This photo was in the David Kemeys’ article in the Auckland City Harbour News today.
The caption read:
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY: Nothing much has changed in Rodney Hide’s supercity plans. The only real concession is a change to electing councillors in wards rather than at large.
Can you think of any others? Obviously keep the captions funny and not nasty.
Interesting piece in today’s Herald on Sunday by Anthony Doesburg about how using open source software for the Auckland Super City could save millions of dollars and allow Aucklanders access to local government in a way they’ve never been able.
E-government, open democracy, a new style of government. Hmmm, think it will happen? Doubt it. Would be good if it did though. Maybe central government could start having some ideas in this direction too, once it can move on from rewriting Section 92A of the Copyright Act.
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:
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.
The Maori Party have been handed a lesson in real-politick. I refer here to Prime Minister John Key’s announcement that there will be no specific Maori seats on the Auckland Super City Council. The slogan “kiwis not iwis” is back in vogue.
A gross miscalculation was made by the Maori Party when they rubbished the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance’s recommendations for Maori representation. Dr Sharples dismissed their report as too weak. He evidently felt that his leverage over the government was such that he could deliver a better result than the Royal Commission.
The recommendations were not weak. They were based on many submissions, meetings and lengthy deliberations. They proposed three Maori representatives, one of them to be appointed by the local tribes. The ballast of this report would have given weight to Dr Sharples’ arguments, but he overestimated the value of the Maori Party in the eyes of the ruling class that controls National. Without the clout of the Royal Commission he was marooned.
Recently I described the exercise of choosing a Maori flag to fly over the Harbour Bridge as an episode of diversionary politics. Dr Sharples will probably get permission from the Prime Minister to fly the flag from the Harbour Bridge on Waitangi Day. However iwi will have to content themselves with a flag blowing in the wind whilst having no presence at the top table of the Auckland Super City.
The tribes around Auckland have historical and ongoing interests in the region. The Labour Party was prepared to include Maori representation as a part of the new structure for the Auckland Super City. We would not have tolerated the irritation of Rodney Hide and his “one percent party”.
Hikoi means “walk” or “march”. This episode shows that Rodney Hide has stolen a march and John Key has just walked over the Maori Party.
My member’s bill went down tonight. It was expected given National and ACT’s declared intention to block vote against it.
It was their opportunity to reassure Aucklanders the super city is not going to pave the way for privatisation, and that Rodney Hide’s wacko ideology is not going to be the super city’s guiding force. Vote for the bill and they reassure Aucklanders. Vote it down and they reinforce Aucklanders’ suspicions. Vote it down they did.
Perhaps the weirdest thing in the debate tonight was the contribution of the Minister of Local Government Rodney Hide. Clearly unprepared, he waffled for 10 minutes, directing oddly personal and patronising comments towards me as the bill’s sponsor, and avoided addressing the substance of the bill.
When I watched TV3 news during the House dinner break I could understand why he seemed distracted. 3News had a leaked email from a senior member of the National caucus saying:
Clearly we are at a crossroads. The ACT party has threatened to end its relationship with National if we allow Maori seats on the super city. Despite multiple arguments in support, its mind cannot be changed.
The email goes on to say:
Consequently I believe the issue is too far reaching and too important for a party presently sitting at 1 percent in the polls to decide alone.
Hide has become a liability to the Government. His two key proposals for the super city: powerless local boards, and councillors elected at large, have met with a tidal wave of public opposition. The Government has already caved on the local boards, and if they have any sense at all they will cave on the at-large councillors.
And on the third of the three issues that have offended Aucklanders’ democratic values Hide is now threatening to throw his toys out of the cot. If the Government follows the sensible idea of guaranteeing Maori representation, he will pull the pin.
Who do you think wrote the email? My guess is it was Steven Joyce. He’s the head kicker who is increasingly calling the shots. He cannot bear it that Hide on 1% is undermining Key’s smiley inclusiveness.
Thanks to Greens, Maori Party, Progressive and my Labour colleagues for supporting my bill. The Not Yours To Sell campaign will continue to defend Auckland’s democracy and our assets.
