Meet the Candidates: 'Grassroots' Auckland mayoral hopeful Craig Lord attacks higher-profile rivals
Thursday, 25 July 2019
Stuff is sitting down with Auckland's most vocal mayoral hopefuls. Today, we speak to first-time candidate Craig Lord.
Craig Lord is the kind of bloke you could imagine yarning to over a pint.
The man is far from a political pro.
Unlike your Phil Goffs, John Tamiheres and John Palinos, Lord is an election-year rookie with no campaign experience.
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Nor does the former engineer, turned media freelancer and motorsport commentator, have any policies.
There is no campaign team in sight – the spin doctors, policy advisors and pollsters are all missing.
Instead, Lord turns up to Stuff's Williamson Ave headquarters with his wife of 20-plus years.
'If you want to use standard sound bites, enough is enough, I'm tired of seeing the same thing,' he declares.
'No more politicians, let's get a grassroots, normal, everyday Auckland person who's lived life, got life experience, a communicator, into the position to do the job that a mayor should do.
'If you keep getting politicians, you keep getting the same people that promise things and promise things and promise things, but generally don't follow through.'
A POLICY FREE CAMPAIGN
Lord's campaign is based on a promise of openness.
He's spurned the traditional game plan of releasing a slew of policies leading up to election day.
'One of the other things he [Goff] does do wrong, and so do some of the other candidates in the past that we've seen, is make bold promises, but not follow through,' Lord says.
''I'm going to lower, or make bus and trains free for school children' – that's a policy announcement that's a promise from a politician that is not guaranteed to come through, and yet it's been done as an election bribe.
'That's the same old thing happening, people don't want that. They're tired of it.'
Lord believes announcing policies is arrogant.
He doesn't see the mayoralty as a power role, calling it a 'token' job.
'I'm probably the only one that's coming in not as a dictator,' he says.
'Local body representation is 21 different people from all walks of life coming together to decide.
'So for me if a mayor comes in and says 'I'm going to do this, I want this, I want this, I want this', they're saying, 'I don't care what the other 20 councillors want'.
TAKING ON AUCKLAND TRANSPORT
Like fellow challengers John Palino and John Tamihere, Lord is highly critical of Auckland Transport's moves during Goff's tenure as mayor.
'Bad communication, bad decision-making, over-spending on stupid things.'
Lord says he keeps hearing stories from ratepayers unhappy with traffic changes in their suburbs.
'We've got a round-a-bout in my suburb and there are two pedestrian crossings and a traffic crossing light,' he says.
'And for some reason, out of the blue, they just decided to put a hump on one of the roads – no reason, no pedestrian island on it, there's no signage on it, they've just put a hump there.
'And so now all the traffic backs up onto the round-a-bout.'
AT, he claims, is a CCO 'out of control', making what he calls illogical moves and spending money in 'stupid places'.
'Weren't they the ones who said it would cost $50,000 to put up street signs to say you can't park on a berm?' he points out.
'$50,000 to put up street signs? Now they've got the wrong contractor somewhere, or someone's clipping the ticket that shouldn't be clipping the ticket.
'It's those sort of things where people in Auckland are going: 'What? Where is our money going'?'
LORD THE COMMUNICATOR
Former Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker has an admirer in Craig Lord.
'Even though he didn't actually have any powers to do anything, he was the person the media went to and he communicated,' he says.
'All the time it was, 'we are strong, we are Christchurch, we are going to get through this'.
'That is a mayor.'
Goff, Lord says, has failed to deliver 'proper communication'.
'The angle that I come from is that I think the mayoral role is … very much a spokesperson role, you are the front person for the city,' he adds.
'You just don't see him, unless the media goes to him you don't hear from him – you don't see him, his head's in the sand somewhere doing something.
'That's one thing he doesn't do right and I believe that's what people actually want, they want a communicator.'
From the media's perspective, it is difficult to get Goff himself to front.
Written questions and responses are almost always funnelled through the mayor's PR team instead.
So, will Lord have a PR team watching his back?
'You've got to have a little one to help out, so you don't make bad mistakes,' he says.
'You have to have a couple of people helping out doing things just to bounce off, but communication is about honesty and it's about telling people what's going on.'
Lord promises a regular blog updating ratepayers on city issues.
'Let's pick on Takapuna for example, with the car park issue there,' he says, pointing to the controversial redevelopment of a parking space at Anzac St.
'I'd be in there asking questions, finding out what's going on, then I'd be telling everyone.'
CALLING OUT JT
After attacking Goff as a poor communicator, Lord moves onto another rival in John Tamihere.
Despite his criticism of AT, Lord is suspicious of JT's claims he will sack the organisation's board.
'When JT's giant billboards went up around town – 'I'm going to fire the AT Board' – I went, 'OK how, mate'?'
Lord said he submitted a question during the recent Local Government NZ conference asking whether it was possible.
The response? 'They all laughed.'
'What JT's done is bamboozled the public again, like central [government] party politicians do, promising, 'I'm going to fire the AT board',' Lord says.
'Same things, same result – promises, no result.'