Q+A’s Guyon Espiner interviews Rodney Hide

Points of interest:- Government views Auckland assets as state assets, so they won’t be sold in National’s first term- ACT Bill to cap all local body rates will be before Parliament in September: Mayors “almost as one” oppose it, National “keen to have a look at it”- ACT has delayed its Taxpayers’ Rights Bill back from “within six months” of the election to 2010- Hide committed to cutting “billions of dollars” from Government spending- Hide: “I think we have got a great deal of overlap and confusion within Cabinet… needs a tidy up”
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0904/S00244.htm

Fatty, You're Warming the Earth!

Fat people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

See full story: UK Reuters

Who's Counting

This letter first appeared in local Manukau papers this week.

WHILE attending a public meeting I was approached by a local businessman who congratulated me on my stand against the white-water rafting proposal being promoted by the trust that operates the Pacific Events Centre.

Amazingly, he told me members of the trust had shown him the business plan.
Amazingly, I say, because councillors who are being asked to make a decision on the trust’s request for $40 million have never sighted a business plan. All councillors have been told is the proposal is viable.

Remember the former mayor’s famous words when speaking of the Pacific Events Centre, “this won’t cost the rate payer a penny”.

So far it’s cost $52 million but then again who’s counting?

Political tickets join forces

Manukau’s largest local body political ticket Peoples Choice is to merge with Auckland Citizens & Ratepayers Association.

Peoples Choice chairman Hamish Stevens says the move, agreed to at an executive meeting last Wednesday, is a response to the government’s announcement that the seven Auckland councils will be merged into one.

"The new Auckland governance structure and the demise of Manukau city means we need to work at a regional level with like-minded groups

Women Athletes Hard Done By

While Valerie Vili will continue to garner athletic titles and awards but one goal that all track and field athletes aspire to will undoubtedly elude her is the world record.

In the women’s shot put the current world record is 22.63 metres set by Natalya Lisovskaya from the former Soviet Union in 1987. This is still 2 metres better than Vili’s best of 20.56 metres set last year.

The fact remains that almost all women’s world records set by athletes from the former eastern bloc were aided by a programme of state sanctioned drug taking.

How many drug free athletes were robbed of Olympic medals by athletes who otherwise would who have little better than a run of the mill athlete.

Australian, Raylene Boyle was one such athlete. Boyle was denied a gold medal in the 200m at the 1972 Munich Olympics by an athlete, Renate Stecher, East German secret service files revealed was on the state-sponsored doping program.

The Australian revels that German coaches implicated in the doping of athletes in the former German Democratic Republic are still coaching to this day.

Sex and the city

Volunteers are joining forces to tackle the antisocial behaviour of street sex workers – and they’re taking the fight right to the punters’ letterboxes.

They’re sending "clients" little pink letters in the post in the hope their spouses will realise their partners are kerb-crawling.

The 15 members of the Papatoetoe Community Patrol say the condoms and human waste left behind by prostitutes and punters at Hunters Corner were bad enough.

But schoolchildren being propositioned by men looking for sex was the final straw.

Graffiti dobbers spurn rewards

Manukau City Council joined the Stop Tags tip-off line a month ago, but has been running its own anti-tagging line for two years.The council spends $1m on graffiti a year, of which $800,000 goes towards painting and cleaning, $100,000 on investigations and the rest on education programmes.Senior policy analyst Rex Hewitt said the programme had had resulted in a "noticeably cleaner city".

State Vandalism

One of the recommendations to come out of the Royal Commission Report on Auckland Governance is that an Urban Development Agency could be created which would have a role in ensuring that the more complex urban renewal in planned nodes and corridors is achieved. This agency, made up of unelected and unaccountable appointees will have the power to compulsorily acquire land for urban renewal. What this means is that someone who does not like or approve the area in which you live can throw you out of the house that may have been yours for decades and give the land to a developer whose plans conform to the vision of the Urban Design Agency.

In Liverpool, England an elderly lady has fought against the compulsory acquisition of her Victorian house, and the laws that enable such state vandalism.

Angela Merkel, Voice of Reason

Politicians are able to spend our taxes like drunken sailors providing they call it investment. People look down on the drunken sailor spending his own money but at least he doesn’t call it investment.

At the recent G20 Summit German Chancellor Angela Merkel offered the wisest words during last week's G-20 summit: noting that the current economic malaise occurred "because we were living beyond our means," she urged governments to adopt cautious fiscal policies. Hence her crucial vote against the European Union's proposed $229 billion "rescue package" for Eastern Europe.

Inner City Zones Use More Energy

We are reminded, repeatedly, by urban planners, environmentalists and most recently by the Royal Commission enquiring into Auckland governance that cities with greater density use less energy.

To quote from the Royal Commission Report:

“Dense cities use less energy per person than the more dispersed model. For these reasons, the MUL is a key policy and the consequent control of land use will require significant enforcement efforts.”

So imagine the shock and confusion when a green lobby group publishes research that shows the it is the dense inner city zones, not suburbia that unleash more green house gases.

Tagger phone line is paying dividends

Tagger phone line is paying dividends

Taggers beware – Manukau’s new dob-in-a-tagger phone line is working.
Residents can call the anonymous number 0800 STOP TAGS to report tagging.

Manukau City Council community policy and planning manager David Tucker says the line is already proving its worth.

"At the moment we get about 10 calls a week, five of which are useful. Not a bad start since the line is only a month old."

Three perspectives on Auckland

There are a number of interesting perspectives offered on the Royal Commission’s report on Auckland governance.

Former ACT party MP Muriel Newman quite clearly has serious concerns that the impact the Local Government Act has had on the construction of the report.

