Unfortunately we have run out of these great posters already. Considering a reprint but in the interim you can go to here to download or even donate to help print some more.
Red Alert
Archive for the ‘Auckland’ Category
Labour with Auckland will deliver City Rail Link
Posted by Phil Twyford on October 30th, 2011
When National set up the Auckland super city they loved to say they were doing it so Auckland could speak with one voice. Well Aucklanders have spoken. They want a world class transport system, starting with the City Rail Link. But National is not listening.
Labour is. At a rally today at Beresford Square, just off Karangahape Rd and site of a future underground rail station, Phil Goff announced Labour in Government will contribute one-half of the cost of the City Rail Link ($1.2 bn). The other half will be the responsibility of Auckland Council.
The Rail Link is the centrepiece of the Auckland Council’s draft plan. It will double the capacity of the city’s rail network by making Britomart a through-station, and adding underground stations at Aotea (Wellesley & Albert), K Rd, and Newton. And as the Council’s internationally peer-reviewed study showed, it will transform the city centre.
To pay for it we will cancel Steven Joyce’s pet project, the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway, freeing up $1.69 billion, and quickly implement the $320m Operation Lifesaver plan to fix the highway’s crash black spots and bottlenecks.
As Phil Goff said at the rally to announce the pledge, the city rail link is the next step in building a modern Auckland public transport system. Without it, Auckland will never meet its ambition of being the world’s most liveable city. Aucklanders know we simply cannot continue building more and more motorways.
Aucklanders now have a clear choice: a vote for Labour is a vote for the City Rail Link, and a partnership between central government and the Auckland Council to deliver the world’s most liveable city. A vote for National is a vote for motorways and sprawl, and a Government doing its best to sabotage Auckland’s desire for a world class transport system.
More detail on the policy here.
The battle for Auckland
Posted by Phil Twyford on September 20th, 2011I sat a few seats along from Rodney Hide at this morning’s launch of the draft Auckland Plan, and as Len Brown and his team unveiled the elements of the plan I wondered if the Local Government Minister was thinking ‘where did it all go wrong?’
It wasn’t meant to be like this. Hide, backed by PM Key and Transport Minister Steven Joyce, set out to hijack the process begun by the last Labour Government when it set up the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. Their plan was to go for a more highly centralised model, wrap up most of Council operations in corporate-style CCOs, and then win control of the mayoralty and council. They achieved the first two aims, but Len Brown’s resounding win derailed the bigger plan which would have seen the ACT Party’s current Epsom candidate preside over asset sales, dismantling of the metropolitan urban limits, and roads roads roads.
Instead Len Brown and the Auckland Council have developed a plan that is distinctly social democratic. It assumes active government creating the conditions for and managing growth, reducing social inequalities, and putting people first, all under the banner of creating the world’s most liveable city. It builds seamlessly on the brilliant work done by the Royal Commission, and when implemented will herald big change for Auckland.
Which is why the Government now speaks about the draft plan through gritted teeth. Managed growth? Urban limits? Public investment in public transport? Hands on support for economic development? These things are anathema to the National Party. Not to mention ambitious education and health targets that invite central government to sign on.
The genius of Len Brown’s mayoral campaign was that he evoked an optimistic, inclusive, twenty-first century Auckland with a place for everyone, including the young, the brown, and the new arrivals. It had success stamped all over it. The demographics are all on his side, and John Banks was left looking like an angry old white guy.
National are now being wrong-footed in a similar way. Aucklanders know the motorways and sprawl model imposed by National in the 1950s won’t do any more. We yearn for a vibrant waterfront and central city. Look at the crowds that descended on Wynyard Quarter’s phase one in recent weeks. We know a modern public transport system can be done. We see them everytime we visit almost any Australian state capital.
In a funny way I think Rodney Hide probably gets it. He is an urban liberal with an interest in what makes cities tick. But Steven Joyce and the National Cabinet are so imbued with an anti-urban, pro-motorways, anti-planning ideology. It is setting up an interesting choice for Aucklanders at this election, given that Auckland’s big ambitions cannot be met without funding and support from central government. If you support Len Brown’s vision for Auckland as the world’s most liveable city you are not going to get it under a National Government.
