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Speaker 1: Onto something else. It's been fifteen years since Auckland became

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Speaker 1: a super city and prominent Aucklanders have been debating how

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Speaker 1: to shape the city over the next fifteen years. Today

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Speaker 1: at a conference various views, support for a bed tax

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Speaker 1: and so on. Graham Quirk is the former Lord Mayor

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Speaker 1: of Brisbane who was there. He spoke to the conference

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Speaker 1: today about his experience and bringing the twenty thirty two

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Speaker 1: Olympics to Brisbane.

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Speaker 2: Hi Graham, Hello Heather, how are you very well?

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Speaker 3: Thank you?

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Speaker 1: 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 Auckland.

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Speaker 3: Brisbane this year will celebrate one hundred years since it

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Speaker 3: was a mulgamated 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 people 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 1: Like what did you do well?

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Speaker 3: One of the things that we discovered was we hadn'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 go out and ask 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 a modern

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Speaker 3: tourism opportunity and offering, and it proved to be very successful.

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Speaker 1: Do you have a view on what Auckland needs? What

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Speaker 1: 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 Brisbanana Auckland for a long time,

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Speaker 3: and but it's been six years since I left office,

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Speaker 3: and I didn't pretend 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, you know, five

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Speaker 3: kilometer tunnels. We built several of those we've we've we've

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Speaker 3: undertaken several cross river bridges for both vehicular movement and

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Speaker 3: public transport, pedestrian and cycling opportunities, and we've we've been

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Speaker 3: able to fund those, not just get approval and do them,

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Speaker 3: but to actually fund them. So so we've we've we've

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Speaker 3: come to the table with a fairly strong agenda and

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Speaker 3: we outline outline this morning some of the ways which

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Speaker 3: that can be done.

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Speaker 1: Now, Graham, there is an interesting thing that's going on

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Speaker 1: at the moment, which it appears is that the punters

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Speaker 1: of Auckland, having gone for the super city, are now

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Speaker 1: not altogether happy with the super city. And I think

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Speaker 1: part of it is probably you know, they don't feel

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Speaker 1: represented or whatever. But the thing that struck me reading

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Speaker 1: about this today is we have one hundred and forty

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Speaker 1: nine elected members for a city that's about two million people.

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Speaker 1: That sounds like way too many.

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Speaker 2: What do you think, Yeah, well, we've got you know,

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Speaker 2: one point five million people in the Brisbane City Council

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Speaker 2: and we have twenty six representatives. You know, look back

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Speaker 2: back one hundred years ago when they amalgamated twenty and

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Speaker 2: to one here. Yeah, I was pretty brave whoever did that.

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Speaker 2: But look, it's not even questioned here in Brisbane.

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Speaker 1: You're telling me if you only have twenty six elected members,

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Speaker 1: do you not have local boards and wards and all

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Speaker 1: that kind of carry on.

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Speaker 3: No, really, the local representatives they have a similar size

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Speaker 3: elected We have state governments here in Australia of course,

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Speaker 3: and the ward counselor as local councilors have the same

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Speaker 3: size elector to say a state member of Parliament. So

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Speaker 3: it is big. They have, you know, about twenty five

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Speaker 3: to thirty thousand elected representatives in each of their electoral divisions,

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Speaker 3: their wards we call them. And but 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 pncs 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 1: Graham, how fascinating and thanks very much, really appreciate it.

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Speaker 1: Grand Quirk, former Lord Mayor of Brisbane. For more from

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