{"id":572266,"date":"2026-08-18T02:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/572266\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T02:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T02:02:09","slug":"auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-to-celebrate-80th-birthday-with-champagne-live-music-and-mates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/572266\/","title":{"rendered":"Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to celebrate 80th birthday with champagne, live music and mates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019m younger than the President of America … And look at the damage he\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AucklandAuckland Mayor Wayne Brown is set to turn 80 on Sunday. Photo \/ Dean Purcell<\/p>\n

Asked how he felt about the milestone, and turning 80 while leading the city, Brown said he\u2019d retired several times before the mayoralty and has \u201canother four or five new businesses to start when I finish this\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was just hoping I\u2019d live long enough to see the City Rail Link finished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown said he planned to celebrate the occasion \u201cin the usual manner\u201d, hinting at the inclusion of live music from a band.<\/p>\n

\u201cChampagne and good food and stuff like that, and mates. <\/p>\n

\u201cMine are a s***load of mates, so they\u2019re hard to come by.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown will join the ranks of other seniors in top leadership positions, including New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, 81, US President Donald Trump, 80, and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, also 80.<\/p>\n

During his appearance, the mayor also welcomed yesterday\u2019s announcement that Auckland ratepayers and taxpayers would jointly fund a $1 million study investigating the viability of Point Chevalier\u2019s Meola Reef<\/a> as the site of a proposed second Waitemat\u0101 Harbour crossing.<\/p>\n

As his preferred route, and one he has long advocated for, the mayor backed confirmation of the study while criticising the millions already spent<\/a>, arguing we should \u201chave a look at something sensible without getting too worried about worrywarts\u201d.<\/p>\n

Sign up to The Daily H<\/a>, a free newsletter curated by our editors and delivered to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m younger than the President of America … And look at the damage he\u2019s doing.\u201d Auckland Mayor Wayne…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572267,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[135829,95,51,6325,6256,177,21639,156,91003,4960,28065,10934,157,111,139,69,1961,61,3542,4767,102],"class_list":["post-572266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-80th","tag-and","tag-auckland","tag-birthday","tag-brown","tag-celebrate","tag-champagne","tag-entertainment","tag-gearing","tag-live","tag-mates","tag-mayor","tag-music","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-this","tag-to","tag-wayne","tag-weekend","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572266","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=572266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}