is based on a set of broad ideas, something perhaps best exemplified by his comment that 'regulations need to be fixed'.

'And we need to make affordable housing and get rid of regulations as well.'

Palino kicks of his campaign back in 2016 at the Metro Theatre in Mangeree. He is seated next to his now-wife Rose Li.

THE PAST

Palino's previous campaign was plagued by accusations he was involved in a plot against former Auckland Mayor Brown.

The now three-time candidate again vehemently denies any involvement when Stuff asks how he thinks it hurt his previous campaign.

'We can't be talking about something that was made up in the past, because that was made up,' he says.

'We've got to be talking about Auckland, what's going to fix Auckland today.'

In a nutshell, Palino stood accused of being behind a plot to bring down Brown by revealing his two-year extra-marital affair with council adviser Bevan Chuang just after the 2013 election.

Chuang claimed to have been romantically involved with Palino's campaign worker, Luigi Wewege, at the same time as Brown.

'It's unfortunate to get caught in something that's made up, but it was made up – period,' Palino stresses.

WHY PALINO?

Palino sees himself as the top centre-right candidate in this year's race.

'You've got John Tamihere and you've got Phil Goff – they're both Labour Party members, well John Tamihere is no longer, but they're both Labour,' Palino points out.

'You've actually left out the centre-right and I've always been the centre-right, although my policies are very left wing.

'It's funny that my policies are more about people, but I'm the only centre-right person actually running.'

Despite his centre-right ticket, Palino says his policies are similar to Tamihere's, taking a subtle shot at the race's most vocal candidate.

'They're all written already – I already said I was going to remove the petrol tax, I already talked about getting rid of the port,' Palino says.

'A lot of the things he's covering about not removing green land, the western motorway, the golf courses – I've always talked about we can't actually reduce all that.

'We have to build in a way that we don't remove our golf courses, we don't remove things that we need – our Western Springs speedway – we don't remove those things that are history and create culture and stuff like that for our young folks to grow up with.'

NATIONAL BACKING?

Palino says he has met with National Party leader Simon Bridges this campaign, but is not holding out for an endorsement.

'As much as they agree with you, Simon agrees with my policies, he likes them, he used to be in transport and he said 'you're right' … they're not going to back anybody,' he says.

'Even when Vic Crone was running, they didn't back Vic Crone really it was party members doing it.

'I have party members that are backing me.'

He calls the lack of National backing, and the fact the party's largely stayed away from local body elections, 'unfortunate':

'Labour's backing their team, but National doesn't back a team and I understand that,' Palino says.

'I think Central Government should be out of local Government, they shouldn't be so hands on in your local Government.'