On the bald face of it the Minto for Mayor Campaign for the Christchurch Mayoralty in the October 2016 local body election was a failure. I received 13,000 odd votes to incumbent Lianne Dalziel’s 75,000 – a huge winning margin for the corporate candidate. But was it a defeat for KOA (Keep Our Assets Canterbury) for whom I was standing as Mayoral candidate? No – quite the opposite in fact. The result masks a very successful campaign in terms of the goals we set ourselves and our achievements along the way.

Classic Neo-Liberal Fashion

By the time I and my partner Bronwen Summers arrived in Christchurch in late 2014 KOA had been active in one form or other for several years (including in the 2013 local body elections. Ed). In classic neo-liberal fashion the incoming 2013 Mayor Lianne Dalziel had called for a financial report on the health of the city finances. When the first report said things were OK and the Christchurch City Council could muddle its way through another report was sought – this time from well-known privatisers, Cameron Partners.

Back in 1990 Rob Cameron, now of Cameron Partners, was advising the Labour government on the privatisation of Telecom and a year later advising the purchasers of Telecom. The result was that the buyers – US companies Bell Atlantic and Ameritech – got a $4.25 billion bargain. This transnational duo netted $12 billion in profits over the next ten years and finally sold it for a further $12 billion.

True to form Cameron Partners talked up future financial problems and this morphed into a projected (fanciful as it turned out) $1.2 billion budget shortfall which – surprise, surprise – led to the inevitable calls to privatise City Council assets. The City Council subsequently voted to sell up to $750 million in assets over three years to help meet this shortfall.

“Whatever It Takes”

In reality the shortfall was caused by the Government backtracking on previous promises to pay “whatever it takes” (John Key’s words) to get the city rebuilt after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and heavy pressure from Earthquake Minister Gerry Brownlee for the Council to pay vast sums of capital into the Government’s priorities for the city – corporate priorities – rather than residents’ priorities. With this background KOA set out to make asset sales a key issue for the 2016 local body elections. Initially we sounded out a number of people to stand in various wards for the Council on a “no asset sales” ticket while not standing candidates against Councillors already on board.

This approach had mixed results and after more discussion it was agreed that I would run for Mayor to ensure a higher profile for the issue. Having name recognition is important in local body politics if a candidate is not standing on an established ticket. Here in Christchurch Labour stands as “The People’s Choice” while National and Act candidates stand as so-called “independents”. We didn’t want to be seen as a single-issue campaign so we set about drafting and refining six policies which would address the key local body issues for Christchurch. (See box with policy summaries)

Carpetbagger From Auckland?

The biggest problem we thought, in notoriously parochial Canterbury, would be the view I was a carpetbagger from Auckland and why would anyone vote for a JAFA. We assumed this would be the first and highest hurdle. But it wasn’t. Astonishingly it was never raised once in any public meeting, with media or letters to the editor. On the surface at least, it was a non-issue. If anything I was seen to bring a fresh pair of eyes to Christchurch for people who’d been bogged down in individual fights with tight-fisted insurance companies.

However to my surprise the 1981 Springbok Tour figured largely in the minds of many older Cantabrians and was a reference point, both positive and negative, that kept coming up during the campaign. 35 years on it seems many in Canterbury had still not thought through the issues around the tour. The Editor of the local giveaway newspaper, the Star, for example – which endorsed Dalziel – editorialised early on to the effect that no rugby lovers in Canterbury would ever vote for Minto.

Unfortunate For Democracy

We decided to make the announcement during the mid-year school break which would give me time to respond to media and get off to the best start we could (John works full time as a high school teacher. Ed.). It was fortunate that in the weeks and months leading up to our announcement many in Christchurch lamented, including the Press newspaper, that it was bad for democracy that Christchurch had no serious candidates to challenge the incumbent Mayor.

As it turned out the only candidate besides myself and Dalziel was a local called Tubby Hansen whom I never met through the entire campaign. He was described as a serial candidate who paid his $200 to stand in every Mayoral race but did nothing else. He was almost impossible for the media to get hold of as he believes phone use is harmful to human health. TVNZ tracked him down to his home but couldn’t interview him because he called out that he was in the bath and through the door declined the opportunity of an interview.

“Judge Us On Our Policies”

Murray Horton, as Convenor of KOA, duly issued a media release, embargoed to the following morning, to say KOA would be announcing at a 10 a.m. media conference the following day that I would be standing as the KOA candidate for the Christchurch Mayoralty. There was a flurry of media activity over the next couple of hours with the result that almost all media outlets ignored the embargo with each blaming the others for the breach.

