At the moment every day it seems as though another group, council or prominent person is picking massive holes in the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill. I have previously commented on the feedback on this bill from North Shore City Council, Auckland Regional Council, the Campaign for Better Transport, Len Brown and the New Zealand Herald (by way of an editorial). Since my last post on the matter there have been three further articles in the NZ Herald – all of which absolutely slam the Bill. Waitakere City Council has also released its submission on the Bill, which unsurprisingly is highly uncomplimentary.
Perhaps most interestingly, quite a lot of opposition to the Bill is coming from organisations that one would expect to think relatively kindly of Government reforms such as this – like the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, and the Auckland City Council. An article in yesterday’s NZ Herald outlined some of the concerns that the Chamber of Commerce have about the Bill. Here are some interesting parts from that article:
A top Auckland business leader says there is a growing perception that the Super City reforms are being imposed by Wellington and a select group of bureaucrats.
Michael Barnett, chief of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, said Wellington and Auckland seemed poles apart in their vision for a city with strong regional governance, community engagement, integrated decision-making and better value for money.
Big gaps in the Government’s third and final piece of legislation were unacceptable and needed fixing, he said.
These included lack of detail and accountability for seven “council-controlled organisations” (CCOs) to run many of the city’s functions, including transport, and missing detail on the power and duties of local boards.
“It would be pointless to spend time and money electing more than 100 local board members at local government elections late this year if they don’t have a constructive role to play,” Mr Barnett said.
The business-friendly leader is unimpressed with the Government and the agency designing the Super City for appointing the directors and senior management of the CCOs, and slammed them for working on the cheap and rushing matters.
“The agenda is being set in respect of the types of people that will drive [the Super City] as opposed to people who will give effect to the vision of the new mayor and new council,” Mr Barnett said.
The appointment process and set-up of the CCOs by the Government and the Auckland Transition Agency and the vague roles and functions of the local boards will be among the main gripes when a special Super City parliamentary committee begins hearings next week. About 600 submissions have been received on the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill.
The same article outlines some of the concerns that Auckland City Council has. The very same Auckland City Council whose majority is effectively the Auckland local government branch of the National Party – Citizens and Ratepayers. Here’s what Auckland City Council says:
Auckland City Council – controlled by the National Party’s de facto local body arm in Auckland, Citizens & Ratepayers – is also unhappy with the Government for placing all transport functions under Auckland Transport.
It wants the agency to be restricted to strategic transport assets and functions, leaving local transport matters to the Auckland Council and local boards.
“Transport was a key driver for change to Auckland’s governance, so it is essential that we get it right,” deputy mayor David Hay said.
Auckland and Manukau councils are among a number of submitters calling for the Auckland Council to be given the power to make its own governance arrangements when it comes to council-controlled organisations.
An opinion piece by independent Auckland City councillor Mark Donnelly, in today’s NZ Herald, delves further into some of the problems with this legislation:
Many people were worried about the Super City and losing control of their local environment and communities to a super-sized Auckland bureaucracy.
But what is happening is worse – we’re losing control to Wellington bureaucrats and politicians. Wellington has taken over with its Transition Agency and its Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) where they appoint their directors. Governments are used to using appointments to put “their” people in place to implement their wishes.
Many people have rightly highlighted the dangers in so many council functions going off to unaccountable organisations, which will run major aspects of Auckland on a day-to-day basis, away from public scrutiny.
This worsens the multitude of councils and organisations in Auckland.
We will be getting CCO fiefdoms, each with their own chief executive, directors and staff. All the present plans do is replicate the current silo mentality and imbed it with powerful bureaucracies…
… In my mind the whole point of the governance review was to unify Auckland and put good ongoing governance in place. So far the Government has fallen well short.
Rather than allow the new mayor and council to take control, they seem determined to run Auckland from Wellington, and to tie up the new council in knots from day one…
…So what is the solution? The Auckland council must have full control over how CCOs are used from day one. We can’t have the current bill mandating all transport and roading to the Transport Agency – the new council must decide what parts of this the CCO should do.
We can’t have legislated objectives set by Wellington – again the council must decide these. The council must appoint the chairperson – rather than it be left to other directors as proposed. They must also be able to remove and appoint directors from day one.
A minimum number of CCOs should be established before the new council. It needs to be able to review the CCOs inherited from the Transition Agency, and to modify and enforce the statements of intent. The new council needs to be able to have full control over these organisations.
If the new mayor and council don’t have full control, how can they be accountable? We don’t want a mayor and council that have been neutered from day one.
It would seem as though Wellington got halfway through the Super City reforms, realised that they were creating a pretty damn powerful agency in Auckland, in the form of the “Auckland Council” and got really worried. With the mayor having executive powers, and being a political figurehead for close to a third of the country’s population, it would seem as though Wellington got really really worried about the monster they were creating. Ever since then, it seems as though there has been furious back-pedalling to take as much power as possible away from Auckland Council, particularly in terms of transport matters (perhaps because of the strong difference of opinion between central and regional/local government when it comes to transport priorities?)
With 600 submissions having been made on this latest piece of legislation, it will be interesting to see what changes are made to the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill by the select committee. It certainly appears as though people and groups of all political persuasions consider it needs some serious flaws fixed up.