Campbell Live covered my member’s bill and the super city privatisation issue last night. Rodney Hide first tried to say that John Key had ruled out asset sales but Campbell picked him up on the fact that Key was only talking about state assets, not local ones. Then Hide objected to my bill on the grounds that it applied only to Auckland! He did say he would like to make the case for the privatisation of the ports of Auckland. Good to see three Auckland mayors expressing their support, but strange that Auckland City Mayor John Banks claimed not to even know about the bill.
My bill gets its first reading tonight, possibly as early as 5pm. For details on how to tune in, click here.
Labour, Greens, Maori Party and Progressive are all voting for the bill. It’s Rodney Hide and the Government’s big chance to prove they are listening to Aucklanders. Let’s see if they take it.
This is a video made for Not Yours To Sell, Labour’s campaign to save Auckland’s assets under the super city. Click here to find out more.
Some critics have questioned the need for my member’s bill protecting Auckland’s assets under the super city. The right wing bloggers have worked themselves up into a froth over it. Baseless scaremongering they say. Even Brian Rudman in the Herald questions whether there is any threat to our publicly owned assets. On the other hand, others like Matt McCarten have backed the bill.
Here’s the equation as I see it:
We have a Prime Minister who says there will be no asset sales in this term of government. Hardly a statement to inspire confidence.
Plus: It wasn’t so long ago city fathers sold off one of the most profitable pieces of our infrastructure, the Auckland International Airport.
Plus: Politicians in both central and local government tried to sell the ports of Auckland and nearly succeeded. There are plenty of leaders in the Auckland business community who would like to see the ports sold off immediately.
Plus: Local Government Minister Rodney Hide leads a party that wants to force Councils to sell off their commercial operations.
Plus: Hide is leading a Cabinet-mandated review of he Local Government Act pushing an agenda of rolling back the scope of councils to certain ‘core services’ (namely transport, water, drainage, roads, waste disposal).
Plus: The Government has loosened up the rules on overseas investment. We know that when key infrastructure assets have been sold in the past they have mostly ended up in the hands of foreign owners, with the result of profits heading off shore.
Plus: Infrastructure monopolies like the port and the airport and the water company are natural monopolies. Put into private hands they lead to monopoly rent-seeking behaviour. In public hands they can more easily be regulated to protect the public interest.
Plus: The new super city wraps up $28 billion worth of Auckland assets under one organization, instead of 8 fractious councils, making privatization that much easier were it to be attempted.
Equals: Our community-owned assets need protection. Aucklanders should have the final say on any move to sell them.
One way to do it is to require a majority vote in a referendum before they could be sold. That’s what my bill would do. Check out Not Yours To Sell for more info, and have your say.
Kiwi music legend Don McGlashan wrote and recorded this song for Not Yours To Sell – Labour’s campaign to save Auckland’s publicly owned assets from privatisation.
The song is called I Don’t Think So.
Click here to find out more about the campaign. You can sign up as a supporter, and send a message to National’s Auckland MPs asking them to support my member’s bill that would require a referendum before assets were sold.
The leaky homes problem could do serious damage to the Government’s super city plans if the Government doesn’t front up and reassure Aucklanders that the new super city will accept liability for leaky homes built under the old councils.
In today’s Herald Minister Hide insists the super city will take on all the liabilities of the councils being merged, including leaky homes. Well, derr. It has to. The law says so.
But the question Hide dodged is this. What about houses built and certified under the old councils but for which liability was not established prior to the new super city coming into effect?
I have been told by old local government hands that when the 1989 amalgamations took place the new councils in many cases brushed off claims from people that dated back to the old councils. How can Auckland leaky home owners be sure this won’t happen again?
Leaky homes are devastating for home owners. And the numbers are scarey: 1798 current active claims in Auckland. By my estimates we could be looking at another 1200-1500 cases over the next three years.
The Minister needs to front up.
He also should re-think his barmy plan to put building inspection back into the hands of the private sector, otherwise we risk ending up with another wave of leaky buildings.
