Sir Dove-Myer Robinson (15 June 1901 – 14 August 1989) was Mayor of Auckland City from 1959 to 1965 and from 1968 to 1980. Holding office for 6,543 days in total (17 years, 10 months, and 30 days), his was the longest tenure of any holder of the office. He was one of several Jewish mayors of Auckland, although he rejected Judaism as a teenager and became a lifelong atheist.
Robinson began working as a travelling salesman, selling motorcycles. In Gore he met Adelaide (Adele) Elizabeth Matthews, the first of his four wives and on 12 September 1924 the two married, having two daughters. The pair divorced in 1932. He established Robinson's Motor Cycle and Bicycle Depot in 1930, but the business struggled as a result of the Great Depression, expanding to include cars. He married Veda Alice Davis, a 17-year-old, on 7 December 1937. The marriage only lasted a month and in 1940 they divorced. Robinson had begun living with Bettine (Betty) Williams, a seamstress, and on 15 March 1941 they married and had two daughters and one son. In 1958 he campaigned against fluoridation of the public water supply, making a submission to Dunedin City Council on this, and led the anti-fluoridation movement in Auckland.
Political activism
thumb|Browns Island, the location of the sewage scheme Robinson opposed
Robinson entered politics in the late 1940s when he led the opposition to a sewage dumping scheme championed by Auckland Mayor Sir John Allum (the Browns Island plan) that would have discharged untreated effluent into Waitemata Harbour. Robinson joined the Auckland and Suburban Drainage League, a group opposed to the idea of disposing Auckland's sewage and slaughterhouse waste into the harbour and intent on finding an alternative. Robinson's first attempt saw him take a petition containing 43,000 signatures to Parliament to try to convince the government to block the plan, but was unsuccessful.
When a vacancy occurred on the Auckland City Council in 1952 Robinson stood as an independent candidate in the subsequent by-election. He used the publicity he had gained in his fight against Browns Island to stand out from the crowd and won the election. It was the first victory for an independent candidate in an Auckland City election since 1935. Now as a council member he was appointed as a council representative on the Auckland Drainage Board, the body proposing the Browns Island plan, and opposed it from within. They also endorsed the candidacy for mayor of John Luxford, who defeated Allum. With Allum removed from the council (and by extension the Drainage Board), Robinson assumed chairmanship of the Drainage Board. There, he proposed and eventually realised a scheme to break down the sewage in oxidation ponds ('Robbie's ponds') near the Manukau Harbour. Browns Island instead became a public reserve. His success in the scheme earned Robinson a reputation as a visionary later on helped him gain the popularity to be elected Mayor of Auckland City.
Robinson had established a public profile during his lengthy political struggle against the Browns Island plan, but it took a toll on his private life. His third marriage ended and he divorced Betty in 1959. On 15 June that same year he married Thelma Thompson, an executive at Childswear Ltd, with whom he had one daughter. Robinson's influence declined in the 1970s and after his 1977 election victory he promised not to run again. However, he recanted and stood again in 1980, but his age was against him and he lost to Colin Kay.
Later life and death
Robinson was loath to retire and twice attempted to re-enter politics. He stood for mayor again in 1983 but finished a distant fourth. At the 1986 local-body elections he was a candidate for a council seat in the Remuera ward but was unsuccessful. Dove Myer Robinson Park, formerly the Parnell Rose Gardens, was named after him. The park was where previous mayor John Logan Campbell once lived.