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Graham Quirk: former Lord Mayor of Brisbane on what Auckland needs to improve · Best of Business

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  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News talksed be follow
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  Speaker 2: Onto something else. It's been fifteen years since Auckland became
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  Speaker 2: a super city, and prominent Aucklanders have been debating how
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  Speaker 2: to shape the city over the next fifteen years. Today
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  Speaker 2: at a conference various views, support for a bed tax
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  Speaker 2: and so on. Graham Quirk is the former Lord Mayor
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  Speaker 2: of Brisbane who was there. He spoke to the conference
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  Speaker 2: today about his experience and bringing the twenty thirty two
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  Speaker 2: Olympics to Brisbane.
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  Speaker 3: Hi Graham, Hello Heather, how are you very well? Thank you?
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  Speaker 2: So what did you tell the conference? What was your message?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I mean fifteen years as a significant milestone for
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  Speaker 3: Auckland Brisbane. This year will celebrate one hundred years since
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  Speaker 3: HIPWI was amalgamated from twenty councils into a single local authority.
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  Speaker 3: And so today's message was really about looking to identify
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  Speaker 3: those things that Auckland needs. Public surveys are great, we
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  Speaker 3: need to find out what paeople want, but we also
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  Speaker 3: need to look, I think beyond that, and that is
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  Speaker 3: what does the city actually need to progress its future?
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  Speaker 3: And so Some of those answers, of course, will be
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  Speaker 3: within the public surveys, but there will be other things.
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  Speaker 3: And I was outlining some of the things that I
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  Speaker 3: undertook as Lord Mayor which weren't obvious to the general public,
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  Speaker 3: but which became very successful parts of our city and
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  Speaker 3: which has helped to shape us and position us to
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  Speaker 3: be ready for a twenty thirty two Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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  Speaker 2: Like what did you do well?
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  Speaker 3: One of the things that we discovered was we haven't
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  Speaker 3: had a new four or five star hotel built in
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  Speaker 3: the city ten years just after I became mayor, and
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  Speaker 3: so in order to rectify that, I needed to put
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  Speaker 3: out an incentive. Now, I decided to remove all infrastructure
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  Speaker 3: and develop a contribution charges for anyone that built a
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  Speaker 3: new four or five star hotel in the city. Now,
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  Speaker 3: normally if you get out and asked ratepayers could you
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  Speaker 3: do that, they'd say, by hell you can. But I
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  Speaker 3: did it and the result was astonishing. We had twenty
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  Speaker 3: five new hotels built in the next five year period.
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  Speaker 3: You know, everything from international investors from the UK, Singapore,
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  Speaker 3: Taiwan and many from around Australia came and invested and
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  Speaker 3: we as a result, had this brand new set of
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  Speaker 3: hotels in the city, and not only in the central
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  Speaker 3: part of the city, but also in some of the
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  Speaker 3: suburban areas. Four and a half star hotels were built
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  Speaker 3: there and so I've proven to be successful. So what
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  Speaker 3: it was about was multiplying the accommodation, giving the modern
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  Speaker 3: tourism opportunity and offering, and it proved to be very successful.
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  Speaker 2: Do you have a view on what Auckland needs, what
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  Speaker 2: are we missing to make ourselves a great city?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I didn't come to this morning's conference with a
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  Speaker 3: perspective of knowing about Auckland. We've had a sister city
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  Speaker 3: relationship with Auckland now Brisbane and Auckland for a long time,
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  Speaker 3: but it's been six years since I left office, and
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  Speaker 3: I didn't pretend in any way to be on top
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  Speaker 3: of Auckland's issues. Today there was some discussion, certainly around
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  Speaker 3: traffic congestion, and I did sort of talk about some
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  Speaker 3: of the things that we had done in Brisbane to
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  Speaker 3: address those issues. Things from most councils around the world
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  Speaker 3: probably would be beyond reach, but we're a similar size
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  Speaker 3: to the council now. The Amalgamated Council in Auckland, and
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  Speaker 3: we took some brave steps of building five kilometer tunnels.
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  Speaker 3: We built several of those. We've we've undertaken several cross
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  Speaker 3: river bridges for both vehicular movement and public transport, pedestrian
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  Speaker 3: and cycling opportunities, and we've been able to fund those,
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  Speaker 3: not just get approval and do them, but to actually
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  Speaker 3: fund them. So we've come to the table with a
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  Speaker 3: fairly strong agenda and we outline outline this morning some
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  Speaker 3: of the ways in which that can be done.
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  Speaker 2: Now, Graham, there is an interesting thing that's going on
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  Speaker 2: at the moment, which it appears is that the punters
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  Speaker 2: of Auckland, having gone for the super city, are now
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  Speaker 2: not altogether happy with the super city. And I think
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  Speaker 2: part of it is probably, you know, they don't feel
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  Speaker 2: represented or whatever. But the thing that struck me reading
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  Speaker 2: about this today is we have one hundred and forty
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  Speaker 2: nine elected members for a city that's about two million people.
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  Speaker 2: That sounds like way too many.
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  Speaker 3: What do you think, Yeah, Well, we've got you know,
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  Speaker 3: one point five million people in the Brisbane City Council
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  Speaker 3: and we have twenty six representatives. You know, look back
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  Speaker 3: back one hundred years ago when they amalgamated twenty and
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  Speaker 3: to one here. Yeah, I was pretty brave whoever did that.
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  Speaker 3: But look it's not even questioned here in Brisbane.
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  Speaker 2: Gram you're telling me, if you only have twenty six
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  Speaker 2: elected members, do you not have local boards and wards
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  Speaker 2: and all that to carry on?
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  Speaker 1: No?
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  Speaker 3: Really, the local representatives they have a similar size electorate.
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  Speaker 3: We have state governments here in Australia of course, and
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  Speaker 3: the ward councilor as local councilors have the same size
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  Speaker 3: elector to say a state member of Parliament, so it
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  Speaker 3: is big. They have, you know, about twenty five to
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  Speaker 3: thirty thousand elected representatives in each of their electoral divisions,
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  Speaker 3: their wards we call them. And the people accepted here
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  Speaker 3: there is you know, still the ability to get around
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  Speaker 3: to the school of PMCs and the sporting clubs and
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  Speaker 3: do all those things you need to do. You do
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  Speaker 3: you get the same access that you might have had
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  Speaker 3: where you have a councilor representing say three or four
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  Speaker 3: thousand people, as perhaps the pre amalgamation will know you don't.
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  Speaker 3: But that's a price you pay for the economy of
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  Speaker 3: scale and the bigger things you can do with an
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  Speaker 3: Amalgamated Council.
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  Speaker 2: Graham, how fascinating it. Thanks very much, really appreciate it.
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  Speaker 2: Grime Quirk, former Lord Mayor of Brisbane.
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