Local government’s worst kept secret has finally been revealed with the tabling in Parliament of the Auckland super city committee’s report. Major decisions have already been announced by Government (powers for local boards, Maori seats) or leaked (the carve up of Rodney), but check out the bill and commentary to see just how badly this has turned out.
It’s a shocker. After the Royal Commission’s marathon and widely praised effort, and months of public debate and select committee hearings, the Government is offering up a flawed, unbalanced and undemocratic super city model.
Key elements:
- Too few councillors – only 20 to represent 1.4 million people.
- Councillors elected from multi-member wards that will be so big as to be at-large under another name.
- Executive powers for a mayor that will unbalance the relationship with councillors.
- Local boards – too many and too small, chopping up established communities of interest like Manukau and Waitakere.
- The denial of Maori representation.
- The carve up of Rodney and Franklin that will put the Hunua dams, the northern beaches and precious regional parks outside the city.
Nothing to protect public assets from privatisation. Nothing to give 6500 local government staff any assurance about their jobs.
The whole process has been mishandled from day one: first the Nats’ breaking their campaign promise to consult Aucklanders on the findings of the Royal Commission; then the first bill rammed through under urgency; the confiscation of Aucklanders’ right to a referendum on the changes; and then a compressed and rushed select committee process; topped off by Rodney Hide’s resignation threat scuppering a proper decision on Maori seats.
What should have been a bright new day for Auckland local government has been tarnished. So flawed is this bill that Labour will be voting against it.
This is disgraceful.
Funny thing perception – Im looking at the items you mentioned as key elements and think they are doing a great job and make tons of sense.
Long may they keep it up.
And on the subject of the super city – I hope we get a super mayor in Banksie !
Friday evening dump of news. How interesting
Checking the wording of the new act very carefully. My hunch is some of the biggest changes are hidden in the detail without a mention in the summary
Blah blah blah…oppose. Blah blah blah….wrong. Blah blah blah….undemocratic.
This type of melody Phil is very, tiresome. Very very tiresome.
Peter Salmond told an audience in Auckland yesterday that Hide’s performance was excellent in terms of transparency.
But I realise Labour knows best.
I agree this report is hopeless.
The powers of the Local Boards are still not any clearer. The ATA (a non elected, non accountable body) now has the huge job of clearing this mess up.
They haven’t even specified how large the wards will be, how many councillors per ward will be elected and the relationship of the boards to the wards. What was the point of all those submissions?
What about the relationship of the CEO, staff, mayor and council and the boards?
What about the relationship of the new Transport authority and the water providers to the council? Can someone please ask?
1.4 million reasons to fix this mess of a plan. I need a drink, later.
Gooner, blah blah blah … Hide has the midas touch … blah blah blah … we won you lost eat that … blah blah blah … private good public bad … blah blah blah … we know best … blah blah blah … we make the rules … blah blah blah … trickle up … blah blah blah
I’ve been moderating philu for this type of comment. Warning issued Jennifer – this is not kiwiblog. Trevor
Jennifer, and the Rt Honourable Peter Salmond is lying?
Out of context selective quotes don’t cut it. Is that the best you can do?
I was in the room Jennifer. It was his opening line in a long speech he gave.
It’s certainly better than Mr Twyford’s negative, whinging rhetoric that frankly Auckland is tired of.
Will Labour keep their minority report and make the amendments listed in it when they are next in power..? Unless they make a commitment to do that, I have no option but to consider this policital spin, as is the job in opposition…
Gooner, what Auckland is tired of is being hoodwinked and lied to by Hide, to the point where he and his henchmen have corrupted the process so venally that the public have lost all enthusiasm and hope for the new super city. Which of course is likely part of their plan, to lower the turn out and get the otherwise unelectable uber-right-wingers elected.
And example of Hide double-speak. Hide told the public this afternoon that ‘he listened to the people and they wanted their representatives elected from wards and we have listened to them’ yet the report says ‘all 20 councillors of the governing body of the Auckland Council should be elected to represent wards, at least for the initial 2010 election under the new governance structure.” Say what? Wards for 2010 and at-large for 2013 and onward? Who advised us to read the fine print? Good advice.
It’s not a day of reckoning for Auckland. It’s a day of reckoning for Labour. And I reckon they haven’t got a bloody clue what to reckon.
If it goes through in the proposed form, it will inevitably require further fixing sometime in the future, which, I fear will be MR Key’s and Mr Hide’s legacy.
Also immediately interesting is the attack on Mr Brown by Mr Trotter over at Bowalley Road. Whatever the final model, the Left muat win power to scupper the Right’s business agenda for Auckland. The internecine stuff at the heart of Mr Trotter’s commentary is not helpful.
Despite the fact he’s spot on Robert.
Too few councillors? London has 25 for 7 1/2 million!
Trevor, and where’s the warning to Gooner, whose lead I was following and whose approach I was lampooning?
Yours slightly worse – close call Trevor
This is just like Question Time.
Point of Order!..
I read the committee report at about 3.10pm this afternoon – certainly made for interesting reading. The Maori Party minority report is absolutely scathing of the decision to not have Maori seats – but what will they do about it I wonder?
