Editorial: Feuding mayors prove the point

O wad some power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as ithers see us! once wrote Scottish poet Robert Burns. Auckland's mayors should take heed. Do they not realise how daft they look?

Though the mayoral squabbles have eased in recent days, anyone who believes that sweetness and light have broken out is an unreconstructed Pollyanna.

The mayoral war of words that greeted the report of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance and the Government's swift response to it, has merely proved the commissioners' implied message that their cities comprise a sprawling metropolis, the councils of which prefer to work in silos, believe one community is superior to the others and that, given the opportunity, mayors would rather engage in verbal battle than unite to secure a structure that would benefit most of those they purport to represent.

To their credit, Auckland City's John Banks and Waitakere's Bob Harvey seem to have glimpsed what the commission was trying to achieve when its three members delivered their report late last month. North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams and his Manukau counterpart, Len Brown, seem unable, however, to see beyond the prospect that their mayoral chains will have to be stowed for good after the next local body election, possibly now two years away.

The kerfuffle with which the four mayors responded to the Government's post-commission plans simply underlines why much of the rest of New Zealand regards their politics as toxic and why reorganisation of local government north of the Bombay Hills is urgent.

Mr Banks is itching to be mayor of an Auckland "supercity" and has tried, unsuccessfully, to remain above the fray. But he is at odds with the leftist minority on his council and certainly with his North Shore counterpart, who has an idiosyncratic approach to local governance.

Mr Brown's concerns seem the most genuine, given the Polynesian nature of his city.

The Cabinet's rapid response to the commission's proposals has taken some political breaths away. But Local Government Minister Rodney Hide and Prime Minister John Key are doing no more than borrowing from the change-meister himself, Sir Roger Douglas.

He proved, in engineering the Lange government's economic revolution in the 80s, that if change is wrought quickly enough, opponents have little time to muster their forces and frustrate an administration's intentions.

The mayors seem incapable of grasping that their bickering only reinforces for non-Aucklanders the value of having someone else dominate the agenda when change might be vehemently opposed.

Proponents of local body amalgamation in the Wellington region, take note. Those who oppose unification certainly will.

If the capital's movers and shakers not all of whom are local body politicians still want the National-led Government to apply the Auckland "supercity" template to the southern North Island, they need to move quickly and be ready to enumerate the benefits before the objectors move in to queer the pitch.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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Romy   #1   09:24 am Apr 22 2009

You seem to miss the point.

In a democracy, you don’t ram down the throats of people “a structure that would benefit most of those they purport to represent” without giving the people a chance to say what they think about it. It doesn’t matter how good or bad the structure may seem to be.

I liken the Royal Commission and the government’s move (and your advocacy) to a mother who wants to gift her young child. She sees her child learning how to use the computer by typing out words. She runs out to her neighbour and tells her, “My child is typing out words on our computer. Can you get her a gift that will encourage her?” The neighbour dutifully goes to the shop and buys a gift, wraps it and presents it to the child. Voila! A portable typewriter!

I am glad that the mayors engaged in a verbal battle rather than unite in support of the structure because if they did not, they would have been totally disrespectful of the people they represent.

“Verbal battle” is the means of democracy. Or would you rather see a people’s parliament on the street?

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