There were some interesting developments in the response to Friday’s transport and overcrowding problems this afternoon. Stuff reports:
The Government will use special powers under Rugby World Cup legislation to take control of the Auckland waterfront set aside for the celebrations during the tournament.
However, the announcement came out of left field for the Auckland Council.
Rugby World Cup Minister Murray McCully this afternoon outlined his intention to tomorrow call up reserve powers available to him under the Rugby World Cup Empowerment Bill.
It was revealed, ahead of the announcement, that McCully ordered Government officials to write a new plan to manage the waterfront beyond its own Fan Zone at Queen’s Wharf.
The plan, which turns responsibility from the Auckland City Council over to the Government, will expand management measures and create more space for partying.
My immediate reaction to the news was “yikes, that’s a pretty big call”. Initially I thought that this must have come as the result of discussions with Auckland Council that this was the best way forward. However, it seems that wasn’t the case:
Auckland mayor Len Brown said he had little warning over the announcement and found the decision “a little surprising”, given the progress the council had made over the many of issues which had caused problems.
Brown said the moves the Government were taking such as the closing of Quay Street on Friday and Saturday near Queen’s Wharf, were what the council was ready to move on as well.
He was told of the Government’s decision in an email this afternoon and only spoke to McCully after the minister had briefed the media.
At the town hall, Brown said he was due to speak with Prime Minister John Key soon and had a clear message for him.
“My very earnest advice to the prime minister is for us all to keep focused.”
Brown said he had no indication the Government would take such action and their relationship over their joint handling of the RWC was “hunky dory” and there were no “red flags”.
I must say I was pretty surprised to hear this news – that the government hadn’t actually discussed their plans with Len Brown before announcing them to the media. That seems rather nasty.
A Radio NZ report (listen to the interview with Murray McCully here) further complicates the situation, as it seemed somewhat unclear about what the government was and was not doing – whether they were only “stepping in” to get necessary fast-tracked consents to expand the Queens Wharf fan zone onto Quay Street or whether they were taking management responsibility for all future Rugby World Cup events in the broad waterfront area.
While Friday’s events were certainly unacceptable, and Auckland Council should take a lot of the blame for that (well, actually it seems like their CCOs should, which is a whole extra interesting story as Joel Cayford discusses further) I am pretty confident that they would have sorted things out. There’s nothing like a crisis to get officials to do what they should have done in the first place. More street space would have been closed, more screens provided people visiting the area and so forth. Just like how I’m pretty sure Auckland Council and Auckland Transport will sort out the transport situation – as long as they do obvious things like providing good bus backups, have better systems in place to deal with problems to the rail network and so forth.
But I suppose this way the government gets to take the credit for things running smoothly for the rest of the tournament. I guess there’s an election just around the corner so we shouldn’t be too surprised.
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Blatant political points scoring here, really made me quite angry hearing about this. Govt have had the RWC Empowering Act in their arsenal since last year, yet they choose to use it AFTER the single biggest event of the RWC? Everything to do with politics/undermining Len Brown – not much to do with the RWC at all.
It’s a worrying trend under this govt that we’re constantly seeing central govt poking into local govt business, undermining local democracy. We saw it with the Environment Canterbury saga last year where 6 democratically elected councillors were fired by central govt, we saw it earlier this year with CERA sidelining Christchurch City Council, now central govt taking over our waterfront for the RWC. I find this disturbing and a blight on our democracy.
Key, McCully, Joyce et al riding to Auckland’s rescue on white chargers. As Liam writes, blatant political points scoring. The sooner this group of wallies is occupying the opposition benches the better.
I posted this on AKT
”Politically motivated in the extreme.
One minute he doesn’t want anything to do with the mess, and now he is the only one who can fix it?
Will Aucklander’s really be happy with this? we vote in a particular Mayor and council and now a Government minister is ‘taking over’. Central Government in general has way too much influence of local authorities.
Very undemocratic. Very disappointing.
I hope there is ultimately a backlash against this decision in Auckland and other parties can seize on it. Disgraceful.”
I would add after forcing Aucklanders and our local politicians into the SuperCity, they now have no confidence in it.
Way to go guys. Nice to see Democracy is alive and well.
Is it just me or are TVNZ very much in the government’s pocket here?
Watched several different interviews and read what they put online, and they always steer away from accusing the government of anything, implicitly and explicitly laying it on Auckland Council as if the Government had nothing to do with the preparations.
