“With that [the Golden Mile] aside, and now having Andrew Little in the race, I’ve decided I’d like to step aside to give him a clear runway to win the mayoralty,” Whanau said.

“I think this is actually a better outcome for everyone involved, certainly for the city. I can keep fighting for what I believe in for the city, but most importantly, I can work with mana whenua. I can serve my people,” she said.

Little paid tribute to Whanau saying, “I want to acknowledge Tory Whanau for her service to Wellington. Tory took on the mayoralty during a tough time for Wellington and regardless of our differences in approach I want to recognise her hard work and her dedication to the city”.

Whanau, who is the city’s first mayor of Māori descent, publicly hinted she might not seek a second term at the end of last year, telling Newstalk ZB she’d be having “conversations with family and friends” about her next steps.

“Over the summer, there were no viable candidates running for the mayoralty, so I thought, well, you know what, I will do that. I will put myself forward, because I still care about the outcomes of the city,” Whanau said.

“I don’t want this mayoral campaign to be about Labour versus Green, progressive versus progressive. That’s not what it should be about. In fact, we ought to be coming together and working as a team to deliver the best outcomes for our city, and I know that we can do that.”

Whanau told Little about her plans last week.

“He was very gracious, very friendly,” Whanau said.

Little told Newstalk ZB’s Ryan Bridge this morning that that conversation with Whanau was a brief one.

“I wished her all the best and that was really it,” Little said.

Little said Whanau took on the mayoralty at a “challenging time” but she had made some positive changes.

The former Labour leader said one of the main reasons he stepped up to be a candidate was so he could restore the faith in the council.

“There, there’s not, it is simply not acceptable for rates to increase, by my calculation, about 30% in the last two years,” Little said.

“A lot of that is, I think, council not getting a grip on their own finances.”

Whanau rates her performance as mayor a 9/10

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Wellington Mornings Host Nick Mills, Whanau said she was confident she could have retained the mayoralty, but thought the council would be better with both her and Andrew Little around the table.

Asked about rumours the Green Party had withdrawn its support for her, Whanau said “that’s completely untrue”.

“I knew it could’ve been won with a really strong campaign”, she said.

Mills asked Whanau whether a deal had been done between the pair for her to become Little’s deputy mayor.

She said there was no deal but expressed her interest in the role.

“I will say early on, hey feel free to consider me if he’s elected next year that would be great.”

A spokesperson for Little’s campaign said there was no deal for the deputy position.

Whanau told Mills she would continue to work on signing contracts for the Golden Mile while she’s mayor.

“I’m a fighter, I’m fighting for those things”, she said.

Asked how she would rate her mayoralty on a scale of 1 to 10, Whanau said she’d rate herself a nine.

Asked about whether she had any regrets, Whanau said she should have campaigned to do a term on council before running for the mayoralty, as well as wishing she trusted her political instincts better.

“Apart from light rail, everything I campaigned on is in train and I’m really proud of that”, she said.

‘A dramatic couple of years’

Whanau won the mayoralty in 2022, beating Labour’s Paul Eagle and incumbent Wellington Mayor Andy Foster in the closest thing to a landslide possible under Wellington’s STV voting system.

Looking back, Whanau is proud to have lifted the city’s water investment to $1.8 billion in the 2024-34 Long-Term Plan.

The council’s district plan will enable thousands of new homes. The council has also planned to upgrade over 800 social housing units.

It has built 27km of new cycleways and bus priority lanes have doubled from 4km to 8km.

“I’m really proud of that … that is exactly what I was elected to deliver and now with the Golden Mile project starting officially I feel very proud. We’re, we’re in the middle of transformation,” Whanau said.

Projects like the Golden Mile had been “a battle”, but one that was ultimately worth fighting.

When asked how her mayoralty might be remembered, Whanau admitted there was “a lot of negativity” around her now, but she believed Wellingtonians will look back fondly on the transformation the city has undergone.

She thinks part of the negativity is due to the fact that great swathes of town are closed for earthquake strengthening, including the central library and the Town Hall.

“We’re a city in transition,” Whanau said.