McCully takes charge … again
Posted by David Shearer on September 13th, 2011McCully doesn’t need to apologise, yes he micro-managed the RWC, but everyone it seems screwed up except him. So in his mind it’s perfectly logical he takes charge. A question: did McCully inform Key before he invoked the emergency legislation that cut the Auckland Council off at the knees – or did he just go it alone?
McCully didn’t see the need to let Len Brown know before telling the world he was taking over, not even a courtesy call – and if Key did know, neither did he. Is that a touch arrogant?
Probably, I imagine that he decided the Council deserved it for spoiling his world cup. But rather than pushing the blame on to the Council, it’s more an admission of wider failure. And for the world’s media, McCully has given the story new legs.
And maybe I missed it, but unlike the PM and Mayor, I didn’t hear the Minister for the Rugby World Cup say sorry. But I guess he’s been too busy being more in charge.
First world event, third world rail
Posted by David Shearer on September 12th, 2011I just hope that Saturday night’s transport debacle stimulates some real thinking about Auckland’s transport. The fingerpointing is out: bigger crowds than expected, alcohol, idiots pushing the emergency stop button, though that happened at the U2 concernt and should have been factored in.
But a world class event being held with a third world train system lies at the heart of the problem. When can Aucklanders finally see a world class transport system like other cities of our size? Not with the rear-visionary Steven Joyce in charge.
Other than adding a few more electric trains to the current order, there have been no new rail initiatives announced by this government – except for pouring a bucket of cold water on the Coucil’s inner city link. Without it we can’t expand the system including running trains to the airport – something that Aucklanders see as a top priority and a symbol of us joining other smart cities – because the network will not run frequently enough without a link.
So hopefully Saturday’s failings – in the midst of a great, great opening – will get Joyce out of his yesterday’s thinking and support the Council rather than white-anting its plans.
Why bother with a super city when you want to rule Ak from Wgtn?
Posted by Phil Twyford on September 7th, 2011The impasse between the Government and Auckland Council over transport and urban planning makes a mockery of all the effort that went into creating the super city.
In the House today Transport Minister Steven Joyce was talking weasel words about his attitude to the draft Auckland Plan even though the Government is implacably opposed to Mayor Len Brown’s city rail link, and the plans to restrain Auckland’s sprawl.
The draft spatial plan hasn’t been released yet but cabinet ministers and the Council have been working away on the plan together for months now.
Differences came to a head at a joint meeting between Cabinet Ministers and the Council on August 26 reported by Brian Rudman in the Herald. Sources in the Auckland Council were quoted saying in a discussion on the issue of urban intensification National Ministers “couldn’t stop browbeating … councillors over the error of their ways”, and were “quite intimidating”.
Ministers at the meeting included Phil Heatley (Housing), Rodney Hide (Local Government), Nick Smith (Environment), Paula Bennett (Social Development) but undoubtedly the Colossus of Roads Steven Joyce would have been calling the shots on the Government side.
He won’t support the city rail link because he is hell bent on spending the transport budget on his Roads of National Party Significance. He won’t support Auckland Council’s plan for a compact city because he is an apostle of the motorways and sprawl model of urban development. On both these issues he is in open conflict with the aspirations of Aucklanders.
Mr Joyce pretended in the House today that he didn’t have a view about the draft Auckland Plan.
It all begs the question of why you would bother to set up a unified Auckland, supposedly so Auckland could speak with one voice, and then block your ears because you don’t like what the city’s elected leaders are calling for?
I guess the answer is that from the National Party’s point of view the wrong guy won the mayoral election.
Smart Transport- Day Two
Posted by Jacinda Ardern on August 20th, 2011Posting from day two of the Labour/ Green co-hosted Smart Transport event in Wellington. Focus today is on groups working regionally or nationally on specific campaign issues.
