Given the Wayne Brown silent treatment, Leoni finds her voice

Newsroom

a day ago

Kerrin Leoni might not get to debate the incumbent Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown this campaign, but she's not going to stay silent on what she sees as his deficiencies as a leader.
Leoni, the 45-year-old first-term councillor who is challenging Brown after others around the council table declined, has some serious questions over whether he is the best Auckland can come up with.
She's already proactively outed Brown as declining to attend the first candidates' debate, and his intimation that he might not participate in any.
'I mean, it's the most important job in the city and that's the least you can do as a candidate is show up, you know. I think it's shocking. As a sitting mayor, he should be attending all debates.'
As a lesser-known challenger, she would say that. But Brown's indications that he might seek to deny Leoni and the other seven candidates the oxygen of his presence at campaign events would be rare for Auckland politics. His Super City predecessors Phil Goff and Len Brown engaged in debates after their first terms in office.
Leoni sees the Brown tactic as representing a wider withdrawal by the mayor from the types of duties and expectations on city leaders.
She alleges he removes himself regularly to his Northland home base, leaving Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson to pick up the community appearances so assiduously attended by Goff and Len Brown.
'When I've been out in places from Pukekohe to Warkworth, in so many areas, they've said they just don't see him.
'We should be providing leadership that's actually seen. The role of the mayor is not just to be making decisions up in the ivory tower.'
Leoni, who represents the Whau ward based around Avondale and the inner west, says she thinks Brown is also focused on what's wrong with the city, rather than a vision for what it could become.
'I'm focused on the long-term plan of this, because I think it's easy to come in and say, 'these are all the things that are bad about what's happening with Auckland and the council.
'We need to have someone that's actually got a balance. I'm saying, 'Sort what's wrong, but what should we be doing to plan for the future of our city'.'
Her campaign's initial slogan is Kerrin Leoni – 'The new energy Auckland needs'.
Auckland mayoral candidate Kerrin Leoni
Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāi Takoto, Ngāti Kuri
Councillor, Whau ward 2022-25
Local Board member, Waitematā 2019-22
Age: 45
Mother to twins Atarangi and Kahu, aged 8
Brought up: Mt Roskill and Waiheke Island
School: Waiheke High School
University: AUT (MA in social services and Māori development), King's College, London (MA in economics and international politics)
Worked as: social worker, property investor, own consultancy and charity organiser (UK)
She also marks down Brown for his verbal treatment of councillors around the Governing Body table, his targeting of individual councillors by challenging them under his Fix Auckland banner and his suitability at age 79 to take a city like Auckland forward.
Leoni questions just what Brown wants to achieve in a second term, into his 80s. 'I mean, if we were going into another term where there were clear predictions about what his policies were going to be for the next term … but I haven't seen any of his policies except for he wants to continue with reining in Auckland Transport, which, you know, I already agree with that.'
In late 2024 she indicated to the mayor she might challenge him, she says, and 'he was more than happy for me to stand, not that I needed his permission. He just said 'There's a few more things that I feel I need to do'. I said 'Well, what are they that you'd need another whole term for?' But he didn't identify anything else and he hasn't.'
Hat in the ring
Leoni (Ngāti Paoa, Ngāi Takoto and Ngāti Kuri) served a term on the Waitematā Local Board before narrowly claiming the Ward council seat in 2022, giving her six years as an elected member of the Auckland Council set-up.
She has not been a high-profile councillor regionally, is not one of the 20 who need to hear the sound of their own voices endlessly at every council meeting, and was something of a surprise when she emerged as the leading candidate for the 'left' in this election.
She tells Newsroom she asked other councillors if they would stand against Brown and when none stepped up, she stepped forward.
'My focus was to make sure Aucklanders had a good candidate who they could vote for.
'I did ask other councillors whether they were interested in standing – and ones that have more experience than me – and they were not interested. But obviously, you know, I don't feel you have to be in local government for 20 years or 50 years to do a good job. I think it's really important, actually, that I'm coming in with fresh eyes.'
She's not flying the Labour Party banner that got her elected by 260 votes three years ago in Whau, the ward she's standing down from by standing for the mayor's chair. 'You know, as mayor, you've got to be seen as impartial to all Aucklanders. I'm definitely standing as an independent.