Auckland City mayor and super-mayoral aspirant John Banks showed this morning at the super city select committee he was out of step with much of public opinion on key democratic aspects of the bill. Mayor Banks has been perhaps the most high profile but is now an increasingly isolated cheer leader for the Government’s super city model.
He supported the Government’s proposal that a minimum of 8 councillors in the new Auckland Council be elected at large, arguing that when he was a councillor representing Birkenhead on the regional council early in his career he was utterly focused on getting re-elected, and looking after the votes in his local ward.
We are only about one-third of the way through the hearings but I have to say that argument has been pretty well debunked in my view over the past week. MPs and councillors commonly rise above the parochial concerns of their electorates. And if the new super city clearly separates out the regional and local tasks of the Auckland Council and local councils this should not be a problem.
It is also clear from submissions that people fear at-large counncillors would be less accountable. And more likely to come from the eastern suburbs, as was the case before the ward system was introduced to Auckland City in 1989.
Mayor Banks’ submission was also revealing on the question of the powers of local boards. He proposed the new super city council would delegate powers to the local councils, and be given the flexibility to shape the roles of super-council and local councils over time.
This was out of step with many other submissions to date which asked that the powers of local boards would be clearly mandated in legislation and not left up to the discretion of the Auckland Council.
Banks’ own Council has starved its community boards of powers and budget. They are a good case study of why the powers of local councils should be set out in law and not left up to the discretion of the super-council.
Today I’m launching a new campaign to protect Auckland’s community assets. It’s called Not Yours To Sell.
Over the last few months of the super city debate, and the last four days of select committee hearings on the super city bill, it has been clear to me that Aucklanders fear the super city may be the prelude to privatisation of our assets.
Last week my member’s bill – the Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill – was pulled from the ballot. Over the next three weeks I hope we can mobilise public support for the bill, and particularly pressure on Auckland’s National MPs to support it.
If passed the bill would give Aucklanders the right to a referendum before any public assets were sold off. The Prime Minister has said the Government has no plans to sell Auckland’s assets and it would be up to future Auckland Councils. Well…yes, precisely. It is not so long ago that they sold off shares in the airport, and tried to flog off the port. Add to that the fact that we have a Minister of Local Government who advocates privatisation. And a Rodney Hide-led Cabinet review that seeks to scale back local government to ‘core services.’
So if you want to help save Auckland’s ports, water company, transport, libraries, parks, sports grounds… go to Not Yours To Sell, sign up, and take action.
Aucklanders are communicating loud and clear with the select committee on the super city which is now into its third day of hearings. Assuming these three days are somewhat representative of opinion across the city, and bear in mind the committee has been sitting in central Auckland and is yet to move around the cities and districts, a number of themes are emerging:
1. People are grumpy about the rushed process.
2. Rodney Hide’s toothless local boards are getting the big thumbs down. People want community councils with the powers and resources to carry out local tasks. Many have argued for the principle of subsidiarity, that is that unless there is a sound reason for putting a task at the top level then it should be done at the second tier. There is quite a range of opinion on the question of how many community councils there should be.
3. Of the individual submitters a strong majority are in favour of all councillors being elected from wards, as opposed to at-large councillors.
4. Most submitters in favour of special Maori representation. (A sub-committee is spending several days hearing submissions on marae but Maori submitters can also choose to address the full committee.)
5. Many submitters in favour of STV as the voting system especially for the mayor but many arguing for it across the board.
6. Particularly from individual submitters, a lot of scepticism about the proposed package of mayoral powers and the ’strong mayor’ model.
7. And although not everyone keen on my member’s bill requiring a referendum before any assets are sold, a strong common view in favour of keeping local government assets in public ownership.
There is plenty of argument and opposing views as you’d imagine. But I have to say it is heartening listening to so many thoughtful and heartfelt submissions by people who care passionately about our democracy. The powerful current coming through from individual submitters today is people wanting a strong local voice, and wanting their politicians to be accountable (not elected at-large, fewer powers for the mayor). Good democratic impulses I’d say.
