Danyl Mclauchlan: Finally, Kiwis care about climate change. Are politicians prepared?

Last month’s floods have forced climate change onto the agenda and neither the Auckland mayor, nor the PM, can afford to ignore it. By Danyl Mclauchlan.

There is a political rogues’ gallery of ­terrible leaders during times of national crisis. George W Bush vacationed at his ranch during Hurricane Katrina. Boris Johnson held drunken parties at Number 10 while his nation was in lockdown. And Scott Morrison holidayed in Hawaii while bushfires burnt across Australia. When challenged by journalists, Morrison uttered the immortal line, “I don’t hold a hose, mate.”

It seems we can add Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to this ignominious identity parade. Invisible during the early stages of Auckland’s unprecedented flooding, then visibly irritated at being questioned by media during a civil emergency, he riffed off Morrison’s infamous line by insisting that it wasn’t his role to rush out with buckets.

When RNZ broadcaster Kim Hill questioned him about Auckland’s emergency response, he replied, with barely concealed relish, “It will be interesting to see just how well prepared Wellington is when the earthquake strikes.” The interview ended when Hill asked if the tap water was safe to drink. The response was a long pause, then, “I’m heading to a briefing right now. I’ll just add that to the list.”

Brown’s political brand was built around his identity as an anti-politician. He could cut through the council bureaucracy and the intransigence of central government. He’d get things done. It was a clever campaign strategy, turning his contrarian, irritable demeanour into an asset. Then, in a leaked group chat message, the mayor complained about having to cancel a tennis game to “deal with media drongos over the flooding”. The name of the group was “Grumpy Old Men”. But there’s more to leadership than grumpiness, and getting things done does require doing things, especially in an emergency. There’s an old political adage: a politician who complains about the media is like a sailor who complains about the sea. And this is even true for anti-politicians, especially when their city is drowning.

When Brown fronted for questions over the weekend after the first deluge, he appeared beside Chris Hipkins. The new Prime Minister was mostly silent, his eyes occasionally bulging in disbelief as the mayor snarled his way through the event. Hipkins must have had many things on his mind – coordinating the emergency response, the scale of the disaster, the logistics of the rebuild. It would have been only human to wonder about the politics of it all.

New leaders usually enjoy a bump in the polls, but not always. When David Cunliffe took over Labour, the numbers remained dire. When Judith Collins became National’s leader, the party’s popularity declined. And now Hipkins was faced with a national crisis – Jacinda Ardern’s core competency – on only his third day as her successor. How could he measure up?

On the Monday after the standup, two public polls were released, both putting Labour back in the lead. Hipkins did not poll as strongly in the preferred prime minister stakes as Ardern had, but he was still slightly ahead of Christopher Luxon. He was not as dazzling in a crisis as his predecessor but he must have consoled himself – as he watched Brown’s deputy tugging the mayor away from the media – with the knowledge that it could have been an awful lot worse.

Hipkins has sniffed the wind and staked his leadership on economic issues. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Aucklanders, and other New Zealanders who have had to deal with natural disasters over the past few years, will completely let him off the hook on climate change.