Of key importance in all of this is the fact that the main reason for a change in the efficiency, performance, and cost of local government over recent years is the amendments to the Local Government Act made by Labour in 2002. These transformed local government from having a focus on maintaining infrastructure, providing core services and carrying out regulatory activities, to being responsible for the social, cultural, environmental and economic well-being of their communities. In addition, they were given the power of general competence, which enabled them to undertake virtually any activity they fancied, even if it had little to do with their core functions.
But rather than ask the Royal Commission on Auckland to consider the effects of this legislation during their inquiry, the Labour Government specifically excluded any investigation of the Local Government Act 2002 from their terms of reference.

Local government expert Owen McShane is concerned that a unitary government for Auckland is fascist model of governance with one Uber-Mayor, one Uber Council and One Uber Plan.

The promotion of a single Uber-City with a single Uber-Mayor, reflects the classic fascist advocacy of “strength through unity.”
 The term ‘fascism’ comes from the Latin fasces which were a symbol carried by the early Estruscan Lictors – an axe wrapped in a bundle of bound sticks. The bundle of sticks reminds us that a collection of sticks can be broken one at a time, but when bound together the sticks become strong.

Former Labour Minister of Local Government Michael Bassett who oversaw the amalgamation of local government in the 1980’s has a somewhat different take on the report.

It sometimes reflects its authors’ slender knowledge of the finer points of Auckland’s local body history and politics. But it is much better than the proverbial curate’s egg: the report is good in many parts. The one city idea recognizes several things. Auckland needs a unified voice that the 29 councils prior to 1989 never provided, and the eight councils since then proved themselves unable to deliver. As one wise old dog said to me many years ago, the most difficult thing with local government is to “melt the mayoral chains”.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Is the plan for a greater Auckland Council a panacea for all that is wrong with Auckland or is it a pill that is too bitter to swallow? The National led government and the Minister for Local Government, Rodney Hide will have some hard thinking to do. They will need figure what to throw out and what to embrace or they could simply use the report as a doorstop.

What are the good parts? A united council working as one for the region to fix the problems that have long bedevilled Auckland, such as a myriad of plans and polices for the delivery of water, roading , public transport, sports facilities, and land use, is probably good.

Apart from that, what we have been presented with, however, will please no one. The local in local government has been gutted. Community boards, loath or love them, have provided a measure of grassroots government to local communities. Replacing community boards in Manukau, there are eight, with one Local Council serving 387,000 people from Otahuhu in the north to Drury in the south and stretching from Mangere to Pakuranga – with about the same power as a community board, is no longer government at a local level. This local community will go cap in hand to the BIG Auckland Council for its funding. Woes betide a local council which falls foul of the BIG Auckland Council.

However, the BIG Auckland Council will be able to save the planet and downtown Auckland. Since the Council will be BIG let’s consider how it will save the planet. Auckland, we’re informed, uses too much energy, because it covers a large area. Therefore the prescription is to make it a compact city with people living around railway stations, foregoing their cars and saving the earth from anthropogenic global warming. People will, of course, like their small energy efficient apartments because they will be designed by an Urban Design Panel which amazingly enough will know where and how you will want to live. And, if they disapprove of where you live, the Urban Design Agency will kick you out of your home and acquire the land it’s on compulsorily.

Downtown Auckland will also be saved. Because it is deemed the centre of Auckland by the BIG Auckland Council it will have its own Community Board – no Community Board for Pakuranga and Howick but, hallelujah, local grassroots government to save the Auckland CBD. The reason for this is simple. The Commissioners have not looked forward to what a modern Western city looks like but have chosen instead to look at late nineteenth century- early twentieth century city models. Old cities where people were less mobile than today tended to gravitate around a well defined city centre – Auckland used to be like this. This type of city is described as mono centric. Today people are more mobile than they have ever been and as a result our cities have become poly centric with residential, commercial and retail scattered over a much larger area. Downtown Auckland faces stiff competition from other retail and commercial centres. While outlying shopping centres flourish, the Auckland CBD withers. The Commission has decreed that this must stop and the BIG Auckland Council will see that it does inserting draconian anti-competitive clauses into its district plan. Don’t believe it – Wellington City Council is doing just that to ward off competition from outlying centres.

And let’s not forget the Commission has made a pronouncement, “The Auckland Town Hall should be the symbolic centre for the Auckland Council”.
The BIG Auckland Council will be wise and all knowing so they will solve all social problems and set up a Social Issues Board which will develop a Social Well-Being Strategy and Implementation/Funding Plan. There, that should solve all Auckland’s social ills!

The elections for the BIG Auckland Council will not be for people that you will know from your local community but for ten people who in all likelihood will have the wherewithal to run an election campaign in an area with a population 35 times bigger than the average parliamentary electorate. Therefore there is no guarantee that Howick or Pakuranga will see anyone from these areas on the BIG Auckland Council. There will be two councillors elected from within the Manukau Local Council area but given the voting pattern of Manukau it is more than likely those would come from the western or southern part of the Local Council area. What’s more there will be three places reserved for Maori – one whom will be an appointed, not an elected member. There is very likely to be a cry of “no taxation without representation”.
The new councillors who will more than likely be remote from the people of Pakuranga and Howick will put in place a new district plan which, going on past performance, of the present councils will take three to five years to become operative. There will be no private plan changes during this time and there will be no right of appeal to the Environment Court of any aspects of the BIG Auckland Council’s District Plan.

Economic development plays a large role in the BIG Auckland Council’s plans however whilst the Rugby World Cup will bring some economic benefits in the long term business must be able to plan and have some certainty. The report provides no certainty with private plan changes on hold and ongoing restrictions on the supply of land for development business will look to a friendlier environment in which to invest. This is something that we just cannot afford during times of recession.

The Report is very much a mixed bag, but on balance is unlikely to solve Auckland’s problems.