I have been shocked by how many of the Government’s members don’t seem to think there is anything strange about handing over government of our nation’s largest city to a whole lot of hand-picked business appointees.
The Herald is shocked too. As are most of the mayors, the Chamber of Commerce, and the overwhelming majority of the public who turned up to speak to the select committee on the third bill.
National and ACT are so imbued with neoliberalism they are quite happy to throw out our tradition of representative democracy, and replace it with a corporate governance model. That’s what they are doing. They are wrapping 90% of Council operations up into commercial entities with their own boards of directors and CEOs. These commercial entities can meet in secret and won’t have to publish agendas, minutes, or subject themselves to members of the public asking pesky questions. And that is the whole point of it, keep the people and their elected representatives out of it.
Transport, the waterfront, water, economic development, investments and regional facilities are all due to be corporatised so they can be managed behind a veil of commercial secrecy.
One private sector group at the select committee last week defended the proposal to structure transport into one of these commercial entities by saying this would avoid transport issues being “politicised”. He meant that people and politicians would no longer be able to argue publicly about priorities and what should be done.
I am not against the commercial model in all cases. There is a place for it, as there is for the State Owned Enterprise in central government. But this Government is going way too far, applying the commercial model to the vast majority of Council operations. Not a shred of comparative analysis is available to demonstrate they have considered different organisational models or applied some criteria to guide this decision making.
What is more, they are cutting the number of elected representatives for the region in half. I know the anti-politician crowd will celebrate that, but seriously, it will be all but impossible for 20 councillors to be accessible and give meaningful democratic representation to 1.4 million Aucklanders.
Add to that the heavy centralisation of power in the super council, leaving local boards with little in the way of real power, a far cry from the capable empowered local councils that the Royal Commission recommended.
It is a gutting of our democracy. Centralise power, take it away from communities and the city’s periphery and put it in the hands of a small number of politicians who will be remote from the people. Hand over administration of the city’s assets and services to council-owned companies, leaving the politicians to draft annual statements of corporate intent.
It all fits the contemporary neo-liberal fad for commercial governance. Small hand-picked boards in the privacy of boardrooms can make decisions efficiently. Democracy on the other hand is messy, time consuming and sometimes inefficient. There is always a balance to be struck but Aucklanders are now waking up to the fact that this Government is imposing an extremist unbalanced model.
The Government and the cheerleaders of this blighted project are forgetting some essential lessons about liberal democracy in the modern era. That the vote was a concession to contain the tensions generated by market capitalism; society and economy might be unfair but at least we can all vote Governments in and out. That the rulers rule because the ballot box allows the people to give their consent. That it is far from perfect but no one has come up with a better system yet.
ARC chairman Mike Lee put it well last week at the select committee when he described the third super city bill as Rogerpolitics. Rogernomics was the transformation of the economy in the interests of the few, now National and ACT are using the super city to do the same thing to Auckland local government.
I suggest elsewhere taht the Supercity is an
“opportunity for active mobilisation and deepened debate about democratic institutions and practices and a stronger civil society. That opportunity poses a challenge – how can we promote increased debate and action for a stronger participative civil society? I reckon that, first, many parts of civil society are actively pondering this issue. It is a live issue. Second, the key issue is how do we create fora which allow the disparate locations in which this debate is active to combine force to greater collective effect. In such measures lie important opportunities not only to protect our partial democracy, but also to promote its widening and deepening.”
Would have thought they would have learnt of the dangers of creating a power vacuum from Iraq, Eastern Europe post Cold War and the French Revolution. Society disconnects from Government, the sharks move in and corruption abounds.
The next step is public executions. Hopefully we can avoid the gillotines when the revolution turns on its creators.
Bleepin’ NACT Grrr.
It is a funny day when I find myself in complete agreement with the Herald and with John Banks.
I wonder if Auckland Transport will survive this…. seems like Joyce went against so much advice when creating it.