'So I'm just going to do the best that we can and I don't want to be seen as just the Labour candidate, or just any candidate. I want to be seen as the candidate for all of Auckland.'
She has not sought formal endorsements from a political party, unions or left-wing luminaries, but cites former Labour PM Helen Clark and the late Labour figure and mayor Cath Tizard as political inspirations. She joined Labour when she returned from the UK because 'I've always wanted to look at ways that we could help people that haven't had great opportunities.'
Policy platform
When the Deputy Mayor, Desley Simpson, announced she would not challenge Brown, but instead act as his Fix Auckland running mate, she revealed her team had failed to identify a political platform sufficiently different to what Brown currently occupies.
Leoni thinks the vision for a future Auckland is the missing link in what Brown has delivered – and something he cannot offer.
'I'll be campaigning on a 30-year plan for the city, not just short-term fixes.' She promises to announce a couple of policies a week through the key campaign weeks (postal voting opens on Tuesday September 9 ahead of the Saturday, October 11 election date).
She lived for many years in the UK and believes Auckland needs to embrace some big infrastructure projects such as a rail link all the way to the airport, beyond the current train to bus interchange at the Puhinui station in Manukau, and passenger rail to both Huapai in the west, and from south to west from Southdown to Avondale to bring communities together.
Leoni is not promising a showstopper policy platform like previous mayoral candidate John Tamihere, with a second tier and rail added to the existing Auckland Harbour Bridge.
'I think I'm going to be the more realistic candidate.'
She favours a second bridge, side by side with the current structure, catering for mid-term needs ahead of any plan for a cross harbour tunnel. 'I know the tunnel is very expensive and I know central government does not have the money to actually pay for that. Even the cost to do the side by side raises a question mark. But we know it's more effective to get that done first if we can.'
Leoni was deputy chair of the Waitematā local board in her first stint in local government. Photo: Auckland Council
Leoni says as a councillor she signed up for the council's Long-term Plan and its projected average rates increase for next year of 7.9 percent (after this year's average 5.8 percent), and to keep future rises under double digits. 'Definitely be keeping them under 10 percent.
'If there are going to be any changes in that budget probably the rates won't be affected, but we know we have to keep the rates down, the feedback we're getting is that is definitely one of the top priorities as people are just struggling.'
She believes the current $50 cap on public transport fares weekly might have been set too high, and there could be scope to lower it, possibly as far as $30 to encourage people to keep using buses and trains.
On debt, (which despite Brown condemning the council's indebtedness before his election of around $11 billion is set to rise towards $14b) Leoni says only that she's 'not a supporter of debt going up when it doesn't need to, and we need to continue to keep the debt as low as possible. We've got to be accountable for every dollar we spend.'
She promises to implement a policy that if the council encounters an 'overspend that's going to happen, then it's going to come out of the budget somewhere else. I've got a very strong view that we've got to stop overspending as a council. We've got to be clear that's not going to happen any more.'
To a suggestion she's saying the same thing as her opponent, Leoni says 'I think that there would be an assumption given that I have got a left-leaning history that I wouldn't continue that. But I'm making it clear that I would.'
One personal focus for her would be council contracting costs, particularly functions out-sourced to international conglomerates.
'My understanding is that a significant amount of the tier 1 contractors are actually Australian-owned businesses. That profit is going overseas and we should be bringing that profit back into Auckland, into our circular economy.'
She thinks procurement contracts at the local board should be examined for potential cost savings. 'If that means we have to scale down some of the criteria and review the whole system, we should. We need to localise some of that contracting there to save money.'
The counter argument would be that large contractors across the region bring economies of scale, but Leoni, who studied economics and international politics for her second master's degree, at King's College, London, says it hasn't been so in reality. 'Why have we continued to have overspends?'
Leoni with her children Atarangi and Kahu at a Blues match at Eden Park this year. Photo: Supplied
Social media and women in politics
As a relatively new figure in city politics, a woman, of Māori and Italian/Irish descent, Leoni perhaps surprisingly hasn't yet been a serious target of social media trolling or abuse that afflicts so many in her position.
'I'm not getting it yet. I've been waiting for it, actually, but the reality is people are probably not going to put it onto my page anyway.
