A progressive councillor is challenging Ōtautahi’s relentlessly cheerful incumbent for the mayoral chains. Will residents choose a known quantity or a new direction?
While there are eight people running to be the next mayor of Christchurch, there are only two serious candidates: sitting third-term councillor Sara Templeton, who has relinquished her council position to run, and incumbent first-term mayor Phil Mauger. The city is growing rapidly and is generally seen to be on the rise following the devastation of the 2011 earthquakes. The Spinoff talked to each candidate to hear about their vision for the city and how their campaign is going.
The incumbent: Phil Mauger
Phil Mauger is relentlessly cheerful; it’s hard to get him to admit to anything negative. “Christchurch is the best place to live, work, invest and play in the country,” he says as the interview kicks off in his publicist’s office. The sentence has one verb too many to be catchy, and sounds very similar to what Mauger said about Christchurch when The Spinoff interviewed him in 2022. “Christchurch is going to be the events and sporting capital of the country,” he said then, although he has traded a sugary long black for sips from a green bottle of V.
Being mayor has involved some compromise. Mauger was fixated on the possibility of getting Christchurch to host the Commonwealth Games, with its new stadium and sports centre. He’s had to let go of that dream, after commissioning a report into the possibility. “The report – which only cost a few thousand dollars, from what I’m told – said now is not the time. You can’t win everything, so you just get on with it.”
Templeton and Mauger discuss housing policy at a UDINZ even at the Ara campus in Canterbury (Photo: Shanti Mathias)
Mauger says that during his three years in the job, he has been able to simply “ring the government” to advocate for Christchurch. When he calls the government, I ask, who is he talking to? “Oh, various people – Simeon [Brown], James Meager, Chris Bishop, Chris Penk.” He doesn’t want Christchurch to look like it’s asking for too much money from central government, he says, because the city received so much after the 2011 earthquakes.
He “rang the government” in 2023 and said Christchurch didn’t need some of the funding it was being offered, which should instead be going to Cyclone Gabrielle recovery. “I rang the government and said I don’t want Christchurch to be the child that gives you grief, the naughty boy in the corner,” Mauger tells The Spinoff. He said he wasn’t surrendering the money, he now emphasises – just saying Christchurch could have it later, and some of that funding has now been used for sealing roads, upgrading Brougham Street and rebuilding the Pages Road Bridge, he says.
Templeton called him out on the phone call at a mayoral debate earlier this month, saying a mayor’s relationship with ministers shouldn’t be an old boys club, reported The Press.
Mauger ran a construction company before entering politics; his hoardings often appear on the fences of empty building sites (Photo: Shanti Mathias)
Christchurch has had “more than its fair share of disasters”, Mauger says, and having a civil defence centre in the justice precinct makes the city well prepared for another one – whether that’s the Alpine Fault rupturing or a flood. The way Christchurch has been rebuilt with resilience in mind is a particular asset. “Christchurch is going to be the place that needs its airport, needs its power, needs its port, because there could well be no other ports or airports in the South Island that are up and running.” One of the best things the city has done for the climate, he says, is the new Bromley wastewater plant which, once fully operational, will “take the thick end of 16,000 tonnes of carbon out of our emissions with their new system”.
During his term, Mauger has been criticised for calling libraries “buildings with some books in” and not supporting some cycleways, especially the one on Park Terrace, which he says is “underused”. “I just want to get better value for money,” he says. He was happy with the result of Plan Change 14, where housing minister Chris Bishop let Christchurch City Council select areas to be upzoned for denser housing. “It was an Auckland and Wellington problem that was getting deposited on us in Christchurch.” He thinks that housing growth should be focused on the central city and suburban centres, rather than expanding to the south of the CBD, which Templeton has advocated for. With Christchurch’s abundance of land, he’d like to see more ownership schemes where people own the house, not the land, to tackle homelessness.
When he ran for mayor in 2022, Mauger promised to keep rates increases below inflation. Three years later, in a televised Q+A debate on Sunday, he admitted that was “naive”. Insurance and interest rates are a source of high costs, especially with Christchurch’s new stadium and Parakiore pool and sports complex on the way. Mauger nonetheless has said he supports a rates cap.
Getting back residents’ trust in council was one of Mauger’s goals for his first term. I ask him about who the council engages with. “Our engagement team works very hard to get people to come and talk to them, and sometimes they say they don’t have enough numbers. There’s a silent majority who are more than happy with the way things are,” Mauger says. Sometimes, in fact, he thinks the council “over-consults, or over-engages”. Mauger, in most cases, would prefer to just get on with it, he says.
His publicist, who is present for the whole interview, chimes in, reminding him of resident satisfaction surveys. In 2022, around 43% of people were happy with Christchurch City Council. Now that number is 53%. It’s not quite the 60% Mauger said he would shoot for but it’s still better than in many other places. Mauger says he isn’t taking another term as mayor for granted – “the All Blacks took Argentina for granted and look what happened there” – and while signs with his face pepper the city, he says he’s personally been too busy for door-knocking. But with low turnout in local elections, perhaps that improved satisfaction is a sign that the people of Christchurch will be willing to tick “Mauger” on their ballots again.
