By Tony Reid
Len Brown celebrated his 100th day in power today by stepping back 65 million years to launch a forthcoming dinosaur exhibition.
There was almost a Len Brown t-shirt in the crowd for the big event.
All eyes have been on Brown since he became Mayor, especially since he announced his 100 projects. So how's he done?
One hundred days, 100 projects - it wasn't an original idea. President Barack Obama's version focussed on getting out the US out of recession.
The Len Brown version was a mixture of very modest and highly ambitious ideas:
- Clean up the Otahuhu Bus Station.
- Get rid of graffiti on a historic building in central Auckland.
- Work on the inner city rail link
- Reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent.
Ask Brown how many are ticked off, and you get another list. Of excuses.
“The 100 projects were aspirational, they were about saying ‘this is the way we want to go’, this is a project that will head us in that direction, so it was about announcing them, it wasn't about completing them,” he says.
Marking people's performance is an academic's job, so we went to one - AUT's Public Policy Expert David Wilson.
“Most people will be judging his performance on whether he can deliver on some of those promises, he's come with a strong vision like that, he's going to need to deliver on projects that support that vision,” he says.
Wilson gives the mayor a six out of 10 - the mayor gave himself a seven.
Len Brown won't be spending too much time dwelling on his first 100 days in office. He's still got his biggest project lies ahead, selling Auckland to communities who didn't want to be to be part of it.
Will he run again? That's a question he doesn't want to answer now.
3 News