Couple of stand out issues. Almost everyone has noted the difficulty they have had engaging with Steven Joyce on issues. Anyone who has observed his response to any suggestion of alternatives to roading projects will not be surprised by that. But secondly, so much of what is being discussed here is about providing people with genuine choice when the government is instead focused on entrenching the use of cars, and ignoring that it is becoming less and less affordable (not to mention the environmental, urban design, and quality of life issues.) Case in point- the CBD rail link!
And a final word to one group in particular- Rob George from the campaign for better transport in Hamilton is who driving a huge campaign for Waikato trains. Hard slog, but you wouldn’t find a more passionate campaigner. Now he just needs some political will behind him…..
Govt bypasses huge West Auckland town centre
Posted by Phil Twyford on August 9th, 2011We haven’t learned how to do big urban development projects very well in New Zealand. We lack property developers committed to good urban design. We lack the capital markets to fund big projects. Neither central government nor most councils have learned how to unleash the creative potential of the private sector when it comes to big urban developments.
Solving these problems has become more urgent now we have a unified Auckland that aspires to building a world class city. Which is why the circumstances around the new Westgate development in Auckland’s north-west are particularly unfortunate. Two government agencies, Transport Agency NZ and Transpower, have been obstructing a new town centre development tipped to generate 10,000 jobs and increase the country’s GDP by $2 bn a year by 2051.
The development borders on the Te Atatu electorate where I am based. Those jobs and the impressive planned new town centre, will be a huge benefit not only to the people of Massey but all of the West.
I am amazed how NZTA has refused to build motorway ramps to service the northern end of the new town centre even though the Council has offered to pay for them. NZTA is stuck in the mindset that the new Hobsonville motorway and extension to Kumeu opened with fanfare on the weekend is fundamentally a bypass to allow people from the north to get to the airport more quickly, and bugger the idea that it should support the huge new commercial hub being built at Westgate.
Transpower has also been a nightmare for the development to deal with. The high voltage power cable obviously has to be underground but they have sheeted home the full cost to the development, causing numerous delays while refusing to sign a contract that gives certainty. Meanwhile the cost has gone from $5 m to around $20 m.
The developer NZRPG are the only NZ-owned firm who do these big retail developments. They have spent more than five years putting together the plans in conjunction with the Council, not just plonking a new mall out there but designing a town centre based on good urban design principles. They have put $228 m of their own money into it. The least the Government could do is act supportive.
That is why I have written to John Key asking him to intervene and tell NZTA and Transpower to pull their heads in. After all, it is in his electorate.
In Question Time today Steven Joyce said NZTA was in talks with the developer and progress was being made on the question of the ramps. About bloody time after five years of obstruction.
Dear Deborah Coddington
Posted by Grant Robertson on July 31st, 2011Last week, along with Young Labour, I helped to organise a commemoration for the people killed in the horrific, senseless attacks in Norway. These attacks were especially poignant for Young Labour and the Labour Party as a whole because the majority of those killed were attending a Young Labour Summer Camp. Beyond our grief and sadness for Norway and for a fraternal social democratic party, with whom a number of us have personal contacts, it was hard to escape the thought of what a similar attack would mean here, where Young Labour also organise a Summer School on an annual basis.
As the Labour Caucus was gathering in Wellington on Tuesday this was chosen as the day for the event. Red balloons were suggested as an appropriate motif for the occasion. Young Labour wanted to speak, and Phil Goff was scheduled to say something on behalf of Caucus. Phil had lost his voice that day, and as a result Jacinda Ardern was asked to say something. As I am sure you know, Jacinda was President of the youth wing of the international social democratic parties organisation (IUSY) before becoming an MP. She knew many of the people on the island that day. She spoke movingly.
All of the above is why I find the statement you made in your column today about Jacinda using the Norweigan tragedy for political purposes, utterly offensive. If anyone is using it politically it is you, in the middle of a column designed to promote Jacinda’s opponent in Auckland Central, and denigrate Jacinda.
