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.

Sir Roger Douglas Speech

Sir Roger Douglas in a recent speech confirmed that he is still the best thinker on matters economic in New Zealand. He certainly has his detractors, mindless buffoons who still believe in some socialist utopia that they imagine existed before Douglas became Finance Minister in 1984.

Douglas points out:

· Households borrowing too much has in part created this current recession, govt borrowing more will not help

· Free markets are not the problem they are the solution

· Recent past policies have been geared towards wealth redistribution not wealth creation

· We cannot spend our way out of a recession


· Labour costs have increased by 60% since 2000 with minimal gains in productivity

· Governments do not create jobs the private sector does – bike paths are a poor investment & will divert people from the productive sector

· Every dollar borrowed by the govt (TLAs) is a dollar unavailable to the private sector & will have to be repaid through taxes (rates)

· In the last 2 yrs $30 billion has been wiped of the stock market

· In the last 1 year $30 billion has been lost on our housing stock

· In total with losses at ACC, Super Fund & finance companies $70 -$80 billion has been removed from NZ’s wealth

· That’s $18,000 for every man, woman & child in New Zealand

Governments not Markets to Blame for Crisis

The evidence is quite clear that it is the heavy hand of government interference in the markets by successive US administrations that is to blame for the current financial crisis not free markets. In its desire to increase home ownership the Clinton administration beefed up the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act so that banks were required to meet mortgage quotas. These quotas were overseen by the Department of Justice and banks which failed to meet quotas incurred heavy fines. Another branch of government Housing and Urban Development chose to increase home ownership through the charter of a government sponsored entity, Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association).

As the government pushed for lower lending standards or demanded greater “flexibility” Fannie Mae no longer required borrowers to provide any down payment. It was only a matter of time before the housing bubble burst.

Furthermore, US local and regional governments enthusiastically follow policies of urban containment – restricting the supply of land for urban development. The unintended consequence of this intrusion in the market has resulted in an unprecedented increase in the cost of land. The worst affected areas in the US are states such as California where land supply restrictions are the most draconian.

It is these various intrusions into the mortgage, housing and land market by governments that has produced the fiscal crisis not free markets.

Getting out of this mire will not be easy but certainly more government intervention is not the answer. To quote Ronald Reagan, “government is not the solution, government is the problem”.

Snow, Snow everywhere

After being warned by global warming alarmists that the ski fields would struggle to provide enough snow for skiing it now appears that there have been record snowfalls this winter. There is so much of the whitestuff in fact that the devices used to measure the depth of snow have proven to be inadequate.

Could it be that the hype surrounding anthropogenic global warming is just that – hype?

However, I suspect that the increased snowfall will be cited as another example of anthropogenic global warming. It is after all a non-falsifiable hypothesis for those who believe.

Land should be released: Commerce Committee

Not surprisingly the number one recommendation of the Commerce Committee enquiring into housing affordability was that land should be released if housing is to become affordable. The Committee noted that the median price of a section in Auckland has increased from $139,000 in 1992 to $443,000 in 2007 an increase of 218%.

In relation to the metropolitan urban limits (MUL) which places an artificial boundary around Auckland the report had this to say:

“We consider that interventions to constrain the supply of land for new housing force up
section prices. We believe that the Auckland Regional Council should carefully assess this
dynamic, taking into account issues such as infrastructure. We believe a more deliberative
approach that focuses on making more suitable land available for new subdivisions would
lead to lower section prices and more affordable housing.”

Many of us such have been saying for years that it is the politicians strangling the supply of land that has led to economic stagnation and the social ills that we see all too often in places like Manukau.

Compare the situation that we are facing in the Auckland region with a dynamic city such as Houston, Texas where land supply is not constrained and housing rises only at the rate of inflation even with the inflow of refugees in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Hard Questions

I spent an hour or so with Edward Rooney of the "Aucklander" at Xtreme Entertainment in Botany discussing, Manukau City Council, crime, police, Len Brown, sport, John Walker and sending down a few bowls.

Police Problems Continue

The revelation in Parliament by National’s Chester Burrows a former policeman that police solved only five of the 53 aggravated robberies of South Auckland shops in the six months before liquor store owner Navtej Singh was fatally shot in a hold-up will come as no surprise to those familiar with the under-resourcing of the police in the Counties Manukau Police District.

This follows stories of lost files and files left unattended as a result of a combination of low staff numbers and inexperience. The average level of experience in the CMPD is just 5 years compared with 15 years in Invercargill.

In 2005 the then Police Commissioner Rob Robinson admitted that there were 11 “unassigned sex cases” after questions were raised in Parliament by ACT MP Rodney Hide. Police Minister George Hawkins admitted that that of the 11 “unassigned sex cases” 5 were cases of rape complaints. Mr Robinson also acknowledged at that time that there were1000 unassigned criminal complaints.

New Zealand has a low ratio of sworn police officers to population and crime and criminals will flourish unless there are more police on the streets of our cities.