Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to BenWilson,
When you can't even move towards the gates from over 100m away, you know it's pointless.
I thought the same thing. It didn't seem worth sticking around at the gate when there was plenty of open space further along. Even the Viaduct Basin wasn't particularly crowded, and it opened up further west.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Sacha,
Kathryn Ryan discusses that this morning with right-leaning Councillor Cameron Brewer who has taken on the left-leaning Mayor over potential risks for some time (10 mins, listening options).
I don't often say this, but Cameron Brewer was right last week.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Toby,
Important point this, and a lesson that I hope isn’t lost in the wash.
Queen’s Wharf was closed 20 odd minutes after it opened, but almost no one knew this. Apart from a solitary display at the main entrance, there was no means, as far as I could see, employed to let the crowd know.And this is where the Key/McCully "well, all __our__parts worked perfectly" line was so absurd. One of the key things about running a venue is how you run the gate or door. And from what you've said, they completely dropped the ball on that.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Toby,
I’'ll say that again: the NZ mobile network.
Which really failed.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Sacha,
Not quite. McCully has also introduced central govt operational staff into planning the event in detail, contesting the local CCOs, especially Auckland Transport and ATEED – who I think everyone acknowledges dropped the ball last week.
I've slightly amended that now, but operationally it still seems to me that it'll be the council doing stuff.
And I meant to mention ATEED in the post -- they seem to have had as much to do with it as anyone.
Yesterday’s bad faith communication of the takeover is another matter. McCully claims with a straight face that his staff and those govt officials were communicating with Auckland Council’s CEO, so it’s Doug McKay’s fault that Brown was blindsided. A tui billboard beckons.
It took McCully until this morning to come up with that line. And it's bullshit.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Kumara Republic,
Ridiculous enough to go to the Press Council?
Oh hell, no. It's just a poorly argued column.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Steve Parks,
Brown seems to be doing his best to maintain the relationship. It would be interesting to hear what he and Sneddon would say about the Govt’s handling of the RWC if they could be completely candid.
I can tell you with some confidence that it would not be pretty.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Tom Semmens,
John Armstrong appears to have written his column in the Herald whilst wanking over a picture of John Key.
I wouldn't put it that way, but yes, that's a ridiculous column. Armstrong might need to get out of the Thorndon Bubble occasionally.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Luke Williamson,
It’s curious to me that people keep saying that we never expected to see 200,000 people turn up. It was obvious a week out that the weather was going to be good and it seemed plain to me that 200,000 was easily achievable.
I confess, it wasn’t obvious to me. And it was 50,000 more than any official estimate.
And Len Brown and co. do have to take it on the chin because, for whatever reasons, they did cock it up. Not spectacularly as in a riot, but enough so that there was a bad taste for many people at the end of the night.
Yep, everyone failed to some extent, like I said. The failure in the first instance – hindsight, yeah – was the location. There simply wasn’t enough room on Quay Street for that many people. But let’s also bear in mind that the area where the real crowd problems happened was on that stretch of Quay Street, and that they were exacerbated by the broken video screen. Over at Wynyard Quarter, and up on K Road, on the other hand, things were a delight.
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Radio NZ news says Len Brown is only just now being briefed about the waterfront takeover.
Which appears to mean that McCully announced it to journalists without telling the Mayor of Auckland.
Far out.