Wellington mayor Andrew Little has work cut out, political diplomacy to be tested

Monday, 13 October 2025

Wellington's new mayor Andrew Little elated by landslide win.

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New Wellington mayor Andrew Little ‒ the former Labour leader, trade unionist and lawyer ‒ is a politician first and foremost.

He won’t say a bad word against the three mayoral rivals he has battled for the past six months ‒ Diane Calvert, Karl Tiefenbacher and Ray Chung ‒ and who just got elected as councillors beneath him. By Sunday, he had even had cordial calls with two of them. Chung was still waiting.

Will three people who, until Saturday aimed to lead the city, let him lead? “I expect they have the maturity to understand,” Little told The Post. Always the politician.

He will likely be hoping final votes see Labour candidate Joy Gribben oust Chung for a council seat, when the 11,000-odd votes cast on Saturday get added to the tallies.

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Little wouldn’t be drawn on how close ties are with the four provisionally-elected Greens that would be needed to make up a progressive bloc.

“Every councillor is important,” he said. And indeed, with National-aligned re-elected councillor Nicola Young backing Little, it is clear his overwhelming election win was not just from the left.

“I think the message from the campaign is clear. People expect the council to get on and work together.”

Andrew Little on election night, with his supporters.

Little has inherited a city fresh from three years of issues: A council divided, an observer brought in, years of massive rates rises, a water crisis, and heated spats on everything from the Golden Mile to the Reading Cinema to selling the city’s airport shares. Added to that was a new District Plan that, in broad brush strokes, divided the city between the young who wanted more housing and the old who wanted to keep heritage.

For Little, the rubber hit the road on Sunday when he planned to sit down with council chief executive Matt Prosser. It should be here that he learned of any unknown nasties requiring emergency decisions before officially taking office in late October.

Little campaigned on a raft of policies. These included reclaiming the capital’s place as the country’s live entertainment city. He planned to fix the city’s infrastructure and promised cheaper public transport.

He campaigned on “saying yes” to housing and development and prioritising community facilities. Specifically, he has promised to save Khandallah Pool, Begonia House, Karori Event Centre and Brooklyn Library, as well as prioritising a Kilbirnie Park master plan and sports hub and a new Tawa “anchor project”.

He has promised greater oversight over big projects and greater transparency, including stopping the “misuse” of commercial confidentiality to heap council costs hidden from the public. He on Sunday said the true cost of the council’s move to new offices could be first cab off the rank.

One of his first headaches will be the Golden Mile revamp. Outgoing mayor Tory Whanau failed to sign a contract for the Courtenay Place to start on this – with the exception of the Cambridge Tce intersection.

Little promised a pause so the council could re-look at the costs, the government funding and impact on businesses. He was keen to look at alternatives.

Other top priorities were getting processes around licensing and consents streamlined, sorting out the relationship with the new regional water entity, Metro Water.

But for now, he still has his day job as a lawyer to wind-up – he was heading to the office on Sunday to do this – and choosing a deputy.

“I haven’t made any decisions,” a diplomatic Little said.

Tiefenbacher said he would hold Little to account if he was doing bad things for the city but, for now, “my job is to make Andrew look like the best mayor Wellington ever had”.

Calvert said she was keen for the council to have a reset and awaited what happened in the coming weeks.

Chung could not immediately be reached for comment, but had already issued a statement questioning the new mayor’s intentions.

“You have promised to get rates down and you have promised to continue with the spending. Both of those promises cannot hold true,” he said.