Our Kiwi Home: A Saturday morning coffee with Chrissy and Phil

Saturday, 26 April 2025

We found a table tucked away in the back of Christchurch mayor Phil Mauger and his wife Chrissy’s local coffee shop and although I’d never met them before I felt that in a previous life, we must surely have served on the school PTA together.

My first question was for Chrissy as I wanted to know about her parents. She said they had a little state house in Christchurch’s Riselaw St and lived there all their married life.

“My dad was a carpenter… He loved being a chippy and he did that all his life. My mum used to work in a shoe factory, and she couldn’t read or write. At the end of each workday, she had to fill out a card, but she would sneak the card into her pocket and bring it home for me to fill out. The next morning she’d go in early and put the time card back in the slot so that nobody would know.”

I asked Chrissy if her mum was embarrassed she couldn’t read or write, and she replied: “Very. At one stage her cousin was going to teach her, but she’d left it too late. I used to think to myself, ‘how do you go through life without reading a newspaper or a magazine? How do you mask it?’ At one stage she was a waitress so obviously she had an excellent memory as she couldn’t write anything down.

“She was taught by Catholic nuns in Rangiora, and they used to hit her on the knuckles if she didn’t get things right and when she got home her father would tell her off because she wasn’t doing what she was supposed to be doing. You can’t learn in fear, and she was always scared to be at school, and then be scared to come home as she knew she couldn’t keep up.”

Chrissy’s dad used to have real “old bombs” of cars, so one day - using an old vacuum cleaner with a paint pot attached on the end - Chrissy decided to spray paint his car metallic blue. “It didn’t worry him,” she said.

At that point Phil interrupted and said to Chrissy: “What about the time you and your mate wanted a convertible, so you cut the top off a Triumph Herald, even though the roof is what tends to hold the car together.”

Chrissy laughed and added: “We used to go on outings in it, and I’m not going to make up any story that the car was OK, because it wasn’t.”

Chrissy said her parents pottered along, had their group of friends, and didn’t really strive for anything – their life was simple.

“It’s difficult to measure happiness, but I think sometimes when you don’t have a lot, you can perhaps be more content.”

By this stage Phil had done a sterling job demolishing his breakfast, so I asked him about his early life. “I was always interested in cars,” he replied. “My grandfather had a building company, so two of my brothers went into building. Dad had a garage that had a panel beating shop, a lubritorium and a paint shop so the sky was the limit. I used to spend all my time there.”

At school Phil was always “daydreaming out the door”, and couldn’t wait to get home. He’d go straight to the garage and start playing with a car or welding something.

“I remember when I was really little, I stood on the fence and watched the guys from my grandfather’s company welding the reinforcing mesh. I’ll never forget it because I was so close to the action I got welder’s flash, and I remember my mum putting olive oil into my stinging eyes.”

Phil has two brothers and a sister, and when they were very young they were “absolute tearaways”.

“Mum even had Dad put barbed wire on top of the gate to stop us getting out. We probably coined the phrase ‘your poor mother’. But she was always there when we got back from school to keep an eye on us.  We were very lucky to have the parents we did.”

I asked Phil if he lasted the distance at school, and he replied: “Yes, I completed 6th form, but I always gravitated back to the garage.

“Dad had Mauger’s Garage, that was built for him when he was 21 by his father, because he was also into cars in a big way. Dad then built another garage down on Beach Rd, which was called Spaxton Motors, because his family all came from Spaxton St in Methven.”

Phil said his dad built that garage in the hope that one of his children would take it over.

“We never did, because in about 1970 he started buying motor scrapers and earth moving machines, so when I left school in 1974, I went straight into the family business… We started up a company called Mauger’s Contracting, and Dad told me we had to borrow the money to pay the first week wages.”

Then the Commonwealth Games came along in 1974, and Phil’s dad did a whole lot of work for next to nothing to get it to happen. There was a big controversy at the time about the Games going to QEII, Phil said.

When he got home from school, he always wanted to crawl under the fence and wander around the building site to see what they’d done that day. “They were really good times,” he recalled.

I suggested it must have given Phil a real love of Christchurch and he said “definitely - especially Brighton, because I could jump in my little beach buggy and go down the … road and go all over the place”.

“Our house was my granddad’s house, and it was on Travis Rd, right opposite QEII, and even now I can close my eyes and walk through that house and remember exactly where everything was. When we were little, we used to play under the floor because it was sandy and great fun.”

A turning point in Phil’s life was when he was given the opportunity to buy 15% of the company, which he did. He gradually bought more until he ended up owning the lot.

“Dad was more than happy to sell it to me because my brothers weren’t that keen on that sort of thing.”

A lifelong passion for Phil has been racing cars and 10 years ago, he went motor racing at Bathurst in Australia with three others.

“We’d got 3km from the gate at Mt Panorama raceway. At the traffic lights, at a place called Kelso, we were the fifth car back, and a truck rear ended us at 45kph. They cut me out of the back of the car, and I had 21 broken bones and a punctured lung. It was terrifying but thank goodness Chrissy was there, although fortunately she wasn’t travelling in the same car.”

Phil was flown that night to Westmead Hospital in Sydney. When he came round - still under the influence of the drugs doctors had given him - Chrissy took him out in a wheelchair, and he proposed.

“He always like to mention he was under medication,” Chrissy laughed.

Phil chuckled and continued: “It took me a year to get right, but fortunately I had some great guys at work.”

