Playing for high stakes

OPINION: Seven days on from Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt's extraordinary attack on the city's long-serving deputy, Neil Boniface, it is still not clear why he did it or what he expects to achieve, but there have been some clues, writes The Southland Times in an editorial.

Mr Shadbolt says he has lost confidence in "his" deputy, can't work with him, wants him sacked and has threatened there will be blood on the floor (presumably of the council chamber) if he doesn't get his own way. What nonsense.

Parliament legislated 20 years ago to take away the right of mayors to appoint their deputies, precisely to put an end to the Team Shadbolt-type culture he says he is trying to instil. Each councillor has a vote and, hopefully, uses it in the best interests of the city, for Team Invercargill.

The mayor's supposed reasons for losing faith in Cr Boniface seem to vary depending on who he is talking to, and he has done a lot of talking in the past week to this newspaper, radio and television, but none of it provides a sensible explanation for his extravagantly violent personal attack at last Tuesday's council meeting.

One complaint, that Cr Boniface did not tell Mr Shadbolt for three days that council chief executive Richard King had been charged with drink-driving after crashing his council-supplied car, has a delicious irony to it. Mr King should certainly have told the mayor himself, the same Mr King who helped orchestrate a blanket shutdown of news of Mr Shadbolt's own crash three years ago. When, five days after Mr Shadbolt rolled his council car, Southland Times reporters learned of the incident and began asking questions, Mr King was still working the phones, calling witnesses even as they were being interviewed, urging them to say nothing.

Councillors, the deputy mayor among them, first learned of that crash when they read about it in the Times.

There may be more than a hint of truth in another of Mr Shadbolt's complaints, that he was jealous of his deputy's success in orchestrating public-good projects like the Warm Homes Trust to insulate and heat hundreds of southern homes, though envious is a more appropriate word. But the most likely reason for his incredible outburst in the council chamber a week ago is that he fears he could lose the next election in 12 months, not to Cr Boniface – a Neil Boniface-Tim Shadbolt runoff would be a no-contest – but to a much-more high-profile candidate in Suzanne Prentice, who has made no secret that she is considering putting her name forward. So the mayor has picked a fight to lift his public profile. He seems bent on a campaign of "I can't do as good a job as I'd like because the councillors and The Southland Times are ganging up on me". And, as only Tim Shadbolt can do, he has gone completely over the top.

He is under pressure. He knows he is not likely to win much public support if the Ombudsman rules in favour of this newspaper's request for a detailed account of his extravagant personal spending on his council credit card, even though the more-than $40,000 has since been paid back; he has been away from Invercargill so much in the past few months, leaving Cr Boniface to carry out many of his duties, that he has probably featured less in the public eye than at any time in his tenure; and he is, perhaps for the first time as mayor of Invercargill, being reined in by councillors over some of his more-grandiose ideas.

He appears embarked on a really high-risk strategy. Even a month ago he seemed to be so secure as mayor that he could have remained in office for as long as he wanted to. Invercargill voters rightly saw him as a real asset for the city, a showman who brought credit to the south while his deputy quietly got on with the routine business. The gloss has worn thin on that image during the past week.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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