The challenger: Sara Templeton
At the start of her mayoral campaign, Sara Templeton decided to say yes to every single event that came her way: every interview, every meet the candidates event, every Q and A. That’s on top of fulfilling her current councillor duties, so it’s been rare for her to have time to herself.
A former high school teacher – her subject was English – Templeton ran for community board in 2013 in the middle of post-earthquake rebuilds. There was a huge amount of need, she says – communities who needed their voices heard. She was elected as a councillor for the Heathcote ward in 2016, and has been around the council table ever since.
Templeton decided to run for mayor last year, launching her campaign in October, having been approached by several people who were “keen to support me, practically”. She “didn’t want to waste a whole lot of people’s time and money” if she didn’t have a shot of winning. To commit wholly to the campaign, she decided not to run for council again. “Strategically, if people want my voice around the table, they have to vote for me as mayor.”
Templeton has personally experienced the benefit of small, central apartment living (Photo: Shanti Mathias)
A long lead time was also essential for fundraising. “The reality is that to run a mayoralty campaign in a major metro in New Zealand, you need some money,” she says. “And I’m not independently wealthy.” She feels encouraged by having received lots of small donations, a sign that ordinary people want to help her campaign. A year’s advance notice also meant the campaign could gather volunteers: she has more than 200 people helping, door-knocking and putting up signs all over the city. Her campaign looks slick, with a nice website and consistent use of the colour purple.
While Mauger hasn’t been focusing on door-knocking, Templeton has. She’s always seen herself as a “city councillor, not a ward councillor”, but widening the focus from Heathcote, which includes the suburbs of Sydenham and the coastal areas of Sumner and Redcliffs, has required asking for wider support. “It’s a lot bigger campaigning for the whole city,” she says. “I’m trying to reach in to as many communities as I can.” Mostly, the experience has been positive. “I’m intensely curious about other people’s views and issues, and I do change my mind based on what I hear from people.” An example of changing her mind? Design of cycleways – which Templeton has fiercely advocated for – where input from local communities who know streets well can lead to a better outcome.
While campaigning, Templeton has appreciated a supportive groupchat of other female candidates around the country. As a councillor, she received targeted abuse, as many women in local office do. Other councillors have labelled her “cycleway Sara”, but this shifts according to the transport woes in vogue: she’s now being accused of wanting more speed bumps, she told The Press in a recent interview.
A Sara Templeton billboard fittingly positioned next to some bike stands and medium-density housing (Photo: Shanti Mathias)
Housing is a big priority for Templeton. She lives in a small apartment; her adult children have grown up and moved out, and something central suits her well. She’d like to see more upzoning, especially in the area between Brougham Street and Moorhouse Avenue, to the south of the city centre. Currently a semi-industrial area bracketed by major roads, it wasn’t upzoned with other areas, but Templeton believes another plan change “would make sense” and get the approval of housing minister Chris Bishop. We’re talking at the Antigua Boatsheds, her local cafe; she’s drinking a chocolate milkshake in an effort to try more things on the menu – she says it’s “surprisingly good”.
Templeton is firm on having no asset sales, saying that Christchurch can manage money without needing to let go of its stakes in the airport, port and energy management company Orion. She’s accused Mauger of keeping rates “artificially low” to increase his chances of re-election. Part of the problem, she says, is central government, with the Beehive not understanding what councils deliver. “They tell us to do a whole pile of things, they don’t give us the funding to do them, and then they blame us for raising rates to pay for it.”
As Christchurch grows, she’s concerned about it becoming “another Auckland”, with the sprawl and traffic problems to match. “We really need to think ahead,” Templeton says. Many people from other New Zealand cities move to Christchurch because the housing is affordable; it has to stay that way, she says. Templeton says she resents the narrative that the city council is “forcing people not to have car parks” – a quote from Innes Ward candidate Ali Jones at a recent mayoral debate hosted by the Urban Development Institute of New Zealand. “The average is a nudge under one car park per dwelling, there hasn’t been a drop in the number of carparks being offered,” Templeton says.
During this term, she’s held the climate change portfolio. While she believes that taking action for the climate is essential, she doesn’t think that climate change should be “siloed”, made the responsibility of just one person. “I don’t get staffing or support or a budget – it’s just like ‘you can raise issues’.” To Templeton, the “future opportunities and challenges” of climate change should be something every council decision factors in, perhaps as a committee system.
Like Mauger, Templeton is positive about Christchurch. “We’ve proven that we can work together to overcome things, again and again,” she says.
As Templeton points out, low turnout means it’s hard to get accurate polling information – and polling is expensive, not a priority for her campaign funds. She says she’s not thinking too much about October 11: regardless of the outcome, she will be leaving behind the job she’s had for nearly a decade. She doesn’t have a clear idea of what she’d like to do if she doesn’t win in October, but will stick to Christchurch. “I will find another way to serve the city.”