Tory Whanau: The highs and lows of Wellington’s latest one-term mayor

Tuesday, 29 April 2025

In a wide-ranging interview with The Post, Tory Whanau discusses the abuse she suffered, the council unity she failed to achieve and how she should have had a term on council before diving into the mayoralty.

Being Wellington mayor is a tough gig, as Tory Whanau’s predecessors Andy Foster and Justin Lester found out the hard way. Senior reporter Julie Jacobson looks back at her time in office.

Tory Whanau promised a big vision of what she wanted for Wellington when she campaigned for the mayoralty in 2022.

Fixing the leaks, and the sewerage, an urban revitalisation project with integrated housing and transport solutions, and arms wrapped around our most vulnerable.

“I want to bring vibrancy and life back to our city,” she said, adding that through “running a political party” she had “significant experience in leadership, crisis management, negotiation, team building and political management”.

It is a list critics of the former Green Party chief of staff will point to, given the fails that were the non airport shares sale she pushed hard for and the dead-in-the-water Reading Cinema deal ‒ two defining events of Whanau’s nearly three years in office.

The Reading incident, where some of tinsel town’s big wigs were wined and dined and then offered $32 million to help them fixing and re-open the complex, led to all sorts of embarrassing shenanigans, not the least whistleblowing by Whanau’s own chief of staff over leaked information and a ratepayer-funded investigation into who spilled details about the secret deal.

Wellington mayor Tory Whanau discusses why she is quitting the race for the upcoming local body elections.

So too the proposed sell off of Wellington Airport, which Whanau failed to get off the ground, ultimately costing ratepayers hundreds of millions that then had to be dragged from other projects and forced an extension of long-term plan deliberations.

It proved the last straw for then Local Government Minister Simeon Brown. A Crown observer was appointed to keep an eye on budgets and behaviour.

Meanwhile grumpy ratepayers were having a field day with decisions by the mayor to keep on keeping on with the roll out of a city-wide bike network — initiated under a previous council — and the Golden Mile upgrade, all while the capital’s water infrastructure crumbled.

Whanau celebrates at her home immediately after learning she had been voted in as Wellington’s new mayor.

Whanau has acknowledged she failed to bring the unity to council she had campaigned on. Dissent kicked off within months of her election when councillors balked at a vision statement that would have branded Wellington for 10 years.

“A city of impact: Wellington is a resilient capital, well-known for climate action, creativity, vibrant communities and incredible scenery” eventually became “an inclusive, sustainable and creative capital for people to live, work and play”.

Leadership, or lack of, also became an issue early on, not helped by insider back-stabbing or pointed grumbling from the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon about “lame-o” councils.

A shocked Whanau outside the deadly Loafers Lodge fire scene.

There was a $46,000 increase for the chief executive at the same time councillors warning of “unprecedented” rates increases, there was taking her dog Teddy to work when the office’s tenancy agreement didn’t allow animals, there was the fiasco over the falling (Wolverine-weight) street lights ‒ something the council said it was aware of that but had no idea where the faulty ones were ‒ and the town hall cost blowout.

There were some very public gaffes, including the train wreck interview where she told Newstalk ZB’s Nick Mills she had to sell her car to help pay the bills after increases including “my mortgage rates have doubled” ‒ despite a $190,000 salary ‒ and then said she hadn’t. Another was television interview where the term “riff-raff” was used in an apparent reference to some right-leaning councillors.

There was a night out in July 2023 when the then self-described party girl left a Wellington restaurant without paying, later admitting that it had been accidental and that she had been “tipsy”.

Another night out at Havana Bar later the same year prompted an apology for her behaviour and proved a personal turning point for Whanau.

She hit the gym, said she was seeking help with her drinking and revealed she had been diagnosed with ADHD.

Of course, it’s one thing to get elected, another to do the job well, and there’s no denying Whanau has stuck with the progressive agenda she campaigned on.

Her compassionate handling of the disastrous Loafers Lodge fire fallout was likened to that of former PM Jacinda Ardern. She followed it up with a review of commercial accommodation, in high-density buildings of two storeys or more, and a plea to the Government to review the regulations around building safety including whether sprinklers should be required in all buildings.

In announcing she was standing down Whanau noted the things she was most proud of. They included the aforementioned water (a record $1.8b has gone into that), enabling thousands of new homes, hundreds of affordable rentals and upgrades to social housing units, planting 223,000 trees around the city and green belt, boosting funding for city safety and tackling homelessness and funding the City Mission to open the first wet house in New Zealand. And cycle lanes, and extra 27km of them.

Projects on track to be finished over the next year include the Moa Point waste minimisation plant, Te Matapihi/Central Library and Te Ngākau Civic Square redevelopment, with the opening of the refurbished Town Hall in 2027.