Auckland Governance

The Auckland City proposal for the super council is, in my view, broadly the right way to go. Auckland's fragmentation has seen opportunity squandered again and again by visionless parochialism and turf-protecting of many local councils in the region. In this respect Auckland is no different to any other major urban area that grew from a collection of previously different municipalities.

Where I think it misses the mark is the actual democratic representation will be limited to 21 councilors. That's for over a million people. That's terrible. Given the new Council's penchant for closed meetings, I would not be optimistic that the politburo being proposed by Auckland would be anything like "open and transparent" in operation. Any one "neighbourhood" will be required to put all of their representational eggs in one basket - a single person. This conjures up all the problems that used to bedevil representation in Wellington under First Past the Post. In every neighbourhood in Auckland there will be thousands of people who end up with a representative who doesn't actually reflect their community values or how they see the world.

I'd like to see a single council, but divided into wards / regions of geographic common interest. Each of those wards would see at least 5 representatives elected usng STV (single transferable vote). We could have as few as 5 or 6 wards, for a total of 25 or 30 councilors. Not much larger than the Auckland proposal, but vastly more representative of the 'whole' of each of the communities they come from. I'd prefer to see anywhere up to 10 wards, for a total of 50 Councilors. Auckland is a big place and the Council needs to have enough talent / horsepower to come to grips with the detail of running the place so that they can have a decent chance of doing a good job of it. These people will be busy people. Cost? How many millions have been wasted on BAD decsions in recent years? A lot more money than an adequate Council would cost.

"Lord Mayor"? That's got to be a Banks-ian brain fart. Or maybe it's an obvious target to be shot down as a "concession" while the main agenda proceeds. Whatever. "Mayor" will do. Make the other 4 mayors "Deputy Mayor". Or whatever. John Banks doesn't need to be any more grand than he already thinks he is.

The North Shore City Council appears to share many of my concerns about representation and transparency and community. Where I differ with the NSCC is that I do think amalgamation is necessary. Otherwise, the differing flags of each "city" will remain rallying points for parochial interests and there will be no requirement or incentive for participants in Auckland government to see the big picture.

In Toronto, Canada, many of the same problems went on for ages until 10 years ago when the Ontario provincial government banged all the disparate, historically mandated local councils together into one Toronto City Council. The result - after all the bitching and moaning subsided - was a city that sees itself as it is: one big community. Having spent 6 months there last year, it was interesting to note the LACK of time being wasted by the inter-council bitch-slapping that used to go on.

Unfortunately for Toronto, the provincial government was a fairly extreme, by Ontario standards, Conservative government. They used the amalgamation as an excuse to strip the new city of hundreds of millions of dollars of provincial funding. That resulted in the new city NOT being able to do things the 6 old councils used to be able to do....leading to much hatred of amalgamation and of the provincial government. Parochial attitudes die hard. The Conservatives were kicked out at the next election and they don't hold a single Toronto seat in the provincial legislature. The rest of Ontario sees Toronto in much the same way as the rest of New Zealand sees Auckland. There were votes to be won by kicking the Big City. But there were votes lost, too. There is a warning there for any government in Wellington that was silly enough to try to do the same to a new, mega-Auckland.