{"id":500814,"date":"2026-06-29T09:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500814\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T09:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:04:11","slug":"les-mills-remembered-for-leadership-in-northland-during-major-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/500814\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Mills remembered for leadership in Northland during major change"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dover Samuels, who was a member of the Northland Harbour Board at the time, said Mills did a great job managing<\/a> all the harbours in Te Tai Tokerau.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe made a huge contribution to the wellbeing [of Northlanders] \u2013 not only with his life of fitness, and getting everyone to exercise \u2013 but the way that he managed the affairs of the harbour board<\/a>,\u201d Samuels said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very, very prominent in engaging with tangata whenua and M\u0101ori communities, especially in isolated communities like Te Hapua.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former Whang\u0101rei mayor Stan Semenoff also agreed Mills had a big impact for the two years he was in Northland.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came in and got stuck in. He did a very good job of downsizing and setting up the port.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LesLes Mills \u2013 a businessman, former Auckland City Mayor and Olympic athlete \u2013 also led in Northland in the late 1980s. Photo \/ NZME<\/p>\n

Semenoff said he and then-MP John Banks convinced Mills to leave Auckland and come north for the harbour board role.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe needed someone who was strong and got things done, and he had that reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work gave Mills a taste of local body politics. After leaving, he became mayor of Auckland City Council in 1990, a position he held for three terms.<\/p>\n

Samuels said Mills\u2019 death was a shock<\/a>, and he had good memories of fishing with Mills at Matauri Bay.<\/p>\n

He sent condolences to the family and passed on best wishes to son Phillip, now executive director of Les Mills International.<\/p>\n

Mills\u2019 first wife Colleen died in 2005. Mills is survived by wife Florence, children Phillip and Donna, daughter-in-law Jackie, grandchildren Diana, Les jnr, Gabriel and Moana, plus many great-grandchildren.<\/p>\n

Denise Piper is a news reporter<\/a> for the Northern Advocate, focusing on health and business. She has more than 20 years in journalism and is passionate about covering stories that make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dover Samuels, who was a member of the Northland Harbour Board at the time, said Mills did a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500815,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[40549,3225,138,12974,2837,2082,16773,9832,78,4507,1043,35019,661,35020,111,139,1067,250117,69,15120,213,157453,7563,2044,102,87539],"class_list":["post-500814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-1980s","tag-according","tag-business","tag-change","tag-during","tag-for","tag-great","tag-helped","tag-in","tag-late","tag-leadership","tag-les","tag-major","tag-mills","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-nous","tag-nz","tag-remembered","tag-sports","tag-steer","tag-those","tag-time","tag-with","tag-worked"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500814\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}