“I like to try and remind people that if you see road cones, if you see construction happening, that is progress. That means something is going to be delivered.”

“Our city in 20 years’ time, even in five years’ time, it’s going to be quite different. We’ll be on top of our leaks, we’ll have Courtenay Place finished – it’ll be the best entertainment precinct, the [central] library will be open, the Town Hall will be open, Civic Square will be open, and we’ll have a new waste minimisation plant,” she said.

“I can understand the frustration that people have, but this is what change is.”

Whanau admitted that she personally had become a “distraction” – one that threatened to undermine what she wanted to achieve.

“I’m glad that I’m no longer going to be a distraction to some of that,” she said.

“That kind of helped me decide this pathway … It’s not about me. I’d rather just put myself aside and keep focusing on the work,” she said.

When asked what she might have done differently, Whanau said she would have sought to spend some time on council before becoming Mayor.

Would not back airport sale again

Whanau’s mayoralty changed after she backed a proposal to sell the council’s stake in Wellington airport to capitalise a fund that would compensate for the council’s $2.6b under-insurance problem.

Council officers recommended diversifying the council’s investments, rather than having them concentrated in the airport (which would itself be vulnerable to Wellington earthquakes).

But the debate turned sour, pitting Whanau against her Labour allies around the council table and even some Greens.

“It got quite ugly, and I think we weren’t being the best versions of ourselves,” Whanau said.

“In hindsight, when I look at that particular project and maybe Reading [Whanau backed a deal to revitalise the privately-owned cinema complex], I may not have been quite as supportive if I trusted my instincts.”

Whanau said after those twin challenges – both proposals eventually fell through – she learned to trust her instincts.

“It was actually directly after the airport decision where I really started to trust myself more,” she said.

While she pledged not to support a sale of the airport shares in future, she says the problem the sale was trying to address still exists.

The council is up against the wall financially and it has an under-insurance risk – a risk that has a good chance of turning into a real problem; the latest modelling reckons there is a one-in-10 chance of Wellington being hit by a significant earthquake in the next 50 years.

“We did have a very serious challenge, and we still do, of under-insurance … it seemed like a logical way to address that, but it’s not what the people wanted,” Whanau said.

The sale put severe strain on the council’s relationship with mana whenua, which Whanau “absolutely” hoped to repair if elected as the Māori ward councillor.

“Politics is dramatic and it’s hard and sometimes relationships become a bit fractured, but that’s because the decisions that we’re making are really hard and people care about them.

“It’s okay to have those disagreements, the rebuild, however, is much more important.”

Personal struggles

Whanau was dogged by personal struggles while mayor. After two high-profile incidents, Whanau admitted to a drinking problem.

Last year, she was also diagnosed with ADHD.

Whanau said her generation of politicians was “more open” about challenges than generations that had gone before.

“I suppose the personal challenges that I’ve faced are probably not dissimilar to what many people have faced, whether it’s needing to reduce drinking or getting an ADHD assessment or just wanting to be a bit more private,” she said.

“These are the issues that my generation are facing – Millennials, Gen Z, we’re all very open.”

Reflecting on 10 years in politics (she began working for the Green Party as a staffer a decade ago), Whanau noticed an increase in abuse copped by local and central government politicians.

She thought the turning point was the pandemic and the subsequent restrictions.

“I think it was the Covid lockdown that really accelerated that behaviour,” Whanau said.

She thought that while politicians copped abuse before Covid, the rhetoric has become far more violent since.

“Violence has definitely increased post-Covid … decorum has been lost. People, mainly men, are very happy to say the most hideous things about women in politics, which have nothing to do with their character,” Whanau said.

She said she was “looking forward to being less of a target” of that kind of behaviour, but it was not enough to make her quit politics altogether – in fact, Whanau said one day she would consider running for Parliament.

“I love people, so it’s a natural pathway for me to go to Parliament and become a minister, but that’s a long way away,” Whanau said.

“I still want to keep going, I still have plenty in me to keep going,” she said.

Thomas Coughlan is the NZ Herald political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the Press Gallery since 2018.