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.

Soulless city of Auckland

An Australian couple has upset Kiwis with an online expat guide which warns that Auckland is a "horrible soulless city" and its inhabitants are "hobbits" who cannot dress properly. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Well I have spent a bit of time to read that guy's blog. I'm not a serious traveller therefore I can only comment on Auckland. What that blogger blogged is indeed bit over the top,but most of the comments, although somewhat exaggerated, are also facts.

Auckland indeed lacks a bit of culture, that's how I feel at least. By "culture" I mean not just the presence of culture diversity, but ... how do I put this, a community that respect, cherish, and upholds "serious" culture (not just the culture of get drunk in a pub every Friday evening.) as one of the important life aspects.

What I was really surprised about is not the whines from this Aussie expat, but how Kiwis reacted toward those comments. I mean, it's just a blogger, like myself (possibly you as well), everyone is entitled to have, and publicly express he or she's opinion, and it is a fact of life that no matter how beautiful the Big Sister Helen or the land of Aotearoa is, it is not possible to win a 100% approval rate - that only happens in North Korea, even the Chinese parliament got more nay votes nowadays.

It's not even a news, there are more than a million blogs out there and I believe a fair amount of them is about New Zealand. Single this blogger out only means that 1) marks the new low of NZ journalism, 2) maybe the view of that blogger is not uncommon and there's a need to discuss it on a higher public forum.

So I was really surprised that many "serious" organisations, like Destination Rotorua or New Zealand beer brewery , treated the comments that seriously, even " took exception to an open letter on the site" ... oh I just see a short cut for bloggers who want to get famous. I actually quite liked the smell of Rotorua, but if I badmouth them once maybe I can generate a bit of traffic to my site as well, but I'll only do that after I put up Google Adsense:)

BTW, wonder where's the sense of humour, or it's just like the Nationalists can make fun on everyone else, but when others make fun of Nationalists, their feelings are hurt.

Section 92A dead

Finally we see common sense prevails.

Most of the us who stood up and against this copyright law is not anti-copyright, I respected copyright holders' rights whenever I can. However, protection of copyright involves a mutual respect, but I feel this Section 92A, promoted by copyright holders, deeply undermines my right.

Since they treat netizens guilty of violating their rights before convicted, I also got a nice name for what they did which caused a great outrage among netizens: "copyright terrorism".

So Section 92A is dead but it doesn't mean this country does not respect copright.  New copyright protection measures will restart from scratch, I hope the new law got more common sense in it.

TVNZ's real problem

The government.

TVNZ is not a fully funded state broadcaster like BBC domestic broadcasting because as a small nation, we probably cannot afford it. Therefore its channels carry adverts, and is exposed to the what Nats are usually proud to say "real business world" out there and needs to compete its way out.

Under the current economic situation, we see countless number of privately owned businesses experiencing significantly reduced profit, or even go into deficit. If you are an investor to a large corporation, you wouldn't expect your dividend to be as high as last year, or you may just get ready to sacrifise your dividend for a year to keep your investment safe.

So Why John Key, aka "the man with real economic sense"  is expecting a unrealistic dividend from TVNZ:

From the Crown's point of view we have $200 million invested in TVNZ, that's the equity in TVNZ, if we don't receive a return on that equity and we don't receive a dividend, that's less money the Crown has to pay for hospital beds, less money it has to pay its doctors and less money it has to pay its teachers.

Nice words, sounds sympathetic, but does it really mean anything? Last year TVNZ paid out $10 million to the government, don't tell me that our health and education system would fail for a shortfall of $10 million dollars.

As TVNZ is going to cut 90 employees, more pressure will be added to the dole queue. So what National government did is, forcing TVNZ to reduce costs by reduce amount of local made programmes (that's what state owned media is for, in my opinion) and axes kiwi jobs to meet government dividend demand so Mr Key can have more money to pay for hospital beds.

I hope those people who will lost their job could find a job soon otherwise the whole thing is just pointless - a large chunk of the few million dollars dividend will be used to pay the added dole queue anyway, when those people really should be working and contributing at least some value back to our society. Now you call that real business sense?

By the way, I remember this government was claiming itself dedicated to keep kiwi jobs.

It's very hard to believe there's no hidden agenda behind this movement.

Weird

Nobody likes to pay taxes, especially Aucklanders and the right. So what happens after government axes the Auckland regional fuel tax proposal? Well,railways have to be built, Auckland needs to move forward, we need to find that money somewhere, and here's how (via Beehive):

• replacing regional fuel taxes with smaller increases in national fuel excise and road user charges, which feed into the National Land Transport Fund
• confirming the government's commitment to Auckland rail electrification
• committing an additional $258 million of the government's capital allocation to land transport over the next two years
• amending the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding to make more money available for state highway construction

I wonder how rural people, especially the nats would think of the first point. But it's a fair measure I have to admit, as the whole country can benefit from a well-funtioning Auckland.

So ... end of tree huggers?

Councils say they will not be able to stop people cutting down native bush and coastal pohutukawa in cities under planned changes to environment laws.

The Government wants to take away councils' power to stop trees over a certain size being chopped without permission. If the change goes ahead, landowners will be free to cut down any tree on their land unless it is listed in their council's district plan. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Oppositions to the councils' tree management claim that "it's their land so they should be able to do anything they like", but let's face it, it's no different than how a teenager feels like "I'm free and independent so I  can do what ever I want", we all get that kind of feeling during our adolescence time, most grow out of it, but sadly, some don't.

The basic principle of the Resource Management Act is the "effect based approach", as long as you can demonstrate that you can minimise the adverse effects on  environment, even a non-complying activity can get a go ahead.  I was a "tree hugger",which means that use trees as an excuse to stop development in quite a few cases,  in one case, a two storey new residential development is proposed on about two lots away from my friend's house, developer wants to chop down a 60m+ tree to provide an extra one or two parking spaces.

From my friend's  point of vew it's actually quite hard to see that tree, just the top part,  but I still criticized the development plan anyway because this is just too ridiculous. If development cannot get ahead without chopping down that tree I may just let it go, but such a tall tree for a mere parking space? Quite a lot of people still don't treat environment protection as part of citizens' responsibility, and think that as optional.

Property right was never absolute, before the current law system there were several common law principles existed, such as good neighbourliness, as long as you don't affect your neighbours' economic well-being then you should be fine. But we don't live in the beginning of the industrial age, we understand the value of our environment more than just a place to dump all our wastes for free.

Not a good one from National, I say, central government should minimise its influence on local government.