Strong showing for Len Brown

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, May 16th, 2010 - 9 comments
Categories: auckland supercity, john banks, len brown, local body elections, supercity - Tags: , , , ,

Good news for Auckland in Friday’s Herald with Len Brown opening up a strong lead over John Banks.

Len Brown’s campaign seems to have been quietly gathering momentum since he launched his insurgency last year. He has got himself around the region, striking a positive tone for Auckland, sticks to the issues that matter and comes across as a uniter and a man of the people.

The poll also shows considerable discomfort with the whole supercity concept with 52.7 per cent of respondents saying a single Auckland Council would be worse for them and 31.2 per cent saying it would be better. Today’s Herald has a follow up poll showing 58.8 per cent of respondents are opposed to the government’s plan for CCOs to run 75 per cent of council services, while just 32.4 per cent are in favour.

The editorial and Rudman suggest another reason why Brown is doing well he’s tapped into this discontent. His message is that if we are going to have this supercity, I’ll look after your community and I’ll make it work. Banks, on the other hand, represents all that is wrong with a downtown takeover.

The blog on Brown’s website shows considered thinking about many subjects facing the region. His Facebook friend account has maxed out at 5,000, so he’s started a campaign fan page (I believe this makes him the second most popular current politician on Facebook in NZ behind John Key). And people genuinely think he’s a good person who would be good for Auckland.

John Banks is, well, John Banks…. yesterday’s man, the guy who wants the Sydney Opera House on Auckland’s waterfront, and soon to be part of Auckland’s history. Oh well. He can go back to peddling Kiwisaver schemes.

P.S Earlier in the week I covered Banks’ dodgy polling that was reported as only sampling ‘ratepayers’ – which would’ve bumped up his numbers. Banks’ ‘campaign strategist’ Bhatnagar replied saying the allegation is false and links to the press release he put out. Strangely, he left off the note at the bottom of the release that says: ‘*Note: Poll sampled 1500 ratepayers across Auckland over five nights last week. It has a margin of error of 2.6%.’ Today’s result seems to confirm my concerns and my call that people should be wary of claims of support for the Mayor for Remuera.

9 comments on “Strong showing for Len Brown ”

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  1. PK 1
    16 May 2010 at 12:08 pm

    **yesterday’s man, the guy who wants the Sydney Opera House on Auckland’s waterfront,**

    I hadn’t heard of this, but who wouldn’t want the Sydney Opera House on their city’s waterfront? It is a magnificent building.

    • Draco T Bastard 1.1
      16 May 2010 at 2:00 pm

      It is, yes and it should be considering it’s cost in lives to build it (~120). But, no matter how magnificent it is we don’t want a copy of it here. What we’d want is something that represents NZ and not British colonialism.

      • Anita 1.1.1
        16 May 2010 at 2:43 pm

        Wow, I know this is totally off topic, but how the hell did they manage to kill 120 people on a single building site?

        Even further OT, one of my favourite things about Te Papa is the photographs at the marae, which include workers who died during the build. From memory only one died in a building site accident.

        To nod to the topic for a moment, I seriously doubt the survey was ratepayer only (telephone surveying only the actual ratepayers would be a nightmare). I suspect they added the word “ratepayer” to their press release because they don’t understand what ratepayers are and aren’t, and because they hope it might be a magick phrase like “hardworking New Zealanders”.

        • Draco T Bastard 1.1.1.1
          16 May 2010 at 4:13 pm

          Wow, I know this is totally off topic, but how the hell did they manage to kill 120 people on a single building site?

          Basically, atrocious safety rules and regulations. The developers didn’t have to put in the safety rails and everything else that taken for granted today so they didn’t.

      • The Voice of Reason 1.1.2
        16 May 2010 at 4:43 pm

        I don’t think anybody died during it’s construction Draco and it’s hardly classical British colonial architecture. The largest loss of life in an Aussie construction job in recent years were the 35 workers lost when a span of the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne fell onto office and smoko huts in 1970.

        • Draco T Bastard 1.1.2.1
          16 May 2010 at 7:44 pm

          Yeah, that’s interesting because the documentary I watched on it’s construction 30 odd years ago said there was and now everybody says there wasn’t.

  2. dave brown 2
    16 May 2010 at 1:01 pm

    Don’t count Banskie out yet. He has the whole of government to campaign for him including the ATA and its secret cabinet string pullers. Expect a bevy of dirty tricks like the ACT piss attack on Williams. According to Rod Oram in the SST today Hide is cutting regulatory fees for his developer mates which will mean they are to be picked up by the rates of the rest of us. Oram also picks some of the likely moves that Hide will make to win back support for the Supercity. Why is it mavericks like Oram who are exposing these frauds? Brown may be making a strong stand but there is no way this is an ‘insurgency’. He needs more fire and more organised backup. Other candidates standing of the ‘centre-left’ are pretty colorless and bland in the statements. There is little of the popular ‘discontent’ surfacing so far. Labour is not making Auckland the all-or-nothing stand to win as the dress rehearsal for the 2011 election. The new right has pulled a bankster/developer coup in Auckland, were is the working peoples’ rebellion? Smash the NACT!

  3. Nemesis 3
    16 May 2010 at 1:54 pm

    I don’t think people take notice of anonymous smears like the one you run against Banksie.

  4. the pinkpostman 4
    16 May 2010 at 4:15 pm

    The ghastly racist comments over the years ,and the ‘Hori ‘ incident with his mate John Carter from Banks in his talk-back show shows that he is notthe s the person to led the new Super City. There is no doubt the Nats will pull out all stops to win Auckland . They well know that a victory to the Left will help to return Labour in 1911. Lets us on the Left be aware of what the Nats and their mates will do to win. I bet Crosbt/Textor are already priming up the Nats Dirty Trick Brigade , lets watch our backs.

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