The Nats are signalling they are ready to move towards empowered community councils. It will be interesting to see how they handle the pressure on Maori representation and at large v.ward-based councillors.
I was very pleased to learn this afternoon that the police have abandoned plans to merge the Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt police districts. This came as a bolt out of the blue (if you’ll excuse the pun) when it was revealed by way of a leak to the Upper Hutt Leader earlier this year. It seemed completely at odds with the government’s pre-election rhetoric about focussing on frontline policing.
Over the course of the past few months I’ve been helping to organise a petition opposing the proposed merger. Over 8,000 people signed it. We then had to endure quite a lot of buck passing about who should receive the petition. Judith Collins refused to have anything to do with it as it was an operational matter (doesn’t seemed to bother her when it comes to telling the police what to do in South Auckland) while the Police Commissioner refused to accept it because he said it was a political matter. Finally the Commissioner agreed to receive it. Despite the buck passing it had the desired effect.
Peter Dunne and Rodney Hide should take note of the strong public opposition to the proposed police merger. It got people pretty angry and yet I think it would pale in comparison to the response they’ll get if they try to force the merger of the two Hutt Valley local authorities (or force a Super City on the whole Wellington region). Dunne has said he wants a Wellington Super City by the local body elections next year while Hide has said he thinks the Auckland model should be rolled out around the country. They are both ministers in the Key govt. In the absence of anyone contradicting them, we can only assume that’s govt policy!
My private member’s bill to protect Auckland’s assets from privatisation was drawn from the ballot today.
No one trusts Rodney Hide and his cronies to keep Auckland community assets in public hands so my member’s bill will put any decision to sell community assets firmly into the hands of Aucklanders. The bill requires the sale or privatisation of any assets to be first put to a public referendum.
I’m hoping ACT will support the bill. They are big on referenda in local government. In fact Rodney Hide’s recent cabinet paper proposes that councils be required to put any ’significant or irreversible’ decisions to referendum. If flogging off the assets Aucklanders have paid off with their rates over generations is not ’significant or irreversible’ I don’t know what is.
I think one of the big anxieties underlying the super city debate is the fear that the super city is just the prelude to corporatisation of local government, and privatisation of our assets: the ports, the water, and our transport infrastructure, not to mention libraries, parks, halls and other assets. These fears have been fueled by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s proposed reforms of the Local Government Act which seek to reduce council activities to core services. And by ACT’s stated policy to force Councils to sell off their commercial enterprises. Bear in mind also that it is only a decade or so since the right wing were trying to hock off the ports.
My bill, the Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill, would require the Auckland Council to hold a referendum if significant asset sales are being considered. An appropriate threshold for the value of an asset that would trigger a referendum will be developed through the select committee process in consultation with Aucklanders. But the Bill would outlaw the sale of a range of assets including parks, swimming pools, libraries and public housing – other than when a sale might be part of the normal day-to-day portfolio management and has been subject to the normal consultation.
Getting the luck of the draw today was perfect timing. Aucklanders will be following the super city select committee hearings over the next four weeks as the committee considers a couple of thousand submissions. My bill will likely get its first reading on June 29 so we have four weeks to get some good debate going on this issue. I would like to hear any thoughts or suggestions people have about how we can best do that.
Just maybe, the Government is preparing for a climb down on the Auckland super city’s second tier. It has been probably the most vexed aspect of the Government’s super city model. And much as I would like to see Messers Key, Hide and Carter die in the ditch over such an unpopular and misconceived policy, it is good for Auckland if they are about to throw this particular doozie overboard.
To recap: the Government rejected the Royal Commission’s recommendation of six local councils with the power to deal with local issues. Instead they proposed 20-30 local boards with very limited local powers, and the job of community engagement. These have been widely derided as toothless talkshops (by me and many many others). In fact I struggle to recall anyone who has publicly defended the Government’s second tier other than Rodney Hide. Almost everybody else has weighed in against them, most notably two of the Commissioners Justice Peter Salmon and David Shand, but also Lawrence Yule of Local Government NZ, the three horsemen (Mayors Len Brown, Bob Harvey, Andrew Williams), both the Fairfax and APN community newspaper chains, and an array of campaigners and community groups, plus Labour and the Greens.
