The capital's power brokers – who has sway to get stuff done?

Saturday, 13 May 2023

Wellington City is more employed, more professional, notably richer and ridiculously higher educated than the New Zealand average. Tom Hunt and Erin Gourley look at the obvious and opaque power brokers and why they are so influential.

One can end careers, one can bend authority to his will, and another can get hospitals built. Wellington, this is what power looks like.

A panel of The Post journalists has assessed who has the real power in Wellington – an already powerful city thanks to it being the capital. Our criteria: the raw essence of power; the ability to get things done.

This is not a list of the greatest, most-famous, or even well-meaning Wellingtonians (although some are). We can take it as a given that Parliament is its own beast and many of the city’s most powerful people are in its walls. We have also omitted the media and pundits. This power list is the people who, in public or behind the scenes, wield substantial influence.

When filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson needed an employment law change in 2010 he was able to gather Hollywood film executives and New Zealand’s leaders – nervous about New Zealand losing shooting of The Hobbit – at Premiere House. He got his law change.

Then, after a stoush with then-mayor Justin Lester, Jackson backed his rival Andy Foster for the top job. Against the odds, Foster won. It has been a while since Jackson was publicly involved in any public Wellington issues but, if he chooses to again, he has the might to change laws or change leaders.

He just didn’t manage to change Shelly Bay.

Wellington City Council chief executive Barbara McKerrow takes a deserved high spot. Recent years show it is staff increasingly pulling the strings at the council, to the annoyance of some councillors. And it’s McKerrow calling the shots.

Mayor Tory Whanau sits slightly lower but, by dint of heading a left-leaning council, she wields more power than her predecessor, Andy Foster. But she is still just one vote (notwithstanding the occasional casting vote) on council. Despite this, she leads a tightly-controlled Labour/Green majority of councillors and will be unlikely to lose a substantial vote, even if the other side of the council kick up a fuss.

Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust chairperson Kara Puketapu-Dentice has somehow pulled the disparate strands of Taranaki Whānui back together. He has made the Wellington iwi again a force to be reckoned with after being battered by scandal and bad-investment. A lot of Crown land around Wellington can go to Taranaki Whānui under first rights of refusal in its Tiriti o Waitangi settlement, giving it immense sway over the city.

A little north, is Ngāti Toa chief executive Helmut Modlik is a man of immense mana, but too far out of Wellington City for this central-centric list.

One name more than most kept coming up. Dame Kerry Prendergast is widely-regarded as the city’s most effective mayor in recent memory. Since losing the mayoralty she has been involved on many boards. She is chairperson of the New Zealand Film Commission, the Royal NZ Ballet and Wellington Opera, to name just a few, and a trustee on more. With husband Rex Nicholls, and others, she was behind the refurbishment of the Embassy Theatre foyer. Prendergast more than nearly all keeps Wellington on the cultural map.

By the same token, Sue Kedgley’s career in local and national politics is winding back but she is cut from similar cloth as Prendergast (even if one is green and the other blue). It seems unlikely either would have their calls ignored by leaders or wannabes. A notable mention in the same vein goes Dame Fran Wilde, whose career highlights include shepherding in homosexual law reform (homosexuality was illegal pre-1986) before she went on to become Wellington’s first female Mayor, and has had plenty of high-profile public roles since. So power in spades once. She seems to have gone quiet recently, but it is safe to say that she could roar again if she chose.

Dame Carolyn Henwood is the matriarch of Wellington theatre and, if the city is still known for its arts and culture, she (alongside notable others such as Dame Kate Harcourt and daughter Miranda) is the one to thank for that. She was a founding member of Circa Theatre and served on the board of Toi Whaakari, meaning there are few successful performing artists not somehow dragged into the limelight by her gravitational pull. She was also a highly-respected judge.

The Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts is Wellington’s, if not New Zealand’s, premier arts event. Being in a city that prides itself on its culture, the person who has the final say on what is in and what it out has immense sway – if not in the day-to-day running of the city, with its emotional health. Meet festival director Meg Williams.

Sir Mark Dunajtschik is well-known for his philanthropy as well as his property investment successes. The early backer of what would become the Life Flight Trust has been funding major projects in the capital to the tunes of tens of millions – recent donations include funding the new children’s hospital, a new mental health unit at Hutt Hospital, and an entire department at Victoria University of Wellington. His power is the easiest to define: If he wants something done, he pays for it.

Developer Ian Cassels has changed the face of Wellington through distinctive buildings around the city. But where his power sticks out more than most developers is his seeming ability to bend power to his will. His $500 million Shelly Bay development is testament to that. His partnership with Taranaki Whānui essentially got him into the land (and a relationship with the iwi that gave him access to its first right of refusal on parcels of Crown land) but also swung a council with a majority in opposition of the development to vote for it to proceed. His son, Alex Cassels, has also been tipped as one to watch.

Harbour master Grant Nalder does not give the impression of a man who sought power. But he ended up with it all the same. In a port town like Wellington, the man whose word is law on all things maritime safety has immense sway. He has used that power in recent directives including rules of how and when the becalmed MV Shiling could leave Wellington, and ordering Cook Strait ferries to take a longer route in certain winds. When there is an issue, he acts decisively and people listen.

Greater Wellington Regional Council chairperson Daran Ponter, and his no-nonsense speaking is likely the reason Kiwirail responded so quickly to the region’s recent train-pocalypse. His appropriately outraged response showed the regional council can use its experience with Metlink to get results for the region’s transport. Also a rising star on the regional council is Thomas Nash.

Patrick Morgan makes this list as a figurehead for the wider cycling community, which has wielded immense power in shaping the city in recent years. When the Island Bay cycleway was first built it was a widely-scorned novelty. Cycleways now pop up around Wellington with regularity and, while there are still many detractors, their existence is testament to Morgan and his cycling ilk.

It has seemed in recent times that one can barely move in Wellington without coming across industrial action. The rise of the unions in recent years has been helped by having Labour in charge, a party that came out of the union movement and still has strong ties to it. And the grand wizard of the union movement nationally is Wellington’s Richard Wagstaff of the Council of Trade Unions, the overarching union of unions. Other union names that should get a mention include Mark Potter and Kate Gainsford from the teachers’ unions, and the “retired” Paul Tolich.

Chris Parkin is known as a philanthropist, past city councillor, businessman, and arts collector and supporter. He is also known to throw money behind political candidates. It would be unfair to Tory Whanau to say the $2000 that Parkin publicly donated to her campaign swayed the election outcome but having a man – regarded as right of centre – publicly backing a Green-endorsed candidate must have helped swing some of the centre-right her way.

Also worth mentioning are those who seemingly keep their own factions of Wellington running: Mike Egan in hospitality, Te Papa chief executive Courtney Johnston WellingtonNZ chief executive John Allen, Wellington On a Plate chief executive Sarah Meikle and Jason Boyes, who is the chief executive of Infratil, the major shareholder in the airport.

Like it or not, a capital city without an airport would be hard pushed to call itself a capital. Or powerful.