The narrative

 

This morning I gave a guest lecture to Post-Grad journalism students at AUT on election coverage of the recent Local Elections as well as relationships between the Council and Central Government.

 

 

That Spin-Off article I have up there was this one: Post-truth politics comes to Auckland: A candidate campaign manager on why he lost

 

While I will post bullet-point notes on what I covered, specifically I am going to point this bit out here from The Spin-Off piece:

The lessons to be learned here are twofold. Firstly, Auckland Council do not communicate their achievements in an effective manner and their relationship with community media is poor to non-existent. Secondly, the strong anti-Council sentiment has been fuelled by the inability of leadership to rally the troops and get strong public buy-in on the city’s many projects. This may change with a new mayor who has campaigned on changing the culture of Council, but the election also illustrated bigger challenges that all politicians now face.

….

Source: Post-truth politics comes to Auckland: A candidate campaign manager on why he lost

 

That specific comment did raise heckles with some in Council but when I mentioned it to the Post-Grad’s today they gave a more sympathetic ear to Hamish who wrote that Spin-off piece I’ve quoted.

It basically came down to this (need to read from bottom to top):

The Committee Chairs and the Deputy Mayor need to operate with decent independent support and allowed semi-autonomy in decision-making. This would as Ryan said allow them to champion messages and policies while being nimble enough on the communications front as well.

Will see where Goff goes after the swearing-in on November 1

……

Source: Council Committee Structure Needs a Change – For More Autonomy

 

Council and Committees needing to be nimble with the message and less paranoid about the message. Bernard (who got name dropped a few times today) will spin it his own way that is going to be a certainty. But and especially the blogs are quite nimble enough to counter off Bernard (if need be) and run with the stories (subject to one’s own bias as I demonstrated today in terms of why I prefer Hulse over Simpson as Deputy Mayor).

 

Lot’s to take home but a very joyful morning.

My thanks to Richard and the students for having me today.

 

Local Body reporting

• Initial two horse race between Goff and Crone
• Enter Chloe
• Chloe ignored by Herald and RNZ
• Chloe and Social Media protest
• Chloe expose in the Herald and increased coverage – recognised as one of the six
• Reporting narrowed to rates, housing, transport and reputation score
• Auckland Plan and Unitary Plan missed out entirely including two big planks:
  • City Centre
  • Southern Initiative
• RNZ and Spinoff were reactive to social media happenings and did try to promote dialogue through things like Spinoff endorsements and the Warcast
• Nothing or very little on Local Boards outside of Community papers and even that was sparse

 

Relationship between Central Government and Council

• Was in a good state as Len Brown left
• ATAP
• Unitary Plan
• Tad frosty with Goff after Goff was at receiving end of Congestion Charging and Vancouver Tax (Key) while it was unpredictability earning a rebuke from English
• Still need to know who Deputy Mayor is
• Govt has moved on housing and immigration which Goff campaigned on
• Governing Body 13-8 progressive-conservative – although Fletcher could swing it 14-7
• Depends on Committee make up and who chairs
• AT and Panuku to get new CEOs