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Its pretty rare to get all of Auckland agreeing on one thing at the same time, a bit of a watershed moment really. With this much opposition to it the govenment will have to make changes and after they do governments for years will probably regret it as Auckland will really start to through around its weight, about time to I think.
It would seem that the following changes could be made fairly easily:
1) Open up Auckland Transport to public scrutiny through requiring them to public meeting agenda and minutes and allowing people to attend their meetings.
2) Creating stronger oversight of the CCOs by Auckland Council. This may involve some technical changes requiring Auckland Transport, Watercare etc. to operate more like a CCO does under the Local Government Act 2002 (ie. more at the whim of the council) than as a very independent entity as proposed in this legislation.
3) Allow Auckland Council to appoint members of the board of Auckland Transport (and other CCOs) as soon as it wishes. None of this situation where Steven Joyce’s cronies can stick around for up to 3 years.
I imagine other changes might happen to guide what the Local Boards will be doing to a stronger extent.
While these changes would certainly make things better, they still don’t resolve more fundamental issues like whether Auckland Transport actually should just be part of Auckland Council, and how to get better integration between the various transport agencies in Auckland. There is still no “the buck stops here” person or organisation, as well still have a variety of groups involved in Auckland’s PT, including:
1) Auckland Transport
2) Auckland Council (guiding Auckland Transport supposedly)
3) NZTA
4) KiwiRail
5) Veolia
6-32572395302) the various bus companies
If my bus/train/ferry doesn’t turn up, or is late, it’s still a damn nightmare to work out who’s accountable.
One thing I think you missed out is the polling suggesting the left will win later this year, the second most powerful person in the country hard left like Brown or Lee, couldn’t have that so power had to be stripped… So short sighted…
I’ve only been following politics a few years but this by far the worse written piece of legislation I have ever seen (and that includes the EFA)…
We have 32 billion bus companies in Auckland..? That is lower than I expected… 😉
Yes the fact that Len Brown has been polling very well has played its part I think.
The fact that there are 600 submissions on what should be a fairly technical bill is a sure sign of how terribly written it is. One would have thought the government may have learned a bit from the previous Super City bill, when they got absolutely hammered by submitters and had to change fairly large chunks of it. However, it seems like the same process is happening again.
I guess this is what happens when you try to rush through complex legislative changes. Ideally the bill should have been developed in consultation with existing councils, and probably 90% of its problems could have been sorted out. However, that’s not Rodney Hide’s style I suppose.
You can see a lot of fights, legal battles and funding wars going on between the various new groups and authorities being created. Where do the Local Boards fit into all this? The third bill says nothing about them. Presumably they will have lots to say about local roads, footpaths, town centres, streetscapes and the like. Its not hard to guess though that they will be kept well away from any decison making role, why else would they be ignored in the bill.
A huge part of the problem is that this “re-alignment” should be happening till 2013, far too much to do in such a short time frame, it is basically gifting Labour a huge election issue as rushing this was never going to end up as anything but a shambles…
Also – the new Auckland supercouncil will not run the State Highways network (or I don’t think they will, someone feel free to put me right here if I’m wrong).
The real problem in funding is this. An Auckland supercouncil will want money for both the state highways and the public transport network – but Government will only give them money for one of those things. So, local politicians being what they are … they will opt for developing the road network. This was the issue in the 1950s as well.
There are lots of overseas cities with credible public transport systems, which also have extensive highways networks – and their highway systems are still clogged; which tells you that people will use public transport only when a good PT system is provided AND road use is heavily restricted in some way.
It wasn’t really the issue in the 50s, the Councils abandoned public transport and central government followed suit…
“Also – the new Auckland supercouncil will not run the State Highways network (or I don’t think they will, someone feel free to put me right here if I’m wrong).”
No, that is done by NZTA, and it would be a bit strange if it was different in Auckland. We would be exchanging one weird situation for another.
NZTA has upped their game quite a bit in my opinion – they usually work to high-quality standards for design and mitigation (but then they have tons of money at the moment!) but their general direction in terms of the big calls is still heavily influenced by old-style roads thinking and roads politicians (though suppesedly they are not the “motorway people” anymore after the merge of Transit and LTSA).
The Royal Commission report that led to the Super City recommended that Auckland’s state highway be jointly managed by NZTA and the “Regional Transport Agency”.
Due to the geographical makeup of Auckland any state highway through Auckland is going to be predominantly used for urban trips, as it must pass right through the centre of the metropolis. The concept of an Auckland bypass or a rural highway through the city- is simply impossible.
So considering all highways and motorways in the region inevitably get used for urban traffic, is it so wrong that the regional transport agency, not the national highway provider, be in charge of them?
I think the jointly managed approach is best, same with the rail network
“is it so wrong that the regional transport agency, not the national highway provider, be in charge of them?”
I would not be opposed to a joint management approach. However, it would be strange if suddenly Auckland had different maintenance, design and operating standards for what is more or less the bulk of all of NZ’s motorways and a huge amount of all high-capacity state highway. So there is no question of “handing them over” (even if Government were less opposed to letting Aucklanders decide their own transport matters).
Matt, Max, yes I was thinking a joint manangement approach where the planning and route selection (and broad level design) within the urban area is done primarily by the Auckland Transport Agency in concert with their other transport activities and the Aucklands Councils general spatial plan and strategic goals.
Obviously duplicating all the constructions, maintenance and operating functions of NZTA would be foolish, as would having differing design standards.