4 November, 2025

Meet the newly elected North Shore representative on Auckland Council and two less familiar first-timers on the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board

New councillor has politics pedigree and local focus

John Gillon grew up with politics and brings to his role as a new councillor plenty of background knowledge of North Shore issues.
This includes his top priority of seeing flood remediation measures through for the Wairau catchment, locking in funding for stormwater infrastructure and safeguarding at-risk homes in Milford.
On this, he aligns with the other North Shore councillor, Richard Hills, who was re-elected for a fourth term with the most votes of any councillor across the city.
But Gillon and Hills, who had a celebratory drink together with Kaipātiki Local Board members on election night, won’t necessarily agree on everything.
Gillon (47) pledges that in stepping away from his two terms as board chair into regional decision-making on Auckland Council, he will remain a strong local advocate.
“I’ll work on a case-by-case basis with Richard and anyone else I need to work with, for the North Shore,” he told the Observer.
First up, he may need to draw on his years in politics to get on side with Mayor Wayne Brown, who after the election was quoted in a New Zealand Herald story about new councillors as saying Gillon seemed “a bit negative”.
Gillon’s working relationships with re-elected Albany ward councillor John Watson and the defeated Wayne Walker – whom Brown has dubbed the Albanians – presumably played into this.
For any advice on dealing with cross-table comms, he need only sound out his father Grant Gillon, who was an Alliance MP, then a North Shore City councillor, before serving on the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board.

At university, John studied politics and sociology before working for a time as a technical writer. “We’ve always talked about politics around the table,” he says of Grant and mother Kirsty. Sister Paula is very much part of the conversation too. She has just been re-elected to the Kaipātiki board, which is based in Glenfield. John’s first local body role was on the Glenfield community board in 2007. “Both my parents are really happy and really proud,” says Gillon of their response to his and Paula’s election success. His retired father has just finished a law degree.
Gillon says the low voter turnout is concerning, underlining why local government needs to be part of teaching civics in schools.
His own education included attending Takapuna Normal Intermediate School, then Takapuna Grammar School from the fourth form (Year 10), after the family returned from a spell on a farm up north.
His own family is based in Beach Haven. He has two daughters, aged 12 and three. The younger is blind.
Alongside local board work, he has been on the Auckland Kindergarten Association board and a school board.
Delivering community facilities, including the Kauri Glen walkway, was a high point of his time on a united Kaipātiki board, which also pushed back on asset sales and council moves to reduce rubbish bins in public areas.

Council is also looking at reducing residential rubbish bin collections from weekly to fortnightly, something Gillon opposes, along with looming “fairer funding” cuts to boards.
He believes council should have pushed back harder on the extent of intensification required by government for Auckland.
Hills, as planning committee chair, is tasked with steering through Plan Change 120, which provides for the more targeted housing intensification and flood-area downzoning council wanted.
Both men have said they want the area’s boards and the public to look closely at PC120 and make submissions from next month.
“I’ll take on board what people have said and push that,” Gillon says.
He will lobby for upgrades to the congested Lake Rd he drives on to see his parents at their Devonport home. “I’m sick of Lake Rd,” he says. He has made securing funding for it another priority.
He laughs when the paper suggests his “Let’s Fix Lake Rd” billboards may prove famous last words.
He supports “quick fix” smaller works, which are in the pipeline, but knows options for any more extensive upgrade depend on getting buy-in to keep the project moving up the regional list of long-term transport plans.

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Home is the sailor, tacking into local body politics

