O tempora! O mores! What times! What customs!
If this applied to the Rome of Cicero’s time, it’s even more apt for the Auckland of today. Strange times we live in. Most readers will know by now, I’ve been asked to stand...
Author: Mike Lee
Answering the call
Dear ‘Ponsonby News’ readers. I have agreed to come out of retirement to stand again for council. This in response to repeated requests over the last five months from concerned local residents who are...
Mike Lee campaign launch speech
If anyone had said a year ago, 6 months ago, even 3 months ago that I would be standing here today, I would have said, “They’re crazy”. When I first started getting requests to come...
Eulogy for John Elliott
“How much more easily is the leave-taker loved. For the flame burns more purely for those vanishing in the distance. Separation penetrates the departing one like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.”...
Auckland Council’s stealthy move to break up the regional parks network
If you thought what Auckland Council is doing at Western Springs, and at Dove-Myer Robinson Park with the national Erebus memorial, was pretty bad, what’s been planned for our regional parks and the Hauraki...
ANZAC Day in a time of war
Dawn service address at the Waiheke War Memorial. Mike Lee. We gather here and all across New Zealand on this ANZAC Day morning – as our parents did, and their parents before them, to...
Citizen Dhall and the battle to save the waterfront trams
The courageous battle by Ponsonby wine merchant Puneet Dhall and his passionate supporters to save the waterfront heritage tramway deserves our admiration and thanks. The Wynyard Quarter tramway operating as Dockline Trams was an...
‘Stand for New Zealand! Every man who is a soldier stand for New Zealand!’- Anzac Day 2021 (Dawn service Waiheke Island). Kippenberger’s rallying cry to his troops in the battle for Crete still resonates today.
Today we gather once again to remember the sacrifices of those who served & those who gave their lives for New Zealand, principally in the great world conflicts of the 20th century. The last time...
Eulogy for Cliff Robinson
It was a shock for me when Laila Harré called me to tell me Cliff had passed away that Sunday evening – though given his age and his long battles with health it shouldn’t...
The Super City must die? – thoughts on Auckland local government amalgamation 10 years on. My talk to Waiheke REBUS
A bit about my background: I have lived on Waiheke on and off since 1979. I was a merchant navy officer and raised my family here in the 80s and early 90s. I have...