By that stage, Phil was 58 and no longer wanted to work in contracting for the rest of his life, out in all weather, so he “backed off”.

“One day when I’d gone over to Mum and Dad’s and was having a grumble about the council, my dad said, ‘why don’t you stop moaning about them, and start doing something about it?’.” He decided he would.

Some people thought he should stand in Halswell, because the incumbent had won by only 200 votes, but Phil thought if he was going to stand he would do it in his own backyard.

“I actually got a map and highlighted all the streets that I’d worked on over the years - there were so many in Brighton, and Burwood. My mate, James Daniels, was standing in Brighton, so I decided to stand in Burwood.”

The incumbent in Burwood, Glenn Livingstone, had a big majority from the previous election, but Phil turned that around.

“Door knocking is the secret to success - I think I knocked on 6000 doors, and I had Boyd, a young guy, with me, who would say, ‘Come on, let’s go out and do this’. We just walked up and down every street, and sometimes you’d knock on a person’s door, and they’d say, ‘this is the first time in my life I’ve ever seen someone from council’.”

Doing the right thing by people created a lot of good will, Phil said.

“My grandfather used to do lots of things to help, like he built a community hall in Hampshire St. Our whole family was used to helping a lot, and I remember my brothers and I went down to a church one day with a wee truck and took shingle in and soil out, it was all good fun.”

When Phil heard he’d won by a substantial margin he phoned Erin Jamieson, his campaign manager from Convergence Communications. He recalled her saying “you’re bloody joking”.

“So yes, it was really good.”

I asked Phil if it was hard to discover how cumbersome the councils processes were compared to his previous life, when he saw a job that needed to be done and could just get on with it.

“Yes, never a truer word spoken,” he replied. “When I used to go home in the car from contracting, I’d have a board meeting with myself in the mirror, and as long as I made more good decisions than bad ones I was on a winner.

“There’s a thing called process at the council, and it’s taken me a long time to come to terms with it, but I understand it now. You learn to use the process to the best of your ability, and you do get things done.”

After a while, Phil thought he’d like to have a bit more control over what happened, and his dad suggested he have a crack at running for mayor. He died before Phil did become mayor, “but I went to his grave to tell him I’d done it”.

I said it must be a great regret that he didn’t know, and Phil nodded and said, “Yes, but I would’ve also got all his advice too. Mind you the lady over on the next table probably has advice for me too.”

Without wanting to spoil our very pleasant Saturday morning coffee I did have to ask Phil about the upcoming election. “I’ve got extremely good people around me,” he replied.

I then asked Chrissy if she was secretly hoping Phil wouldn’t stand for a second term, and she replied without hesitation: “Yes, but on the other side of the coin I’m happy for Phil even though it really is a 24/7 job. There are sacrifices you have to make, but that’s where I come in, to make sure that we still keep up with family and friends as you can’t just say, we’ll see you in three years’ time.”

At that point I said I really liked the email I received the day before from Joss, Phil’s media adviser, when I suggested it would be nice if Chrissy could join us for coffee.

Hi Mark,

The Mayor will talk to Chrissy tonight to see if she’s available to come along tomorrow morning.

Cheers,

Joss

I thought that was so beautifully normal and how all couples should operate.

“I often feel sorry for Chrissy when I come home, and she’s made my tea,” Phil said, “I scoff my food down and then say, ‘I’m stuffed, I’m going to bed’. What sort of relationship is that?

“Fortunately, we’ve got a really good group of friends, and we go out probably once a week for what we call a ‘cheap and cheery night,’ which over the years, has become ‘expensive and sad’, but it doesn’t matter, because we’re all together as a group. We’re so lucky that we’ve got so many good, close friends.”

Phil said he was often asked why he does it.

“I definitely don’t do it for money. I do it for the challenge - it’s very rewarding when you get an idea and then steer things through to a conclusion.”

I told Phil he must be grateful he was not mayor during the earthquakes, and he replied: “Yes and no. I sent Bob Parker a note some time ago and said ‘I take my hat off to you. I’m looking out of the office, looking down at the Art Gallery, where you stood giving your news conferences. You were the voice of reason and calmness. Christchurch was a disaster zone, but you gave people confidence and hope.’

“That’s the job of the mayor and I think Bob did it very well. So sad that he is now very sick.”

At that point I said we had a really nice story, but Phil said, “One thing we haven’t mentioned is between Chrissy and I, with our blended family, we’ve got five kids between the ages of 38 and 41 and nine grandkids under 13. We’re so, so lucky, because they all live in Christchurch. We all went away together at Christmas time, and it was amazing. The two youngest are 2 and a bit and I can tell them all sorts of rubbish, and they listen to me - I wish I had that sort of control over council.”

Phil’s final words of wisdom were: “If you don’t enjoy your job, you shouldn’t do it, and I still enjoy it. I really like the people I work with, but I always enjoy going home. When I’ve had a bad day and I’m driving home and I see someone in a wheelchair or someone on crutches, I think that could have been me, so life could be so much worse.”

It was only right that Chrissy should have the final word, and she said: “Sometimes, I think it would be nice to catch up with Phil, but I’m so lucky, because I would never have got the chance to see how our city works, or meet all the people like the volunteers. It’s just amazing, and it’s awe inspiring.”

After our very jovial catchup Chrissy and Phil headed off to a grandchild’s birthday party and I left for my next interview at Birdlings Flat with a warm glow of Kiwi friendship.