Garth Ellingham was perhaps the bolter in the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board election. Young(ish) at 38, he had no local body experience and his campaign consisted largely of a website he made himself. But as an independent candidate he came in fourth of six successful contenders. Ellingham (pictured) gives a succinct summary: “I put myself out to the community I have a love for and have had support back, so I will see what I can do.” He grew up in a yachting family. “I was on the boat when I was six months old,” he says. The family home for Garth, sister Kate and parents John and Pauline was a couple of hundred metres from Narrow Neck Beach. Yachting became his priority, with his parents involved at Wakatere Boating Club and he and Kate competing. Garth regularly placed in the top five or 10 nationally in Optimist and P Class racing, and in 2004, aged 17, he won the national Starling champs. Kate was the first girl in the P Class champs in the same year, and sixth overall. Ellingham went to Vauxhall Primary, Belmont Intermediate and Takapuna Grammar. He studied civil engineering at Auckland University during the week and did sail training at the weekends. After finishing his degree – during which he became interested in the environmental apects of engineering, including stormwater and wastewater – he committed fully to yachting, joining the world match-racing circuit, with the long-term aim of becoming an America’s Cup sailor. For the next 10 years he led the life of a professional yachtsman: glamour mixed with grind. Living out of a suitcase, often couch surfing and trying to eke out slim budgets to travel the world for events, mixed with “a side hustle” of crewing on boats for the mega-rich. “It was all pretty surreal for a kid from Devonport – sailing multimillion-dollar boats and drinking champagne in St Tropez.” Ellingham helped form Waka Racing, winning a clutch of events and twice finishing third in the World match-racing champs. He sailed for the Chinese team in the America’s Cup pre-regatta in San Francisco in 2013 and also “B” boats used for training races in the America’s Cup in Auckland. But by his early 30s he decided to come home. He’d bought a unit across the road from Wakatere and moved in during Covid. “It made me fall in love with the area again – being close to the water made me happy.” He founded Lucke – a sustainable workwear company that began making re-usable masks during Covid then moved on to other lines. The operation has three employees and has opened an office in Australia. With the company finding its feet, Ellingham began working part-time in reception for old friends Terry and Siobhan Holmes of Chiropractic Alchemy in Milford. Chatting to customers was a great way to get “an idea about people’s priorities for the area and they got to know me as well”. But he realises: “A big challenge will be adapting from being a small business owner, where decisions are made and problems solved quickly.” Council processes took time and “I know I’m not going to be some sort of silver bullet”. He’s interested in protecting the environment and coastline – “the very reasons we live here” – and finds it unpalatable “that we can’t swim off the coast after it rains”. He hoped to put his engineering training to use on issues such as flood protection, stormwater upgrades and roading. While he’s single, without kids, his sister, who lives in Hauraki, has two. “And I can see how much sacrifice is made by parents – what my parents did for us… so [local board work] is definitely giving something back.”

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Newbie keen to bring planning know-how to board table

New Devonport-Takapuna Local Board member Scott Macarthur’s election campaign, which asked residents how they would like to see local issues tackled, made for a point of difference with other candidates.
His career as a town planner, giving him a strong understanding of council processes, may also have struck a chord with voters.
“When I’m sitting there getting advice, I can question,” he says.
By picking hot-button topics like traffic congestion and intensification, Macarthur (pictured) tapped into shared frustration, though he doesn’t claim all the answers.
“I didn’t say I’ll fix Lake Rd, but just came up with ideas,” he said, suggesting his video clips made a difference.
“I felt quietly confident, but you never know,” he said of coming sixth of six places on the board, having started the race as one of the lower-profile of 20 candidates and lacking any long-established local links.
Macarthur, a Belmont resident of five years, stood on the A Fresh Approach (AFA) ticket, sharing collective promotion and hoardings. He was the only one of its candidates to join incumbent member Terence Harpur on the new board.
The 44-year-old said he decided to stand because he thought he could contribute. Town planners seldom ran for office – given they often worked for councils and faced a conflict. But after 15 years at Auckland Council, including Auckland Transport, he moved on several years ago, setting up his own company, Urban Planning Consultants.

Drawing on his knowledge of how the Resource Management Act worked, which included stints on planning hearing panels, would help in hitting the ground running.
Among things the keen e-biker wants to achieve is the Green Path from Devonport peninsula to link further north via the long-sought pedestrian and cycle link from Francis St, Hauraki, to Esmonde Rd.
During the campaign he also spoke of balancing intensification with better urban design and green space rules and the management of on-street parking to meet residents’ concerns. He wants all bus stops to have shelters and would like water slides installed at the Takapuna Pool and Leisure Centre.
Macarthur had a circuitous path to the North Shore. He grew up in Pakuranga, studied at the University of Auckland and bought his first house in New Lynn. The lure of being close to the sea and in modern housing first brought him and his partner across town. “I don’t think we’ll be moving anywhere soon.”

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