For the last few years, the Wellington City Council has been a national joke, a byword for the pursuit of crazy obsessions at the expense of basic services. Councillors with no real-life experience have pursued with near fanatical naïveté personal hobbyhorses, with little regard for their practicality or cost, confident all the while that long-suffering ratepayers would keep paying the ever-escalating bills. 

Overall, the Council was hopelessly divided, frequently behaving more like the worst imaginable collection of student politicians than a responsible Council in the nation's capital. The situation reached its nadir during the disastrous term of Mayor Tory Whanau, who seemed to live in a permanent world of self-delusion about how good she was for the city.

Given that, the new Mayor Andrew Little was considered to face an uphill challenge in restoring even a modicum of sense and respectability to the much-derided Council. Expectations about what Little would be able to achieve were not high.

However, to his credit, Little has made progress in the four months since he became Mayor. The crazy councillors have been largely sidelined and silenced, no longer holding sway the way they did in Whanau's day. Many pet projects have either been quietly shelved or abandoned and there is an emerging feeling that the adults are at last back in control at the Town Hall. And the Council appears to be working in a more unified fashion than before.

There seems to be a welcome appreciation that while increases are inevitable, rates cannot to rise the way they did under Whanau’s regime – 16% last year. There is a fresh recognition of the need for more discipline – a word Whanau and her clique neither liked nor understood – in Council spending, and that some projects will need to be severely pruned or shut down. For beleaguered ratepayers, Little's approach is overdue good news.

In the city's recent sewage crisis, Little's leadership has been solid and impressive. He has focused on sorting out the problems within Wellington Water that led to the crisis, and on realistic public communication about the problem and the public health and environmental threats it poses. There have been no histrionics, no polemical ideological rants nor obfuscation. Even when Little went swimming at Lyall Bay to reassure people it was safe to do so again, he was careful not to overplay his hand, still advising people to be safe and not take undue risks.

But while Little has eased into the Mayoralty with aplomb, there are still major challenges ahead for him and his Council that will test his political leadership skills. The strategic plan he released last week sets those out starkly, alongside the bleak path ahead when it comes to paying for them. However, there is a risk the Council’s self-opinionated ideological dogmatists, who held so much sway before, could become more restive, especially if they see their pet projects and grandiose schemes being threatened or curtailed.

Little also has the wider problem of Wellington’s economic decline to deal with. Hospitality businesses are closing; property prices are stagnant and unemployment – in the main due to state sector job cuts – remains high.

There is nothing on the horizon that looks likely to be able to redress that. With emerging talk in central government of local government reform that could lead to plans for a single unitary local authority or “super city” for Wellington being revived, there is likely to be an expectation of stronger economic development leadership on the part of the Wellington City Council.

But that will require a sense of purpose and future vision that the Council has yet to display, which will in turn put pressure on the Mayor and his team to develop and promote the strategies required. Whether they can do so effectively remains an open question at this stage.

However, there is no doubt that thanks to Little’s leadership so far, the Wellington City Council is now better placed to lead the region’s revival, than it was in the years when it was an ongoing national joke. For a start, as an experienced national politician, Little knows how to talk constructively to the government of the day, rather than “at” them the way Whanau did. He might even be able to pull off a special regional deal with central government which was never on the cards under Whanau.

Although Wellington is far from getting out of the doldrums it has been wallowing in during recent years, there is an emerging sense that with Little at the helm, provided he is not kneecapped along the way by some of his Councillors, Wellington might start to move forward once more.

The last thing New Zealand needs is a dysfunctional capital city. From a national perspective, not to mention that of Wellington’s long-suffering ratepayers, Little’s early performance as Mayor is encouraging and a relief to those who despaired of the Wellington City Council ever regaining its senses.  But to truly succeed the Council must allow Little to carry on the way he has started, for the balance of his term.