The Press devoted half the front page to my candidacy with a headline “Minto: Judge Us On Our Policies” and outlined the main thrust of our campaign. The big picture accompanying the article was a “campaigning Minto” complete with microphone, craggy face and wearing an “Aotearoa is not for sale” T-shirt. The campaign was widely reported through the national media as well although this aspect wasn’t apparent to me till someone messaged me on Facebook to say he’d wanted to vote for me but my name wasn’t on the ballot paper! I was dumbfounded till he told me he lived in Kingsland in Auckland!

From the outset we characterised Dalziel as the “corporate candidate” because she was endorsed by the local Chamber of Commerce, the big property developers and the Government. A few months earlier Gerry Brownlee was effusive in his praise of the Council. We accurately characterised this as him having the Council just where he wanted them – under his thumb.

We held a formal campaign launch a month before the election and organised six public meetings across the city in areas where it was unlikely any candidate meetings would be held. These meetings were advertised solely through letter box drops (1,500 leaflets for each one) and the turnouts were small – from two to around 16 people but valuable nonetheless in that we were seen to take the trouble to bring political debate to the suburbs.

Three Major Debates

There were three “major debates” with Dalziel – on CTV, at the Cardboard Cathedral (organised by the Press) and the final one organised by Generation Zero. There were several other “meet the candidates” gatherings organised by church and community groups which had varying attendances. The debates went well from our perspective (although I thought I did poorly in the CTV debate) and our policies got a good hearing from the audiences and warm appreciation from many.

The Cost-Share Agreement figured largely early in the campaign. The previous (2010-13) Council, headed by Mayor Bob Parker, had negotiated an agreement with the Government in a nasty deal done behind closed doors and directed by National Minister Gerry Brownlee.

Under the Agreement the Council signed up to a Government priority list of $892 million in capital spending and this was one of Dalziel’s major arguments for the sale of city assets – to pay for the Government priorities. She also pushed through rate increases of over 7% for each year over the next three years (this was later reduced to 5% per year in a “benevolent” Council move leading up to the election).

Three years on, as the election campaign got underway, the Agreement was up for discussion because the situation with many projects had changed in terms of cost and timelines. We argued strongly that the city must renegotiate the Cost-Share Agreement to put resident’s priorities first ahead of the Government’s glamour projects but Dalziel said it was only to be refreshed and gave a pile of half-hearted excuses as to why it couldn’t be renegotiated.

“Read My Lips…..”

However, rattled by our insistence that negotiating the Cost-Share Agreement behind closed doors was anti-democratic, Dalziel blurted out at one of the debates: “Read my lips – the Cost-Share Agreement will be discussed in public by the Council”. She should have added “after it’s signed” because it seems that is her intention.

At the beginning of the campaign I had thought Dalziel was in a difficult position given that the Council had been under huge pressure by the Government in determining the priorities for the earthquake rebuild. The Government’s priorities were the so-called “anchor projects” in the inner city whilst residents’ priorities were footpaths, roads, basic services, local sports and recreation centres etc.

By the end of the campaign it was clear to me that Dalziel was not under pressure from the Government at all. She was in fact very happy to be implementing a National Party corporate agenda for Christchurch – just as newly elected Mayor Phil Goff is happy to be doing the same in Auckland. In fact for Dalziel this is her retirement job – she long ago gave up the notion of fighting for anything other than an easy ride. In this she has trod a well-worn path of Labour politicians since she was elected to parliament in 1990 to bring the voices of workers to the legislative chamber. The transition to corporate representative happened quicker for Dalziel than many other Labour MPs.

In one interview before the election Dalziel all but admitted this view with the comment she was in a “post-political space”. People like Dalziel and Goff, from the Rightwing of a supposed Left of Centre party, are very useful to free-market capitalism because they help reinforce the message that there is no alternative to the rule of the 1% in either local or national politics.

Oh Please, Andrew Little – Spare Us

In the same vein it was absurd for Labour Leader Andrew Little to claim that in the three major Mayoral races – Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch – those elected were all Labour-aligned and had campaigned on traditional Labour policies of jobs, homes and incomes. Utter rubbish. Dalziel – and Goff from what I could see – had no policies on any of these three critical issues and in Dalziel’s case she refused to support the Living Wage Campaign, didn’t know if the Council had a gender-equity employment policy, refused to commit to building any more Council housing and had no jobs policy whatever. In fact Dalziel attacked these very policies that KOA was putting forward.

Dalziel’s approach was to firstly refuse to comment on our policies on the basis it wasn’t her role to comment on the policies of opponents. She wanted to ignore the KOA campaign. However, without any policies of her own – she was only offering business as usual – she was inevitably drawn into debating our policies.

