Key announces amended version of super city

The Government has backed an Auckland 'super city' council and says it should be in place in time for next year's local body elections. ... Rather than having six local councils, there will be between 20 and 30 community boards. These will not be able to raise revenue or appoint staff. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Local democracy was identified by many, including myself, as the major problem of the Royal Commission report. However, I don't see this is best the solution. I disliked community boards from start, waste of time, not many actually attends, and its power cannot change much for the community. I prefer the parliamentary electorate style, each community elects its own member to the Auckland Council, the member manage local issues and represent that at the higher level.

Anyway, the difference in government recommendation[pdf] is, community boards will gain extra power, such as :

• advocate for their local community and have input into the Auckland Council’s plans
• develop local operational policies for local issues, for example dog control, liquor licensing and graffiti control
• influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities. The local boards will not have the power to set rates, so any rate rise would have to be agreed by the Auckland Council.

Can you imagine 30 sets of dog control and and operational policies? Anyone who still thinks the change will save their rate bill should check if the sky in their little world is still blue. Also I did not notice anything in that report mentioning the delivery of council services,  does that mean all people need to travel to Auckland CBD to get their resource consent done?

The grand council will increase overall efficiency but I don't see a way that could reduce overall costs in both Royal Commission and government report.

Also another thing worth noticing:

Nice try. So National.

Michael Cullen leaving politics

As expected, he has announced his retirement earlier this afternoon, and was then appointed as the deputy chair of NZ post. And also as expected, the appointment is again attacked by a lot of right wingers/whingers.  This is the part I don't like about this country, people judge politicians according to their place on the political spectrum,  not their actual abilities.  No matter who's in power, they are there to improve this country, but this kind of sick, arrogant culture can really put some of NZ's most talented people away.

In my opinion, although Cullen was not prefect, he did a fine job in the past 9 years. National was reluctant to admit that but they also know it for a fact.  He also did a fine job on his baby Cullen fund, I know it has a bit of trouble at the moment, but under the current economic circumstances, which fund is still free from trouble?

I haven't got time to check who is next on Labour's list but if my memory serves me right, the person should be Damien O'Connor. Not too bad, as long as we keep Judith Tizard, the minister responsible for holding PM's handbag out.

Twitter impostors

There is a lot of impostors on Twitter. Nearly every Chinese community party leader, even the deceased Chairman Mao, has a twitter account, and his bio reads like:

I'm living in The Chairman Mao Memorial Hall. Welcome!!!

We all know those twitterers are fake, because we know for a fact that Chairman Mao cannot tweet from the below (or above, as some may still prefer), and for those who are still breathing, they don't need a twitter account as they don't have to go through the general election process.

But in New Zealand and other countries like the States, politicians need get up to date with all the internet new techs although they are usually a bit behind. It is important nowadays for politicians to at least set up a facebook page (although the politician may never have visited "his/her page", as it was done by the employees).

Everyone wants to get their hands on youth votes, but does a facebook page really means those politicians "understand" WWW ? I always feel pity for anyone who thinks they do - the fact is that Section 92A  was passed by all major parties, except two that are, in my opinion,  sometimes genuinely connected with youth - Maori and Greens.

So no surprise on how John Key was tricked by a twitter impostor on  the April's Fool.

What I've been up to

I need another week to sort out my university works before I can resume my update here. However, I still have a online presence, I'm inceasing number of English updates in my twitter,  usually are short comments of news items.

During the week I struggled to finish the first of two presentations I have to do this year. As a moderate-severe stutterer(even this word is difficult to pronounce), it went better than I expected, but I still tend to over-simplify speeches to keep fluency, and that has affected my marks. Second presentation, however, would be a lot more worse, the panel includes city councillors, and a parliamentary party leader.

And I also got several assignment that I need to finish this week.

Earth hour tonight

What you can do (from Auckland City Council):

• Switch off your lights at 8:30pm on the night of Earth Hour
• Turn off any unnecessary appliances
• Spend your Earth Hour creatively: plan a candlelit dinner with friends, or play cards by candlelight
• Spread the word to neighbours, friends, family and colleagues
• Avoid driving anywhere for the view as this results in unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions - what we are fighting against!
• If you live in a tall apartment building, you are even more visible. Let your neighbours in other apartments know about Earth Hour and see if your building can have the fewest lights on. Perhaps you could talk to the property manager about turning off any ornamental lighting that is not needed for security reasons.

I think I'll enjoy this day if a substantial amount of people turn off their lights. Light pollution is so common in big cities, making astronomic observations more difficult each year. People no longer watch the sky - we don't know what we've missed.