'But, I'm mentally prepared for it and I'm practising my responses and not to be too reactive, because you've got to expect it is likely to happen.
'I mean, to any male who would say, well 'You can't run a city', I'm like 'Well, we're already running the city. I'm a regional councillor, I'm already making decisions,' she says.
'The only difference between our job and the mayor is that he sets a budget, which we get to sign off anyway and he's got to get a majority of the vote for.
'And he's supposed to be the leader and a visionary for the city, which I don't think he does that well.'
She says she's been relatively un-targeted by the mayor in council meetings because she has been 'quite direct' with him since the start of the term. 'He probably hasn't singled me out as much as I've seen him single out others.
'But he's made inappropriate comments to me; like, I think one was that if I was going to vote for the sale of the airport shares, I'd never be an MP [Leoni stood for Labour in 2020 in the blue-riband National seat of Waikato]. And I thought, 'You don't have control over that'.'
From the moment she announced her candidacy, Leoni has heard and seen comments likening her to another single Māori woman mayor, Wellington's outgoing leader Tory Whanau, who faced intense personal criticism over her private and political conduct.
'I think it is quite sad that our country and our city might think like that,' the councillor says. 'But I guess that was my frustration when I came back from living in the UK, [in 2015] it felt like I'd come back to the 1950s in terms of our thinking and those things around racism and sexism and everything else – and the expectation that you have to be an old white male to be able to make decisions for the city. I mean, it's just appalling.'
She spoke to Whanau about the pressures directly. 'She admits, and I think she's said this in media elsewhere, that it would have been helpful for her to do a term first [as a councillor] before becoming mayor. We had that conversation and I said to her, well, I've done two terms in local government. It was helpful.'
Five years ago Leoni took on the un-winnable National Waikato seat for Labour at the general election, narrowing National's majority from 15,000 to 5000 as part of the Labour landslide.
Grander ambitions
Because of her candidacy for Parliament in 2020, Leoni also faces repeated quips about her stand for the mayoralty being driven by seeking profile towards a decent spot on the Labour Party's list for the 2026 general election.
She shrugs that off, focusing on Brown's job. 'I actually love local government and the experiences I've had have been very positive. Local government is where it's at for our communities.
'I mean, central government is always going to be there and I'm only 45 years old. Look at Wayne, he's 78 or 79. So I've got many years ahead of me in politics. You look at Winston Peters, and you know, Shane Jones. I'm not in any rush to get into central government.
'My concern is doing the best for Auckland and providing the best leadership.'
Nine weeks to go
Winning the Auckland mayoralty is a high-cost exercise, with Brown using a considerable sum from his own funds in 2022. Without union or party backing explicitly, how does Leoni see a path to increasing her name, face and vote recognition?
'The fundraising has been a bit of a challenge, and I think that's more of a cultural thing for me. In the past I've been able to fund some of it and done some fundraising.'
For the mayoralty, region-wide and trying to grab profile on motorway billboards and the like, 'we do need to take it up a level. But we've got the basics of the campaign, the billboards, the people who are happy to give out the leaflets and door knock, which I think is great.'
She is a confident figure, right back to her high school days winning an award from then-Auckland mayor Les Mills, through to buying her first home from age 21 and trading property ever since, studying in the UK and forming her own consultancy and charity. She's raising her eight-year-old twins while a councillor and acting as landlord for three properties.
But she is not sounding over-confident of being able to knock off a well-heeled incumbent mayor. She knows, like the late Efeso Collins at the last election, she'll need votes from beyond traditional left-leaning districts. The voting-heavy districts of north and east Auckland will need special attention.
Leoni says she learned during her bid for Parliament in the National stronghold of Waikato that: 'Make sure you don't assume that the people that you think aren't going to vote for you won't actually vote for you. You've got to put yourself in front of everyone.'
Asked what success would look like for her in nine weeks, when the polling is done, Leoni does not mention the word 'winning'.
'Success is making sure that we do get right across the city and that we have policies that are clear for Aucklanders.
'It's about having good policies that Aucklanders see as good for them, having good leadership for every single group.
'So yeah, looking back at it at the end and saying that regardless of whatever the outcome that we've had a good campaign and that we've done a great job and I think that's all we can expect, you know. Given that I don't have $50 million.'