Local Govenment Minister Rodney Hide wasn’t quite running up the white flag when I pressed him on this last week at question time, but Judith Collins saying the local boards had better be more than ‘tea and scone clubs’ was a hint that support for his second tier was leaking away. Hell, John Key was backing away the week before.
The climb down is now well underway with John Carter (the kinder, gentler face of reform) telling Radio NZ he’d ‘learned a huge amount’ through Auckland community meetings and discussions on the issue and ‘it’s helped focus my mind on the things that matter for people. And where I started some six or eight weeks ago, I’ve shifted personally, myself, a lot.’ And then telling the Eastern Courier how important it is to get the lower tier right, how people were telling him they wanted fewer boards than the 20-30 being proposed, and how they needed to be given their own budgets.
That is heartening. I have no doubt the select committee is going to hear plenty of submissions on this issue so the Government will have no shortage of advice on how to get this aspect of the super city right. For the record, Labour wants to see empowered and resourced local councils with the ability to deal with the important local issues – to keep the local in local government:
1. fewer local councils than the 20-30 proposed in the bill
2. governance and policy making responsibility over local services and assets
3. control over their own budgets
4. powers and responsibilities mandated in law (not delegated at the discretion of the Auckland Council)
It remains a mystery why the Government got it so horribly wrong in the first place, thinking they could ram through these changes without the public really noticing, under the cloak of blaming the region’s Mayors who, ironically, have been doing a pretty good job of keeping local government local. As the Commission argued, if you are going to centralise the big regional functions in the super city, then you must balance that with an empowered second tier of local governance that has the mandate and the capability to do the local stuff well.
Interesting appearance at Finance and Expenditure committee this morning from Auditor General Kevin Brady. He mentioned the last major local govt reforms in 1989 not all being plain sailing. I picked up his cue and asked if this meant he had concerns of a repeat of “technical redundancies.” These saw senior local government staff leave one council on a Friday with a huge redundancy cheque, then start the following Monday at the reshaped new council, sometimes in the same job! Ratepayers were rightly outraged. Might we see the same of someone leaving Manukau or North Shore and joining Auckland Super City Council with a few hundred thousand in the bank? Mr Brady confirmed he and his deputy only yesterday began discussing this risk. They will report further on this issue.
Here’s another angle on the super city issue that hasn’t had any airtime in the public debate so far: hundreds of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of economic output will be sucked out of Auckland’s peripheral cities.
Let me stress again that Labour is not campaigning against the super city per se. But one of the problems with the Government’s handling of the super city is their failure to front up and explain the costs of the project. They’ve been clear that Auckland ratepayers will pick up the tab for the transition but much less forthcoming about what the transition will cost. So I commissioned an economist to come up with some numbers by re-modelling the Royal Commission’s numbers based on the Government’s preferred super city model. That research found that ratepayers will pay up to $750 each for the transition costs. I also found that ratepayers in Manukau, Waitakere and North Shore will also face a hike in their water rates due to the imposition of volumetric pricing – that’s an extra $700 a year for a four-person family.
But these figures are dwarfed by the likely economic impact of the super city on the peripheral cities of Manukau, Franklin, Rodney, Waitakere and North Shore. University of Auckland public economics lecturer Rhema Vaithianathan has used the Royal Commission’s modelling and adapted it to reflect the changes the Government plans to impose, to determine the economic impacts on the cities and districts outside of Auckland City. The Government’s plans will result in a massive centralisation of resources within Auckland City and the research shows how detrimental this will be to the other cities and districts economically and in terms of jobs.
