On Thursday I posted on John Banks bashing South Auckland:
A political salvo aimed at wounding the leadership aspirations of Manukau mayor Len Brown is still causing outcry in South Auckland tonight. Last night on the Close Up debate, Banks told Brown he didn’t “want South Auckland replicated across the North Shore and across all of Auckland”.
Banks said Brown had “led a social disaster, his city has been a social disaster for Auckland”. Brown, Banks’ main rival for the role of Super City mayor said today Banks’ comments were out of line. … Banks is also being criticised by long-time residents of South Auckland. “I think his comments are very divisive, they are very old fashioned. How on earth can one man lead one city when he has a very entrenched view about South Auckland?,” said Colleen Brown, a Manukau City Councillor.
“I have lived here for 20 years, I love the place, I choose to live here, so do a lot of other people. As a mayor of a city you need to have a political awareness of what to say and what not to say and he he’s alienated a very huge number of people by these comments which is unwarranted in my view.”
This was not an off the cuff comment by Banks – bashing South Auckland is part of his “strategy”. It’s in his robo-phoning pitch:
Jessica received a charming, recorded cold-call from the John Banks campaign. “Apparently if I vote for Len Brown, he’ll hike my rates and send the money to South Auckland to pay for its crime and problems. Gee, I thought I moved to Remuera so I wouldn’t have to think about those less prosperous than me. How can they assume that just because I live in Remuera I’ll automatically have a ‘xenophobic’ view of South Auckland? This is why I did not vote for John Banks.”
Charming. In Thursday’s post I pointed out the similarity to National Party flameout Melissa Lee, who blew her own My Albert by election campaign out of the water by evoking similar stereotypes about South Auckland. And no surprise now to find the unfortunate Cameron Slater playing the same game.
Nice one “Banksie”. You can tell a politician by the ideological company they keep.
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