Newly surfaced text messages between Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown and Transport Minister Chris Bishop have laid bare how bluntly the mayor lobbied the Government to strip Auckland Transport of most of its powers, a campaign that ended with landmark reforms passing into law earlier this year.
The messages, reported by 1News, show Brown telling Bishop the public “loathe” the council-controlled agency and complaining that it kept building what he called “dumb s**t”. They cover roughly a year of private exchanges between the two men while the Government moved to overhaul how Auckland runs its transport system.
In a message sent on 21 May 2025, Brown told Bishop the council had “a good relationship with NZTA but not AT so much”, adding that Auckland Transport’s “current public support is well under 30% and the public loathe them and I can see why”. A few weeks later, on 11 June 2025, he wrote, “I spoke to a big audience at a Chamber of Commerce meeting and they all hate AT.”
By 25 June 2025 the mayor was pressing his case harder. “I didn’t go thru all this to have AT continue to build dumb s**t,” he told the minister, according to 1News. Brown pushed back on part of Bishop’s reform plan and argued that “capital program delivery and maintenance and renewals is why the public hate them”, urging the minister to “leave them with public transport and anything else we delegate to them”.
The blunt language was aimed at an agency that had long drawn public frustration over cycleways, road cones, parking rules and stalled projects. Brown campaigned for the mayoralty in 2022 promising to rein in Auckland’s council-controlled organisations, and the texts show he kept up that pressure in private long after the election.
His lobbying found a receptive audience. Parliament passed the reforms at their third reading on 30 April 2026, shifting most transport decision-making from Auckland Transport back to Auckland Council and its local boards. Under the new law the council becomes the road controlling authority and takes over all transport policy and planning work, while a new Auckland Regional Transport Committee prepares a 30-year plan for the region. Auckland Transport is left to focus on running public transport, and more than 1,350 staff move across to the council.
Announcing the third reading, Bishop said the changes would “give Auckland Council the opportunity to finally take the lead and enable Aucklanders to hold elected members accountable for transport decisions”, according to a statement on the Beehive website. Local boards also gained new say over local roads, including speed limits, road closures, parking and cycleways.
The texts do more than confirm the mayor’s low opinion of the agency. They also show a warm working relationship between Brown and the minister that ran alongside the policy push. Brown offered Bishop seats to an Auckland FC semifinal and to the ASB Classic men’s tennis final, and the two ribbed each other over rugby results. After Brown was re-elected in October 2025, Bishop texted “Well done mr mayor”. At one point the minister flagged a newspaper story he thought was “exceptionally unfair” and suggested the pair “get a beer in Auckland and invite the Spinoff”, to which Brown replied that “voters need reminding that we get on”.
Auckland Transport played down the mayor’s comments. Asked whether she was concerned by the disparaging language, interim chief executive Stacey van der Putten said “the mayor thinks highly of public transport and its benefit to Auckland” and declined to comment further on his personal views of the organisation.
Bishop was similarly unfazed. He said the mayor’s opinions “are publicly available” and that “it’s not like he’s saying anything there that he hasn’t said publicly for many years”. On a message telling him to “sort this CRL s**t out”, the minister said it “could be one of any number of different things about the CRL”, calling the City Rail Link “a frustrating project”.
The exchanges offer a rare, unvarnished look at how a major reform actually came together, driven as much by a mayor’s private frustration and a friendly line to the minister as by any formal process. Supporters of the overhaul argue it restores a clear line of accountability, letting voters hold named councillors and board members responsible for transport calls rather than an arms-length agency. Critics have warned that folding so many functions back into the council risks trading one set of problems for another, and that the real test will be whether buses, trains, footpaths and road maintenance actually improve.
Transport remains one of the sharpest issues in Auckland politics, from the near-complete City Rail Link to the Government’s decision to slow several major roading projects. With the general election set for 7 November, voters weighing where the parties stand on transport and the wider shape of local government can compare their positions using Newswire’s voting tool.
For now, the reforms are law and the agency Brown spent years criticising has been cut back to size. Whether Aucklanders notice the difference on their daily commute is the question the mayor and the minister will both be judged on.
What do you make of the mayor’s texts and the Auckland Transport shake-up? Have your say in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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