In his column this morning, Brian Rudman covers an area we haven’t been paying enough attention to, how the changes to the Land Transport Management Act will affect the governance of transport in Auckland. Rudman starts out by explaining the situation:
By sheer weight of numbers, elections are won and lost in Auckland, so it would seem suicidal for a government to declare war on a third of the population. But that seems to be exactly what the Key Government is doing.
Of course it’s not the first government to see Auckland as “the enemy”. Labour’s finance spokesman, Michael Cullen, once infamously quipped to a Taranaki election audience that “Auckland now sits atop the nation like a great crushing weight”.
But National’s current behaviour has a pattern to it that goes beyond pre-election hyperbole. Having created the Super City less than three years ago, it is acting as though it was all a big mistake and the aim is now to emasculate the monster it created.
In recent times, the mortars have been lobbed across the Bombay Hills from Wellington in a near-continuous barrage. Last week, at a post-Budget meeting with Wellington businessmen, Finance Minister Bill English warned: “We cannot let 20 planners sitting in the Auckland Council offices make decisions that will wreck the macro economy. We cannot let that happen, and we won’t let that happen.”
This was hot on the heels of the charade of the Auckland Housing Accord. This was supposed to signal the working-out of a mutually agreed solution to the city’s housing shortages. Yet a few days later, Housing Minister Nick Smith was threatening to “intervene by establishing special housing areas and issuing consents for developers”.
The idea that the government is lobbing verbal and policy mortars over the bombays seems like quite an apt description. I suspect that there are much more than 20 planners sitting in the council offices, although perhaps Bill is just referring to the senior staff. Rudman continues:
Sailing below the radar is the most concrete example of the Government’s efforts to sabotage Auckland’s local democracy. The tool being used is the boring-sounding Land Transport Management Amendment Bill, which will become law early next month. It will usher in a significant transfer of power in the area of transport planning, from the Auckland Council to the Government.
The new law strips Auckland councillors of their power to decide how the $459.5 million of ratepayers’ money – 33 per cent of total rates income – spent on transport each year is targeted. Instead, the final arbiter will be the unelected board of Auckland Transport, which will have to follow the Government policy statement (GPS) on land transport. The only sanction the Auckland Council will have to control the board of Auckland Transport – a council-controlled organisation – if it goes feral is to sack it. But the new law insists the board’s first loyalty in setting transport priorities must be to the government GPS, so what would a replacement board do differently?
This is quite concerning, the GPS effectively sets out governments funding priorities and ranges. At the moment they have focused almost entirely on the building of new roads and specifically the Roads of National Significance at the expense of other state highway improvements, local roads and of course public transport. Being fair, the current government didn’t set up the GPS as it was brought in by the previous government. This also shows one major flaw when complaining about it, it can be changed by a future government. A change in government could see funding priorities for which we may be thankful should we ever have an anti PT council.
Its also funny how Bill English complains about a handful of planners sitting in Auckland making decisions that could wreck the economy but doesn’t object to probably a similar number sitting in the MoT offices in Wellington making decisions that will wreck the cities future transport network and economy. But it gets worse:
The new act also ignores another statutory document, the Auckland (Spatial) Plan, which sets out Auckland’s direction and policy, including the integrating of land-use with transport.
Speaking to the select committee on behalf of the Auckland Council, transport committee chairman Mike Lee complained of the impending loss of democratic accountability to Auckland ratepayers, pointing out that Auckland would be the only part of New Zealand where elected representatives would not set the local land transport plan.
He said that by law, the principal objective of a council-controlled organisation such as Auckland Transport was to “achieve the objectives of its shareholders, both commercial and non-commercial”. He said the situation “would in effect be creating two local governments in Auckland”.
It was “appropriate in terms of its statutory responsibilities and as owner, major funder and sole shareholder of Auckland Transport, that the Auckland Council continues to set the long-term direction for transport”.
The select committee did the reverse, noting that it had gone out of its way to recommend changes “to ensure that Auckland Transport may not delegate its responsibilities for regional land transport plans and passenger transport plans to the Auckland Council”.
It did this by repealing the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 clause that says the governing body of Auckland Council is responsible and democratically accountable for setting transport objectives for Auckland.
So not only are we being forced to have to follow the governments transport agenda but our elected representatives won’t even have the chance to set the high level strategy any more. This is effectively taxation without representation and is shameful. To me it also suggests that the government are scared of the amount of power the council has. They were expecting a different result 3 years ago but it backfired so now they are trying to back pedal as much as possible to regain control of the city.
In saying all of this, while it is a concern that the council is being shut out of the process for setting policy, I know that there are many very good people at Auckland Transport who are not about to quickly jump on the more roads agenda. Hopefully they will be able to keep things going in the right direction until such time as a future government can resolve this – although it is very rare for a government to give up acquired power so we will just have to wait and see.
If we did start to see some really bad projects being progressed ahead of much needed ones – well more than they are already – I wonder what ability the council will have to withdraw funding for them? If they say that they won’t provide any rates funding unless the projects proposed meet the councils goals then we could end up in a very public power struggle.
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Wasn’t something like this that led to that little spat in 1775 in the American Colonies?