The Art Of Neo-Liberal Politicians

The art of being an elected politician under neo-liberalism is to sound good while promising nothing. Dalziel has had lots of practice. For example, she attacked the Living Wage Campaign on the basis she wanted everyone in Christchurch to have the living wage. It was the same with free public transport (she said I should have stood for Environment Canterbury which runs the bus network) and swimmable rivers.

She blamed everyone for pollution in the rivers and that it was dreadful and that people needed to change their attitude to rivers, but no leadership, no vision, no policies – just the neo-liberal mantra that there’s nothing we can do about it. She showed her true colours when hinting we should have user pays for water in Christchurch because some people were wasting water – that’s a battle yet to come in Christchurch where water is provided as part of rates. This was music to the ears of her neo-liberal backers.

Down On The Ground

Down on the ground the campaign went really well. There was a great, positive spirit amongst the campaign team and support to help out with the various campaign tasks. The biggest expense, and most important part of getting the campaign message out, was through leafleting. We produced an excellent leaflet – the best I’ve ever seen in any election campaign – and eventually printed 65,000 which were letterboxed throughout priority areas of the city.

As it turned out we could have letterboxed a lot more because the energy and drive of our supporters – some did 5,000 on their own – exceeded our funds to print more. Letterboxing is one way of measuring the political temperature. Back in 1981 we received dozens of leaflets returned with the most vile of racist and obscene comments whenever we mass letterboxed. In this campaign we received just one leaflet returned in the mail – no stamp – with the profound political statement scrawled across it “What bit of ‘no junk mail’ do you not understand – WANKER”. We’d have to count this reaction as progress.

On another occasion I was campaigning on a street corner when a car drew up, the passenger window came down and a stream of racist invective was directed against me because of the 1981 tour protests. I used my partner Bronwen’s approach to disarm his argument. “So you think Nelson Mandela should still be in jail?” I asked. The volume and intensity of the invective rose to a whole new level and he was in danger of bursting a blood vessel.

“Mandela was a terrorist – he should never have been let out. Whites are being exterminated in South Africa now” etc. I haven’t come across such an attitude in Auckland for at least 20 years but in Christchurch…The same car turned up at another protest and the invective was renewed. This time I took the approach of saying: “Look – most things can be sorted out over a cup of tea. Here’s my address on the bottom of the placard – come over”. He was astonished, even smiled and said he would. I haven’t seen him yet…

Earlier Campaign Lessons

We were absolutely delighted with the huge positive response to our fundraising appeals. We had some $23,000 in campaign donations which enabled us to do some things we’d never have had the chance to do otherwise. One of the lessons I learnt from an earlier campaign was that media coverage in the local newspaper and non-commercial radio does not reach our target audience. People on low incomes do not read the Press newspaper or listen to Radio New Zealand.

Instead they get their news mainly from commercial radio and TV. With this in mind and extra funding available we were able, in the last two weeks of the campaign, to produce some advertisements for commercial radio and anecdotal feedback on this was positive. All in all an enjoyable but exhausting campaign – done on top of working full time – with lots of successes.

The Six Policies KOA Took Into The Election Through The Minto For Mayor Campaign

Keep our assets – A John Minto-led Council would abandon all plans to sell Council assets and look for opportunities to bring strategic assets back under community ownership and control. This will save money and help reduce future rate increases.

An extra hour at home with your family every day – A John Minto-led Council will end the stress and waste of time in traffic congestion. Comfortable, modern, low-emission trains and buses, with free wifi, would provide free and frequent travel to all parts of the Christchurch urban area. This policy will save money because it’s much cheaper than building more roads.

A decent affordable home for every family – A John Minto-led Council will build a minimum of 1,000 affordable Council rental (or rent to own) homes in the first term as Mayor. Every family needs a decent affordable home and the market is only building for middle and high income earners. This will be paid for by borrowing which will be paid back by Council tenants through rents.

The living wage for Christchurch workers – A John Minto-led Council will pay a minimum of the living wage ($19.80 per hour) to council employees and those employed under contract to do Council work. At the same time we will set the maximum pay at the Council at $160,000 - four times the living wage. This policy will save money because currently 317 staff are paid over $100,000 and 11 are paid over $200,000. The Council will lead the way for other employers to follow.

A people’s city rather than a corporate city – A John Minto-led Council will end the corporate stranglehold on the city earthquake rebuild with steep increases in rates on undeveloped land in the CBD (central business district). We will also create a “local zone” in the CBD to showcase products made here in Canterbury.

Swimmable rivers – A John Minto-led Council will insist that all rivers in Canterbury be swimmable – nothing less is acceptable for our children and grandchildren.