I am relieved at the news that young Richard Hills will not be running for Auckland’s mayoralty.

Up to the point that he pulled out of the running yesterday, he was clearly seriously considering it.

He reportedly set up a campaign team as early as mid last year and was the Labour Party’s favoured candidate. 

It's not that I have a problem with Richard Hills himself. I don't. But I’m not a fan of someone his age running Auckland. 

He’s reportedly 35 years old.  

Who really thinks a 35-year-old - whose only jobs listed online are in politics - is equipped to be running our biggest city?

The Supercity Mayor is one of the five most powerful (if not three most powerful) political jobs in this country. 

I wish political parties would get over their fascination with youth. 

This isn’t just a problem on the left. Labour and the Greens are certainly the main offenders but don’t forget National selected a 17-year-old as a candidate last election. 

There is nothing inherently attractive about youth in political office.

Proponents will tell you the benefit of youth in politics is ‘fresh ideas’. That’s rubbish. They’re not fresh ideas. They’re untested ideas often borne out of naivety. 

Give that young person twenty years to try those ideas out and see how many of them they stick with.

We don’t want young politicians testing their ‘fresh’ ideas out on 1.7 million ratepayers. I’d much rather they tried them out in private enterprise first, saw which ideas worked and then brought the tested ideas and the experience to running our biggest city. 

Case in point: one of the ideas Richard Hills likes is trialling using a lane on the Harbour Bridge just for bikes.  

Hands up who likes that? That’s great in theory somewhere in la-la land but in the reality of a congested Auckland, that’s just going to make things a lot worse. 

With Richard pulling out, Auckland’s left with three definite or likely contenders for the job: 

Efeso Collins, Leo Molloy and Viv Beck, all of whom have a few years on Richard. 

Frankly, we’re going to have to see a lot more of each of them before we can know who will be best for the job.

But one thing’s a given already. I’ll take experience over youth every day.