Interesting that apart from the 1 member for Rodney & Franklin districts the rest of the wards are yet to be set both in terms of their boundaries and also in terms of the number of councillors they will have. The report does suggest that they should be multi-member wards – perhaps we’ll end up with 9 wards with 2 councilors? That would be better than six wards with 3 councillors each I reckon.
The two big issues – powerless local boards and at-large councillors – are gone, which is good. However, the whole “let’s split Rodney District” is a real bizarre decision. The Auckland Council will own regional parks that aren’t actually within their jurisdiction. How bizrre is that? And Watercare will own dams outside their area too… slightly odd once again.
I hope that Kaipara District work on their District Plan and don’t see their newly acquired lands as a cash-cow for redevelopment, leading to Auckland sprawling even further north. Perhaps this a ploy to allow enough development so that Steven Joyce’s Puhoi-Wellsford motorway makes sense?
That Northern sprawl is a something I’ve been worried about for a while to Jarbury, it’s the only way that motorway makes sense and this does nothing to alleviate it…
It seems to me that there will be another series of nation wide ‘89 style reforms coming down over the next few years with us ending up with 15 or so unitary authorities and the Chathams..!
In that case let us hope if this silly decision doesn’t work out the future Auckland/Northland Council boundaries can be re-adjusted…
so what’s Labour going to do about it?
Well nothing really.
No wonder half the population leaves for Australia. A plague on both your houses.
[Edited, abuse - admin]
There have certainly been some good changes made – although the boundary changes to the north are truly bizarre. To the south, what’s wrong with the current ARC boundary?
After years of consultation and reports and the Royal Commission what has been delivered is a slightly different ARC as a unitary authority; community boards with more powers and the removal of the existing councils.
Why did we need all this consultation and kerfuffle for that?
What were you really expecting Gooner? I always thought the city councils were too big to be local but too small to be properly regional – stuck in the middle in a pretty ugly way.
Hopefully this system will work better. I am curious about the changes to the mayoral powers, perhaps someone with a bit more knowledge on the matter might explain how the select committee process changed the mayoral powers (enhanced them I think) and whether or not that’s a good thing.
@jarbury – on the southern changes, the line from the government was it was changed to match natural water catchments if I’ve read the reports right…
And it seems to me, the mayoral changes are the difference between a Prime Minister and a President… I.e. A PM appoints members from his party to cabinet and has to be careful (unless a challenge happens etc) while say the US President appoints his Cabinet…
From my understanding the mayor has gone from simply being able to appoint the chair of a committee to being able to appoint whoever’s on that committee and to be able to decide whether the committee exists at all.
That seems a significant change, but I’m not sure.
20 councillors is quite reasonable if there is adequate lower representation – it just means that the average person deals with someone lower down the tree rather than directly with a councillor. Think of it like your electorate secretary deals with inquiries on your behalf as you can’t be in the office 24/7. Surely you are not seriously suggesting 40 or more councillors, a meeting of that number becomes hugely unwieldy.
Maori have representation the same as we do, not through seats, but I don’t see any special reserved seats for anyone else.
Labour was always going to vote against it, since they did when it was introduced, LOL
This is a very condensed post i.e. it glosses over major issues, no substance of debate because there in reality isn’t any substance to the complaints. Ah um, I don’t remember any referendum in 1989, do you? well actually there is no requirement to hold one, and I’ll just point out we have just had a nationwide referendum that Labour said they would ignore.
Nathan Mills: The different regions of London are each run by a London borough Council that has a significant degree of authority, meaning that London has rather more than 25 councillors.
Swampy, would love to have a debate over the issues raised by centralising everything in Auckland Council chambers and the Beehive.
It would be a big mistake to view this through the Nat-Labour prism as it seems that politicians of all sorts seem to propose more local decision making and funding when campaigning but run a million miles away from it when in government. When was the last time any politician proposed giving more power to their local communities.
If you are happy with that, fine, but I personally don’t like Wellington appointed transport boards telling me I don’t have enough technical knowhow to have a say over my local pedestrian and road improvements and I certainly don’t like having to share my councillor with 50,000 others when I want to ring up and complain about the intransigience of bureaucrats.
Lets face it, this is a proposal dreamed up by Wellington and a few mayors, supported by bureaucratic power brokers- and the way it is being set up reflects that fact completely.
BTW- what about the proposal that our rates will now go to fund the mayor’s political unit? What a great place for party political staffers to get training and launch their careers. Do you think Labour are going to be unhappy with that?
did anyone see Marae on Sunday with the Super City debate. They had Hyde, Horomia, te Heuheu and the young Maori guy who helped arrange the Auckland protest .. can’t remember his name.
The young guy said he/they have given up in the short term re the Maori seats but suggested that if they didn’t get sets, then they will organise protest marches in 2011 during the World Cup while the worlds media were watching.
I consider that to be the 1st shot fired.
Don’t believe me, try and see a replay of the show. I wonder what Parekura thought?
Jabba, missed that show. But that guy’s on to it. Protests during the world cup might be even more effective than Rodney’s toy-tossing tantrum?
[...] And still so much that is wrong with it. More detail here. [...]