Judy Gill: Just Another Failed Trip to Auckland CBD

18 January 2025.

So we came by ferry to Auckland CBD from lovely Waiheke Island — lovely socialist, neo-Marxist Waiheke Island — I and my young son, intending to catch a train to visit his sister in Onehunga.

The trains weren’t running. Not in January. Not through the CBD. Not in peak tourist summer season. Not in cruise ship season. So the plan changed.

We decided instead to pay an essential visit to the School Uniform Shop in Epsom. But the buses don’t get you there. Not one bus anyway. You need two buses, OR walking at both ends — and it’s raining.

So we call a Didi taxi. It was meant to be there in seven minutes. We wait more than twenty. It never came.

We opened the app again. The price had gone up from $11 to $17 while we were waiting. So we abandoned that plan too.

We went to eat.

Four Square. A reheated bagel. Cold egg. Bacon. A hash brown still cold after reheating. And coffee.

No toilet.

Next door to Daily Bread — still no toilet.

We went to the newly branded Waitemata train station — formerly known as Britomart. (No the public were not consulted, let alone advised.) There is a toilet there.

But four security staff were standing in front of it, telling us we couldn’t use the public toilet because the trains weren’t running. The trains aren’t running — but the boy’s wee-wees will soon do.

The security staff tell us to go to Commercial Bay because “they have public toilets”. Never mind that Commercial Bay is a private, commercial operation. It was never part of the plan.

Seventeen minutes to find a toilet.

Nothing at Commercial Bay for children. Not shops. No playground.

We had another drink.

The boy took his action heroes out of his school bag and played at the table. That was the entire stop.

We headed up to our usual backup: Auckland City Library.

Walking up Queen Street, homeless Māori were lying on the concrete footpaths — lounging, sitting, barefoot, dressed in rags, cardboard signs, begging bowls out.

Supermarket trolleys being used as portable homes.

Mattresses and sleeping bags everywhere.

Hapless parents doubling their children on Lime scooters.

Tourists renting Lime scooters, looking dazed.

Not a single bicycle in sight.

A huge bicycle rack outside Aotea Square sits completely empty.

The 21st century Rangatira never intended, from the beginning, to get rid of this Māori poverty — the Papa Hone Tamahere and Wee Willy Jacksons of this world.

Māori poverty is the PR campaign. It is the justification. It must continue for the Te Tiriti o Waitangi and Waitangi Tribunal gravy train to continue.

The money flows to iwi, to Māori-led NGOs and corporations, to politically nepotistic so-called Māori leaders.

It is never distributed to the people actually lying on the street.

Those people are not a failure of the system — they are the evidence the system requires to keep the gravy train going.

We reach the library.

There are the usual Asian parents diligently reading to their children.

There are women in hijabs with children, little girls in hijabs too.

I am told that these are refugee families housed in hotels in the CBD until a taxpayer funded home becomes available in the suburbs.

We've met these same family groups in Myers Park Playground before too.

There were a few homeless Māori sleeping on the couches.

We leave the library to catch a bus instead of walking down Queen Street because the boy is tired.

But the buses are all lined up, all marked “OUT OF SERVICE.” So we walk.

We walk down Queen Street and arrived at "Te Komititanga" — formerly QEII Square.

Not just a committee (Komiti) meeting place, but a sacred tangata one, sacred by assertion —

A newby-nym filtered through English, dressed up as depth, then "gifted" back as something ancient, no doubt at great taxpayer expense.

QEII Square was land once reclaimed from the sea by European settlers. But apparently Maori once held sacred Komiti meetings in this once aquatic He Tangata space.

The timing matters.

The trains are due to start running again on 29 January. When the city reconnects, political marches become feasible again.

Oriini Kaipara’s Toitū Te Aroha is planned as a march from Aotea Square to Te Komititanga on 31 January.

On the same day, Brian Tamaki is planning a march from Victoria Park over the Auckland Harbour Bridge with his haka lads - the true patriots of New Zealand.

This is where my imagination kicks in.

Oriini invokes spirits and demons — otherwise known as tupuna and atua.

Brian invokes Jesus: “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”

Two movements. Two moral languages. Two claims to righteousness.

One calls it Aroha. One calls it Jesus.

Both organise through exclusion. Both thrive on spectacle. Both are competing for the same thing: msm, national and even international attention.

What if these two Maori worlds were to collide in Te Komititanga that day? Haka upon haka. A 21st century charge to war. Far left vs far right?

31 January 2026?

Same city. Different places. Victoria vs Elizabeth? Victoria Park vs QEII Square?

This is a contest, a showdown, for airspace and imagery. For the national and international stage.

The lasting, departing impression of our day trip to Auckland CBD is of a third world city dressed up and marketed as first world — an un-developing city living off borrowed prestige.

Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.