Christchurch mayor: ‘I wouldn’t say that I broke that promise, but I didn’t do what I promised,’

Monday, 14 October 2024

A year out from the Christchurch mayoral election the city’s mayor Phil Mauger has conceded he learned lessons from his previous campaign for city leader.

Mauger, who is in his first term in the role, was questioned by Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q&A on Sunday about the campaign promises he made to the city in 2022 regarding rates and selling off assets.

“I wouldn’t say that I broke that promise, but I didn’t do what I promised,” Mauger said.

The interview came a day after third-term city councillor Sara Templeton announced her bid to run for mayor in 2025.

When Mauger was the newly elected mayor, it was expected Christchurch rates would not increase higher than 4%. The average increase of 2024/2025 rates was 9.9%, with an average rise of 6.4% for 2023/2024.

“Hand on heart, I went and thought we can do this, we can really do this. I was wrong.”

But spending $40 million on insurance, rising inflation, and rising interest rates on debt were also factors he did not consider when - as a city councillor - he campaigned for the mayoralty.

Mauger said he did keep his promise over not cutting back services, which contributed to the rate rise.

“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die, “ Tame suggested to Mauger during the interview.

He wanted to make sure where assets were not helping Christchurch, the fat was cut, such as the land the council owned, Mauger said.

“If an asset is increasing in value and making a good dividend, why would you sell it?

“If they’re not making a dividend we’ve got to look at it and see maybe why.”

He said the council may look into selling off “a little bit” of its shares of the port or the airport if the dividends took a dive, “but at this stage, no”.

The council’s investment arm, Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, reported a dividend of $50.7m for the 12 months ending in June. That’s up 56% on the previous year’s $32.4m.

He did not concede that rebuilding the Christ Church Cathedral was a mistake after the project was mothballed because it ran out of money.

The council promised the project $10m in 2017, and had paid $3m so far, but no more council money would be going towards it due to the $85m funding gap.

Instead, the council was focused on funding the $683m Te Kaha One New Zealand Stadium, he said.

He hoped that greater Christchurch councils would help with operational costs once it opened in April 2026, but they had not yet agreed to this.

Mauger also defended the council’s vote to delay a decision on residential intensification.

“We’ve got plenty of room to intensify in town. We’ve got our corridors to Rolleston, our corridors to Rangiora, with our spatial plan. So that’s where we want to increase intensification, so people can jump out of their house, walk to the bus, come into town.”

Mauger has been widely tipped to put his hat into the ring again for mayor, but told Tame he would not confirm until the New Year.

He was asked what he’d learned since taking on the role and his answer was simple - the bureaucracy of process.

“Coming from a private practice, you have the board meeting with yourself on the way home in the car, and as long as you make more good decisions than bad ones, you’re looking sharp.

“But a thing called process, I struggled with it a lot to start with, but now I know how it is.

“It seems absolutely pedestrianly slow to people outside looking at it, but you have to do it that way.”