Surely you would at least ask what level of involvement the Minister had with the planning? Because to me Murray McCully is being an awful manager: not accepting any responsibility for something that he ultimately heads, then instead of relying on the ‘staff’ to fix the mistake he’s somehow go to micro-manage it. Good leaders can hold people accountable without trying to take over their jobs.
You didn’t watch Close Up, when Sainsbury pointedly asked McCully about the fingers pointing back at him? (and the sound bite was used in the program’s promos)
http://tvnz.co.nz/close-up/s2011-09-13-video-4397410
axio, I wanted to get a gun and go down and conduct a massacre at TVNZ last night after the way their 6pm news bulletin reported this. “Auckland city has dropped the ball and the government has picked it up!” Delivered in breathless way that suggested the viewer was regarded as the intellectual equivalent of the audience at a Wiggles concert. What a miserable, patronising, stupid, contemptuous and morally bankrupt bunch of c**ts TVNZ’s news organisation is.
Agree about TVNZ (except for the gun part).
And now more excuses.
From the Herald:
“I rang the Mayor of Auckland myself when it became clear to me yesterday after I made my media comments he hadn’t been fully cited, and frankly I was surprised he hadn’t been,” McCully said.
John Banks told Newstalk ZB the Government had swallowed the Council’s plan “hook, line and sinker”, and paid the price.
“It’s an evitable consequence of planning and a gun-ho approach,” Mr Banks said.
“The Govt can’t afford to have another botch-up down there.”
This is a desperate and nasty hit job on Len Brown and Auckland.
Hah! The political theatre in the wake has been ridiculous in the extreme!!
So the Minister who has come in and taken over can’t even ensure he liaises with the Mayor of the city to ensure they are both on the same page. And he wants to take control of water-front organisation! *sigh*
“gun-ho approach”, i call the gov rocking in at the last minute gun-ho. Initiating a super-city reorgansiation in the lead up to a World event gun-ho.
Also, I am pretty sure Cameron Brewer went on RNZ this morning to further spear Len Brown, but some astute observations by Katherine Ryan reduced him to looking as incompetent as his colleagues in Council and his message to one of: “officials” need to take some blame too. Heh. Backfired.
Finally, worth mention, Public Address has an interesting article written _before_ the events of the opening ceremony:
http://publicaddress.net/hardnews/just-dont-call-it-party-central/
Some nice quotes:
“… “Party Central” — although you won’t find that phrase being used anywhere officially. It was dropped on RWC 2011 organisers when John Key announced it out of the blue in 2009, and RWC CEO Martin Snedden was subsequently frank about his distaste for this “terrible terminology” when he spoke to Media7’s researcher Sarah Daniell. It simply wasn’t part of the “fan zone” branding they’d developed, and its implication of a booze-up was unhelpful.”
…
“The McCully Effect — ministerial interference, duplication of roles, poor lines of accountability, confusion of roles — has been manifest across the project, but it looks like Queen’s Wharf will actually work out despite it.”
As we all witnessed, it didn’t work out.
*sigh*
This is just politics pure and simple. McCully is capatalising on the ridiculous hysteria around opening night (honestly it was not that bad) to score some points.
The only points he’s scoring are own goals…
Of course, blown way out of proportion and no doubt fuel the whole “Anti-PT” slant of the media.
Fully agreed… and it’s rather sad, really.
In some ways, really unsurprising. This is the government that removed a whole layer of regional government in Canterbury over disagreements on water rights, replacing it with unelected commissioners. And then granted itself dictatorial powers over Christchurch after 200 people died (admittedly with the collusion of pretty much all the sheep in Parliament – what a disgrace). I don’t know what happens if we ever have a disaster or terror incident like the Twin Towers. Will John Key get declared prime minister for life? For our safety & right to party, of course?
What it is guys, its the fact that National hate Auckland Council so much that they are looking for someone to blame to make themselves look good. Auckland Council and Auckland Transport are the good guys they are trying desperately hard to improve public transport and deliever a safe and efficent system, its the government who is refusing to spend any more money on it. To start off with the government should be offering assistance to Auckland Council but instead they are using the transport mess as a way to blame them, so they can force through their visionless views and an election is coming up so they want to look good if Key was to get re-elected, I do hope not though!
I have less confidence in National running the waterfront it’s their fault why this happened.
I guess the National’s solution for the Waterfront is for everybody to drive down there. Let’s do it the final night, then we’ll see what works better.