On what basis would you say Jacinda is “known to exploit anything for political gain“? That is a horrible accusation, and one which you should be ashamed of making. Moreover, describing Jacinda as a “catwalk revolutionary” is just the kind of personal, dare I say sexist, mudslinging I am sure you told us in the past had no place in politics, and was one of the reasons you left.
I could go on to critique the rest of your column as well, but I will leave that to others, except to say, that I can kind of see why someone might question Nikki Kaye advocating for increased spending on public transport given the neglect shown towards public transport by this government. A goverment that she is actually a member of, despite what she might want Auckland Central voters to think much of the time!
As you might tell I am angry Deborah. Jacinda is my friend and I stick up for my friends. Though she will probably be furious with me for writing this when she is perfectly capable of responding herself if she wanted to. But more than being a friend she is an intelligent, compassionate, hard-working MP, who deserves far better than your pathetic diatribe.
Yours sincerely
Grant Robertson
Tau shoots himself in foot
Posted by Phil Twyford on June 18th, 2011My opponent in Te Atatu, Tau Henare, is on the rampage campaigning on behalf of West Auckland businesses he says are being unfairly charged higher rates by the Auckland Council than businesses in other parts of the city.
Tau says this is a “constitutional outrage” and that West Auckland businesses are “being bled dry”.
He is right that West Auckland businesses should not have to pay more than those in other parts of the new super city. But they wouldn’t have to, if it weren’t for a silly law passed by National and voted for by Tau Henare.
The Local Government (Auckland Transition Provisions) Act explicitly prohibits the Auckland Council from introducing a new unified rating regime until mid-2012. Not only did Tau vote for it. He sat on the select committee that heard public submissions on the Bill.
Under the Act the Auckland Council is this year allowed only to levy a uniform percentage change on the pre-super city rates – a move carefully designed by National to make sure Aucklanders didn’t get hit by super-sized rates increases just before this year’s general election.
(For the record, Labour voted against it.)
Who is the real taniwha here?
Posted by Phil Twyford on June 9th, 2011The great taniwha stops transport project story has popped up again, this time after a member of the Auckland Council’s Maori statutory board asked whether the Council had considered the impact of the rail tunnel on the taniwha Horotiu who lived in an ancient creek running past the Town Hall and down Queen St.
The modern taniwha has carved out an interesting role where modern infrastructure projects meet politics. The Herald reports taniwha sparked public debate in 2002 when the presence of a one-eyed taniwha called Karu Tahi stopped work on the Waikato Expressway. Taniwha inspired an on-site protest during construction of the Ngawha Prison, near Kaikohe.
The taniwha story provokes very different responses on each side of the Maori-Pakeha divide. For Maori I suspect it is a part of the ongoing struggle to get authorities to engage and listen to iwi and their concerns. For most Pakeha the growing influence of taniwha is probably seen as political correctness gone mad.
But neither of those should distract from the main game here. The real threat to Auckland’s long-awaited rail link is not the Queen St taniwha. It is a roads-mad Transport Minister determined to sink the plan for a modern rapid transit system in our biggest city.
If there is a taniwha threatening the rail link its name is Steven Joyce.
Auckland Unleashed – still time to have your say
Posted by Phil Twyford on May 26th, 2011The new Auckland Council is taking public submissions on the first Auckland Plan – a 30-year blueprint for the new super city. You have until May 31 to have your say.
A lot is riding on the Auckland Plan aka the spatial plan. It is the mother of all plans, and aims to integrate land uses like transport and other infrastructure, as well as setting out the key strategies for the new Council. It is also the main way that Council and central government are supposed to line up their priorities.
If you want to have a say on the future of Auckland this is a great time to do it.
It is especially important if you care about Mayor Len Brown’s vision for a liveable city and a world class transport system. At a time when John Key and Steven Joyce are doing their best to sink the vital central city rail link, this is a good opportunity to weigh in behind Len’s election-winning vision for the city.
But maybe you have strong views on where development should take place and where not, what the Council should spend our rates on, and what the priorities should be?