I just wish the Herald had done this a month ago before submissions on the Bill closed.
To be kind to him, Rortney is just misguided having surrendered to his mentor’s ideology years ago. Key, on the other hand, is showing his true colours behind all the stage managed spin, smiling photo ops and heavily polled diversions. If these guys get a second term, the super city template will be applied to central government, to complete the job Lange stopped Douglas from finishing. The ‘last best hope’ is to kill this super city now, before it can infect everything else.
But business could run the country and Auckland better than deomocratically voted officials. We should have done this long ago, yay for big business, they never get things wrong.
Do they?
Democracy to the Greeks also meant rule by free white males to the subjugation of all others.
So I guess what NACT are doing fits the idea of demokratia
Transport Blogger- I agree entirely, the Herald outrage seems hollow given it is post submission stage.
Perhaps this is the Government’s plan to solve leaky buildings… sell up the household goods to pay for the new homes.
Waterboy, yep, that XT thing is a run away success. Not to mention a certain Kiwisaver fund.
BNZ was pretty good in the 80’s too Jennifer, not to mention ACC currently.
Jennifer – let’s not forget ALL the superannuation funds we all paid into since the 80’s which barely return above 0% and some return consistently less than a simple bank deposit…
The Finance Industry
The Developers who voluntarily liquidate their companies when the current property development is finished to avoid any liability and then start another for the next project…
I absolutely believe some corporatisation of Council cant hurt, business sand business expertise absolutely has a place in helping things run better and be more cost effective BUT to make Ministerial appointees the majority on new Boards is more than a violation it is an insult to us all
Funnily enough Tracey, superannuation is a very good example of yours on why governments have consistently let us down.
Very quickly, Muldoon promised 80% of the average wage from the age of 60, that’s what the promise was. Now, it is 66% of the average wage from 65.
You do the maths on what continual broken promises by governments have done to pensioners in this country. That is a destruction of wealth by, for and on behalf of governments.
Do I have an option though on whether to continue to rely on these broken promises by politicians? No.
Do I have an option on where to invest my own money? Yes.
I know what option I prefer.
Gooner yes Muldoon stole from my parents. However the superannuation industry has abysmally failed since the 1980’s, when Govt failed us. Both have failed. So where does that leave those who indulge in the it’s all govt or all business or nothing? I’ll tell you where on another planet where I wonder if the sky is blue for them too.
You have an option Gooner, you can have Muldoon or his ilk steal it or you can rely on so-called experts to steal it from you under the full protection of the law…. when things go wrong, like B Hickey’s article this morning, always blame the dopey consumer who ought to have known better about things they don’t know anythig about and so rely on “experts”.
It’s a money-go-round boys and girls, but not everyone can get on the carousel.
The Cullen fund was a beam of light in an otherwise sad 20 years of superannuation for public and private sector but this government stopped contributing at the very time it should have continued, when the market was at bottom, to average out the investments you have to keep investing when things are good and bad. Funny John key with his background missed that fundamental? Yeah right.
jarbury has changed his name!
Tracey, and don’t forget the leaky homes crisis. The tories slashed away all the ‘red tape’ and set up private firms to consent and certify, all of which went bust and headed off to the Gold Coast. Yep, tory deregulation, handing it all over to the competitive private sector, certainly delivered a big win there. Now, like all these failed tory privatisation schemes, the poor old taxpayer has to pick up the pieces when it all goes bad.
Gooner, I see Rortney is holding an ACT party meeting on the Shore tonight. Hope he’s not using VIP transport. User pays, remember.
I won’t be there jennifer so you’ll have to go and ask him.
Gooner, the meeting is billed for Rortney to ‘report on ACT’s performance and achievements’. So the introductions will take longer. Should be out of there in a few minutes. He could take names for the list of CCO appointees, after all, that’s what this super city is all about, right?
He has his meeting on north shore, then he’s on 7pm free advertising, what an offensive he’s on… paid by us of course to help him promote himself, er his party