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”.