Dr Vaithianathan’s work calculates:
Rodney: annual regional GDP falls by up to $74 million and 270 job losses
Waitakere: annual regional GDP falls by up to $139m, over 680 job losses
Manukau: annual regional GDP falls by up to $189m, 702 job losses
Franklin: annual regional GDP falls by up to $41m, 113 job losses
North Shore: annual regional GDP falls by up to $162m, 658 job losses
The negative economic impact is likely to be even greater than this analysis shows, as it is also likely that council contracts that currently go to small local businesses will be lost. These contracts will be centralised and will probably go to larger firms which can operate across the entire region.
I think the Government hasn’t been upfront about this, but Aucklanders deserve to know how the changes will affect them and their communities. Labour has consistently supported the idea of a unitary council but, like the Royal Commission, supports a model which gives local councils the powers and resources to deal effectively with local issues. This would lead to less centralisation than the Government model, fewer lost jobs outside of Auckland City and less loss of spending in local communities.
* Dr Rhema Vaithianathan is a member of the Labour Party.
Council water staff in Auckland have been given a case of the jitters after Councils received a letter from the new integrated water company asking for lists of staff with their age, sex, CVs, salary levels and whether they are union members.
It is an odd approach to employment relations and certainly not one designed to give confidence and security to staff.
Integration of bulk water supplier Watercare with the councils’ water retail operations is one of the big planks of the whole super city scheme. It is likely the merger will generate some efficiencies which over time may lead to job losses. But asking for age, sex and whether people are in the union? Crikey. You can only wonder that they are drawing up lists of staff and working out who might get the chop.
Watercare tell me there is nothing sinister about the request for info, which came as part of a much bigger due diligence request. They say that the information is needed to help them plan for what positions are needed. I reckon it is understandable that it has set alarm bells ringing with Council staff. I think it is vital that the Transition Agency take a careful approach to managing the changes for local government staff. Staff deserve fairness and certainty. Aucklanders also want to know that the new super city will have the skilled staff it needs to work effectively. A slash and burn approach is not what is needed. Auckland Mayor John Banks blurting out that he thought 40% of council jobs could go, and Rodney Hide’s cabinet paper on local government reform which advocates a radical scaling back of Council operations, will add to anxieties that big job cuts are on the agenda.
Many Aucklanders want a referendum on the super city. Seventy percent in fact, according to last week’s Shape NZ poll. But the National-ACT Government doesn’t. They used to think it was a good idea. And they think referenda should become a regular part of local government in New Zealand. But for some reason they don’t want one on the super city.
Back in 2006 John Key had a private member’s bill on Auckland amalgamation which proposed a referendum.
The Local Government Act allows for referenda on forced amalgamations which the super city certainly is. But the first of the three super city bills, passed under urgency, took that right away from Aucklanders.
The Government says a referendum is not necessary. But in a Cabinet paper on planned local government reforms, released last week, Rodney Hide proposes a requirement for referenda when local government changes are “significant” and “likely to be irreversible”. Go figure.
The Cabinet paper is explosive. It sets out an agenda for cutting back local government to core services (such as roads, footpaths, sewage treatment, storm water and refuse collection), and getting Councils out of “social, economic, environmental, and cultural community outcomes”. This would entail a major rewrite of the Local Government Act, and flies in the face of the vision for Auckland laid out by the Royal Commission.
As North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams has said, “Rodney Hide’s agenda to turn communities into corporations has finally been revealed, putting the meat on the dry bones of his rhetoric about cutting rates and red tape…” ARC councillor Joel Cayford has blogged on this. I’m in full agreement with the Greens on this too.
No wonder Rodney doesn’t want a referendum on the super city. Andrew Williams again: “His paper goes on to suggest there is far too much public consultation in local government and cites the example of the need to ‘consult the public on some decisions – notably decisions to contract major council services to the private sector or to sell shares in a port or airport company’ as an area where public consultation is particularly troublesome resulting in ‘much more information being disclosed’ than is relevant and useful.”
If you had any doubts about the agenda here, it is time to lay them to rest:
Step 1 – ram through your super city changes in Auckland, using it as a test case for the rest of the country
Step 2 – get your mates elected (we saw John Key signal his support for Banks for mayor yesterday)
Step 3 – roll out a radical privatisation and corporatisation agenda for local government.
