ENCOUNTER: Mergers and impositions | Auckland News | Local News in Auckland

Who: Les Mills
What: Former Auckland Mayor, gym magnate
Where: His Pt Chevalier home
Why: He was the first full-term Auckland Mayor after the last regional re-organisation in 1989

The art deco house sprawls with extensions, is dotted with guano from roosting pigeons. On the way to the broad harbour views one passes an aged Alsatian and the accumulations of a life well led.

Overlooking the Waitemata from Pt Chevalier, the home displays the clutter of a person you'd take to be liberal-minded with a penchant for mementoes - photos, books, art.

But a pragmatic businessman, Olympian (and Olympian's coach) and self-proclaimed "centre-right politician with left leanings" has lived here for more than 40 years. The contradictions fit somehow.

Les Mills was the first full-term Mayor of the current Auckland City after the 1989 amalgamations, when 29 territorial councils were reduced to seven plus a regional council.

He won the 1990 by-election when Dame Catherine Tizard stood down to become Governor-General.

From a deep leather chair in his sitting room, beside the large fireplace, Mills says lessons need to be learned from the past if the next era of local body mergers is to benefit the region.

"The city was in a mess. The amalgamation was not going that well. Spending was out of control and the city was going into debt at $350,000 a day," he recalls.

"There was a lot of reckless spending, a lot of finger-pointing and no one taking responsibility.

"It was a failure to come to grips with the amalgamation quickly enough."

The main cause - he leans towards me with a serious expression that resembles a grin - was a lack of a long-term plan.

"The most important thing for this administration is to target those first few years and put in place a 20-year, costed annual plan.

It's no good selling assets you might need or rate Aucklanders in an ever-increasing way that is out of touch with inflation."

So I ask him if the machinations of change are likely to hit us in the pocket again.

Maybe, says Mills, given the amount of lobbying around the new council once the election "dust has settled".

"There will be a lot of lobbying. It will be huge battles to get projects done. Every [former] city will have the expectation of having their projects completed in their area. If it is done on an unfair basis, it creates dissension."

The push and pull of council budgets will be further complicated by the seven council-controlled organisations, he notes.

How these bodies will be controlled and the amount of power they will possess concerns him. Each will want a bigger slice of the pie.

"If you get the wrong leadership, chief executive or mayor, it could go quite wrong and could be expensive. I don't think we will get the wrong leadership."

Mills is 76. He walks his dog and works out in a gym in his garage at home three times a week.

For someone who trained to throw heavy objects a long way and whose name is indelibly associated with health and fitness, his handshake is not overbearing. It's a hand that has shaken many hands. It is tempered, perhaps to fit all grips, to appease the right and the left. A politician's hand.

When Mills was elected he wanted to revitalise the city centre by loosening the reins on developers. Sound familiar?

Britomart was to be the hub: Quay St closed to traffic; trains beneath Queen St; massive underground car and bus parks; paid for, in part, by developers whose high-rise buildings would encroach upon the waterfront.

Most observers say Britomart, much reduced in its rail station, bars and shopping incarnation, cost him the 1998 election. He says a third candidate took 10,000 of his votes and let Christine Fletcher in.

Whatever the reason, 1998 shows we still have a vote and can get something resembling what we want. Best we use it.

Let me hear your local body talk

How Les Mills would re-organise the region:

Beef up the present regional council; leave the seven territorial councils to deal with local issues

More power and responsibility for community boards

Know what a council can and can't do: it can't provide cheaper houses, has little or no control over major transport issues, can't ensure a skilled labour force and cannot reduce compliance. It can make Auckland more livable by sorting out drainage, sewerage and public transport problems.

On council-controlled organisations: "A ministerial agenda to limit council's powers so it did not become a challenge to central government."