The Council has produced a great discussion document called Auckland Unleashed. You can email in comments, or take part in facebook discussions.
I have my own local issue I am submitting on. Since moving to Te Atatu and campaigning here I’ve realised how badly served this part of Auckland is by public transport. The transport planners seem to think the West’s problems were solved by electrifying and double-tracking the rail. However the rail line is too far away for people in Massey and Te Atatu who are plagued by a motorway that is jammed up in rush hour and clogs the main feeder routes like Lincoln Rd and Te Atatu Rd.
Adding the odd lane to the NW motorway, or widening the arterial routes is not going to solve the problem. We need a public transport solution that allows people to leave their cars at home. Happily the North Shore Busway offers a very successful model. It currently takes two whole lanes of traffic off the harbour bridge in rush hour and patronage is still climbing.
A dedicated NW Busway is the logical solution, especially given the huge population growth planned for the North West in coming years.
So if you are a Westie who is sick of the traffic, check out out our campaign You’d Be There By Now on facebook, and go here to make a submission to the Auckland Council.
Whatever your desire is for Auckland, go forth and submit!
A lot more than twenty questions and still going Part IV
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 9th, 20111. What exactly did Brash get for his $30k?
2. Did Whale and Hooton get cash?
3. What was Lusk’s role in this?
4. Did Joyce contribute or was he just the fixer?
5. How much of it did Banks pay?
6. Was money only paid into NZ bank accounts?
7. What do Leonie Hapeta and Mark Mitchell have in common?
8. Is employing a specific consultant now a requirement to get a contested National Party selection?
9. Is there transparency during the selection process, ie did all candidates know of the consultant and his assistants roles on behalf of those employing him?
10. Does Whale get paid for all his endorsements of candidates?
11. What do Upston, Gilmore, Woodhouse, Lee Ross, Lotu Iinga, Wagner and Blue have in common?
12. Does Bill English realise that he is being undermined by these processes?
13. Did Goodfellow know his parties party’s consultant was moonlighting with Brash?
14. Has the team offered their services to any other party this year?
15. Did Key know of Joyce’s involvement, and if so did he tell his deputy?
16. What did Joyce say to Lusk last Wednesday night after they were rumbled?
More to come…………
Twenty questions Part III
Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 8th, 2011
1. Who is this guy?
2. At whose funeral were arrangements made?
3. Who was the matchmaker?
4. How much did Brash pay and who funded it?
5. Was support for Joyce part of the agreement?
ps. Might end up being more than twenty questions at the rate the tips are coming in.
Stop Hide
Posted by Phil Twyford on April 14th, 2011
Rodney Hide has announced a fundamental review of local government. He is developing a master plan he will roll out across New Zealand if National-ACT get a second term.
From anyone else this announcement would barely raise an eyebrow. But with the Hide-zilla in control, communities all around New Zealand should be very afraid.
Hide’s agenda here is to “do an Auckland” on the rest of the country. This should be reason enough to put in a shark-filled moat at the bottom of the Bombay Hills. Or a grassroots network of towns and districts declaring themselves Hide-Free, with warning signs erected at the town limits (Welcome to our town, a Hide-free Zone).
Join the Stop Hide facebook group and register your opposition to Hide’s designs on local democracy. Suggestions on how to Stop Hide gratefully appreciated.
Why such alarm? Well, consider Hide’s track record on Auckland, his only real “achievement” in two years as Minister of Local Government.
He talked about allowing Auckland to speak with one voice and then rammed through a forced amalgamation without allowing Aucklanders the chance to decide in a referendum as would normally happen under the Local Government Act.
He talked about putting the local back into local government, and then massively centralised power in the hands of the new Council with local boards left toothless.
He handed over 75 % of Auckland’s assets and services to be run by hand-picked corporate boards.
He took away Aucklanders’ right to decide in a referendum whether their port should be privatised, and opened the door for private ownership of water infrastructure.
He rejected the Royal Commission’s popular proposal for democratically elected Maori seats, and imposed an unelected Maori Statutory Board that has voting rights on council committees and is costing the ratepayer a million dollars a year.