Sure nobody expects to "save the earth" by turning off their lights for an hour a year. This is sure not the point, however, this is the least people can do to show that "we care".  Save electricity is just the first step, the most important thing, in my opinion is, save the wasted energy first. I'm doing that everyday, and I hope people can also do the following simple things:

• Turn off or put  your computer into sleep if you need to leave for more than 15 minutes;switch off the monitor if you need to level for 5-15 minutes;
• Switch off all the lights if you are the last to leave the room;
• Adjust the sound of your TV to a moderate level, you can hear from it, but it's not too loud;
• When the price and the quality are the same, use services/goods provided by green businesses - in fact sometimes you can find green businesses are even cheaper;
• Don't leave cellphone battery recharger on for too long;
• Use eco-bulbs if possible;

A common misconception is that people need to change their lifestyle back to stoneage man to be green. I'm not that kind of "greenie" who refuses to use anything powered by electricty, but I believe that  by just doing what you can to reduce unnecessary waste of energy you will also make a huge difference.

If you believe Global Warming is a myth or scam, I respect your opinion :) However, I still recommend you to reduce the wasted energy, even if there's no earth to save, at least to me, I enjoyed a substantial reduction of monthly power costs.

Super City of Auckland

Earlier today the Royal Commission has published the long anticipated report on Auckland Governance. And yes, a super single city structure was recommended. For details see the report, if you are not that technical, just read the news, but don't expect to read it here as I'll only discuss the aspects of my interest.

It's quite similar to what I expected, but bit different from what I wanted (I'll talk about this later). A "supercity" looked inevitable, but I also expected that the current local councils structure will be maintained at some degree, it's common sense that one grand council will not work. There are two common misconceptions in the general public, and a right wing government actually fuelled them: first, bigger is better; second, this investigation is about cost cutting.

The objective of the commission, was cleared stated as:

to receive representations on, inquire into, investigate, and report on the local government arrangements (including institutions, mechanisms, and processes) that
are required in the Auckland region over the foreseeable future in order to maximise, in a cost effective manner,—
(a) the current and future well-being of the region and its communities; and
(b) the region’s contribution to wider national objectives and outcomes.

Most people tend to confuse the meaning of "cost cut" with "cost effective". In fact, in my opinion, one council that takes care of everything is not necessarily cost-cutting, and has the potential to actually increase the total cost.  However, with the right management, the super city council can be cost effective. This change will eventually save a bit of money in the short run, but will it be the sum that public sector killers (aka Nats) wanted? Not necessarily:

Preliminary analysis, which will need to be quantified in detail by the Establishment Board, suggests that adopting the Commission’s proposals for structural change will result in estimated efficiency savings in the indicative range of 2.5% to 3.5% of the total expenditure of the Auckland councils planned for 2008/09 (of around $3.2 billion). This represents estimated efficiency gains of between $76 million to $113 million per year.

113 million sounds like a lot, but when translated into rates, it's really not that many, at least I doubt it - the integration costs, as suggested by the commission, cost even more than that at around 200 million, and I also expect more people employed in the long term to manage such a large city. I can only see substantial cost saving from council owned organisations like water supply, that is likely to same a fair amount of money, but whether that saving will be transferred to you ... well, it's at local politicians' discretion, and that's bit scary, as a unified region is more likely to return a left leaning mayor, due to the majority of the population are  urban.

I agree with the Commission's decision to maintain the current local council structure in principle.However, I don't agree the functions though:

In addition to the elected governing body of the Auckland Council, local democracy will be maintained through six elected local councils operating within the unitary Auckland Council. Local councils will oversee the delivery of services by Auckland Council staff and will undertake local engagement in four urban and two rural districts.

My understanding of Auckland's current problem is, how should I put this, policy inconsistency and fragmentation, and kind of "too locally focused" way of thinking in each local council.  Auckland Region is more connected than ever, and policy of one district council will have direct impact on one or more other councils, and usually council act on their own rather than sitting together to find out the best solution for all.

However, one district plan, one spatial plan, and one long term council community plan will not solve this, in fact, there's a danger to make things even worse as the policy role is even more dictated. The people who understand local issues and needs are not mayors or councillors, but planners and other people who get in touch with the community every day. A single plan has the risk of more imbalanced development.

What I preferred was the super council acting as a over-guiding authority, each local council still makes its part of the district plan, but they come together under the guidance of the grand council and merge as one plan. The current proposal also does this, but it's bit over the top.

Local democratic participation is also important on local issues, so it worries me a bit that all community boards will be abolished.

For the rest of the functionalities of each level of governance, I agree with the Royal Commission.

But the arrangement and structure of the new councils is not that good. I really don't see the need for local councils to have councillors, a single (or three)  councillor from the grand council is more than enough to manage local issues and represent its local council in the region wide context - 22 local councillors for current Auckland city really sounds like a bad joke to me.

In general, I'm ok with the current plan, but there's sure a large room for improvement.

If you were interested in my opinion, here it is. Maintain community boards, but with a larger area, or use the current electorate system we have. Each community returns one grand council councillor,  this councillor is also the local council councillor, and should know the local constituency very well and know where the problems are. In that way we got  a better consistency of policies in different areas, while the local needs and identities (like Waitakere's eco-city) can be maintained.

Oh, and by the way, I don't see reason why National will not adapt the recommendations made by the commission. In fact, I have heard that the law change proposal is already finished, its just waitting for cabinet approval, which shouldn't be a problem at all.