But here’s the rub. I asked Mike Lee, long time local body politician, and current Waitemata & Gulf Ward Councillor if he ever feels that heat, and he’s a much younger man than me.
Mike Lee knows that feeling of having his experience completely ignored. This is a very disappointing revelation, because Lee’s local body involvement stretches back over 25 years, and part of that time he was a very successful Chairman of the Auckland Regional Council. I have heard Mike several times talking about his efforts to pull together all members of that regional body and have them behave in a bipartisan way. He was mostly successful.
I asked Lee if he made a mistake deciding to stand again in 2016, when he was personally inclined to retire. I was one who urged him to stand again. He has no regrets about standing again. “Many people asked me to stand,” he told me, “and I had unfinished business to attend to. I felt I should use my experience for another term - I had more to offer.”
Lee has known Phil Goff a long time. He briefed him several times when Goff was Labour leader, then as Labour party spokesperson for Auckland when Mike was Chairman of the Auckland Regional Council. He briefed Jacinda too.
Auckland Transport has copped a lot of the criticism of the Super City, and I personally think that criticism is well justified. They have behaved like a secret society, answerable to no one. So, when Mayor Goff removed Mike Lee and Chris Fletcher from the board of Auckland Transport they were both irate. Those two councillors were the only conduit to ratepayers Auckland had, and their removal just encouraged AT to thumb its collective nose to Auckland Council and ratepayers. In my opinion there has been outright corruption at AT, and Mike Lee says that was a symptom of a bad corporate culture - “some of which to be fair was inherited, but the organisation needs to be more accountable to the people who pay for it.”
I think it’s fair to say that Mike Lee’s relationship with Phil Goff took an irreparable turn for the worse at that point.
I asked Councillor Lee why it seemed so hard to run Auckland Council well. “Short answer,” he replied, “the organisation is simply just too big. It is way past critical mass to be efficient.” He said “The council and its CCOs are becoming dysfunctional. There are a myriad empires within, and declining accountability,” Lee alleges. Lee: “We are a property-owning democracy, but the structure of the Super City makes it much less accountable to its citizens, over major decisions in transport and public assets.”
Mike Lee also worries about wasted ratepayer money, including outsourcing traditional council responsibilities such as parks and reserves to big overseas corporations. He also says that the system allows massive amounts of ratepayers’ money to be funnelled into the private sector. He reminded us that we had no chance to vote on this Super City proposal, whereas at least Wellingtonians and Northlanders have been able to vote and reject a similar plan. “It started with the non-democratic decision to impose a Super City without asking the people of Auckland and it looks like it will get worse before it gets better,” maintains Lee.
Mike Lee was born in Wellington, but came to Auckland at 21 with his mother, an Auckland girl, who always reckoned Auckland was a better place to live. And so it was. Lee says he still loves "this great city," but he worries about its future.
When I asked him if it was a thankless task being a politician, Mike laughs, “Well we were never promised a rose garden. I’m just proud to have the support of the people of Waitemata and Gulf.” It is
a thankless task, and Councillor Mike Lee has seen and heard it all for over 25 years, and although disappointed in many ways with how Auckland City has turned out, he remains optimistic about our future. That is why he is still there, grinding away on issues of concern.
“I’m obviously not in Mr Goff’s in-crowd. My job is to speak out on behalf of individual citizens - many of them at their wits end with frustration about how they are treated by an increasingly unacceptable bureaucracy.”
He’s a man of principle, with integrity as his second name. Auckland is better off from having a man of Mike Lee’s stature as our man on council. We at Ponsonby News thank you Mike, for your many years of toil for Auckland, and assure you that you have far more supporters than detractors in Waitemata. How else could a committed left winger survive in what has become a Tory stronghold?
Not even Jacinda Ardern could wrest Auckland Central away from Nikki Kaye, so Mike Lee must take the plaudits for his longevity and his continued success in central Auckland. (JOHN ELLIOTT)