He promised to save the ratepayer money, but delivered redundancy and IT cost blow outs, with rates widely expected to rise once the new system kicks in.
Ignore the weasel words in Rodney Hide’s discussion paper. Look at his record in Auckland. Why should the people of New Zealand believe his master plan for local government in the rest of the country will be any different?
Rodney Hide simply cannot be trusted with the future of local government.
On a more +ve note
Posted by Trevor Mallard on March 16th, 2011
Team New Zealand launched their new boat today. It will be used until 2013 when they will shift to a larger cat for the America’s Cup.
A number of these are being built in Auckland for various syndicates and it looks like most teams are going to use Auckland as their (northern) winter training base. Hopefully there will be some racing here too. At an average (conservative) of 100 per team, and then the bigger spenders at peak times it will be a great little boost to NZ.
Team NZ have announced that Emirates is to continue their commercial partnership.
I got a bit of flack when I announced (twice) government support but the subsequent reports showed the direct (paye and GST) return to the crown was the equivalent of that support – and of course there was tons of leverage which meant they were very good economic decisions. Anyone see that superyacht a couple of weeks ago?
Hope I’m still allowed to go sailing. Was a great thrill to spend some time at the top (100ft?) of one of the old boat’s masts.
Fiasco
Posted by Phil Twyford on February 17th, 2011
Maori representation on the Auckland Council has all the elements of a fiasco: it started out as an ambitious undertaking but has ended in ludicrous and humiliating failure.
Aucklanders have been saddled with an unelected Maori board that has the power to appoint members to Council committees with full voting rights, after the Government rejected a perfectly good option of Maori councillors democratically elected off the Maori roll. And the poor old Auckland ratepayer is going to be stung with $1.9 million a year, or more, to pay for this, depending on what the High Court decides.
So who is responsible? Not Local Government Minister Rodney Hide who says he opposed the provision but had it forced on him by the National and Maori Parties. In Question Time yesterday the Prime Minister denied Hide had breached rules on cabinet responsibility because Hide had been speaking in his role as leader of ACT. Ironically the PM criticised Pita Sharples who called on Hide to resign if he could not accept the Maori board, saying he should not have made those comments under his ministerial letterhead.
So who is responsible if the responsible Minister is not responsible?
The affair is another blow to Hide’s chances of surviving the election. First there was his spectacular fall from grace as the perkbuster and then his role in concealing his law and order spokesperson’s identity theft. Now the self-styled Minister of Ratepayers and one time champion of ‘one law for all’ has presided over a shonky and undemocratic Maori board at some cost to the Auckland ratepayer.
He is desperate to present the Auckland amalgamation as a success in election year but this has well and truly knocked the gloss off it.
It is also a failure of leadership by John Key. First he buckled to Hide’s threat to resign. Then to make good with the Maori Party he inserts a dodgy compromise option into the law without making any public statement. The responsible Minister (Hide) openly slags the law he himself introduced to Parliament. Another Minister (Sharples) calls on the responsible Minister to resign over it. Key sees no problem with it all. The Auckland ratepayer is left to pick up the tab.
Checking for signs of the apocalypse
Posted by Phil Twyford on January 22nd, 2011
I have just been outside to check for any signs of weirdness that might indicate the apocalypse is on us. No sign of birds flying upside down. Water still seems to be flowing down hill. Which makes this morning’s Herald editorial even more of a shock. It is scary. I agree with every word of it.
The Herald says the Government has breached a fundamental principle of democracy in allowing non-elected advisers to vote on Auckland Council committees. Exactly.
But wait there is more. The editorial rightly points out it is the Government’s problem to fix. Rodney Hide, the great advocate for one person-one vote, brought this legislation to the House. Labour and the Greens voted against it. The Herald’s solution: Two dedicated Maori seats elected by Auckland residents on the rolls of the Maori parliamentary electorates covering the Super City. Couldn’t agree more.
Hat tip to The Aucklander who broke the story.