The money is still being spent by our democratically elected government. It’s wildly unfair between the regions, and it will be a bad move for transport planning – but it’s not taxation without representation.
Really, it’s one elected body stealing.. I mean “facilitating the transfer of”.. tax from another elected body.
Taxation with limited representation.
Money from Auckland is being spent less on the opinions of Aucklanders than the rest of the North Island.
How about I get a 50% say on how you spend your food bill?
I think it would be beneficial to Brownlee’s health if we controlled 50% of his food bill 🙂
90%
So the nats are appropriating Auckland ratepayers’ money. Is anyone surprised? They despise democracy, that much they have made abundantly clear but this is a constitutional outrage
How is it constitutional?
We don’t have a constitution.
We do have a constitution, and our constitution says that the existence and functioning of local government is whatever Parliament makes it.
True, but Rudman does us a good service to point out that the Super City was given (if you’ll excuse the agricultural metaphor) big hefty balls when they thought that the Nat’s mates would run it, and since democracy didn’t go how they liked, they’re getting their castrating shears.
oh that’s a wonderful metaphor. Reading it just made me wince.
Those shears can snip both ways of course. National are being last ditch fools for this, what happens in the quite likely event the next government is a labour green coalition? They can write a government policy statement too!
It’ll be the same all over again, set up a bunch of legislation to benefit yourself in the present but just ignore the fact your man doesn’t always win on the day, so the other guy gets your dictatorial powers instead.
No we dont have a constitution – which is exactly why Parliament can pass laws like this.
Well goosoid, you’re the lawyer so I’ll defer to you in this, however my understanding is that while we don’t have a written constitution, our constitution in fact comprises the body of law. An example is the so-called “principles of the Treaty”, invented by Geoffrey Palmer. Woe betide anyone who tries to circumvent these! As Steve D said above, parliament makes the rules (not government, although the government of the day generally wins the vote) because parliament is sovereign. Remember how the previous government retrospectively sanctioned the theft of $800,000 of taxpayer’s money – perfectly legal albeit highly unethical.
@Jonno, we don’t have a written constitution, we have precedents set by previous actions that act as a constitution.
Rates are a land tax that are the reponsibility of local government to colect and spend as they require.
Yes in our “un written constitution” the local exists at the whim of the central. It has been more cost effective in the past for this situation to exist.
In the end why even bother having local government? Anyone feeling like this is like a scene from Star Wars when Darth Smith states the imperial senate has been replaced by Imperial Governors.
It is my understanding that I pay “LOCAL” rates to use on LOCAL matters, and I pay TAX on “National” matters.
So what happens when a good proprotion of people refuse to pay 33% of their rates bill. Is Emporer Key going to let slip his Sith Lord Joyce Sidious?
Gosh it almost sounds like I’m invoking Rebellion. My Gods hope the GCSB aka STAZZI don’t read these posts.
If Aucklanders are mad enough to embark on a rates strike over this, they’ll be mad enough to throw out the Government next year. National’s style of meddling with local government whenever it disagrees with it is a lot more worrying for Canterbury, since on their own they don’t have anything like the same electoral muscle. But now, nearly half the country is in the same boat together.
Patrick M, I’m sure you know this (and I enjoyed your humour) but I’ll spell it out anyway – if someone fails to pay their rates (or part of them) then if they have a mortgage it gets added to the outstanding balance. If there’s no mortgage it becomes a charge on the estate unless council pursues it through the courts. Very few people with mortgages would fail to pay their rates, but it’s not unknown for mortgage-free property owners to try it on.
I want to thank to Brian Rudman for raising this issue. We gave him a hard time a few months ago when he misread the RPTP map (which caused him to come out swinging against ghost buses on Queen Street), but in this particular instance he is not only right on the money, but he’s at the forefront of raising awareness about what is a very important democratic issue.
I personally had no idea the LTMA had turned into such a cynical piece of legislation. It’s now effectively just a National Government power grab designed to castrate Auckland Council’s input into transport strategy. Hopefully even if it passes the people at Auckland Transport will simply flip the bird to the Government when it tries to force them to implement the GPS.
As Rudman notes this makes a mockery of the term “Council Controlled Organisation”. More like “Brownlee Controlled Organisation” – shudder.
I see very little that the government could ever put into a GPS that would prevent AT from actually doing what the want either?
Even something like aggressive investment in motorways to alleviate congestion could be building the CRL if you really wanted.
Irrespective of the legalities of it, this is a very real disaster for Auckland. The Auckland Council’s planners have produced some quality work in recent years, and are far more regionally aware and responsible than the private developer-driven Wellington government. The problem is the slow adoption super-city concept, which should work in principle but has been hampered by having such mixed support across the Auckland region. If public support within Auckland for the new super-city were stronger, then I suspect that Key would have found this move politically unpalatable.
The reason for the lack of support from Aucklanders? Many reasons really, including the mere fact that it is a change. Definitely a lot of opposition to the super-city is down to huge rates rises for many in the region, while others enjoyed reductions or negligible rises. We also have a misunderstood and alarming unitary plan, and expensive rail upgrades with no intention of spreading the network to the whole region. While I appreciate that the Council’s understanding on these issues is far more considered than Wellington’s, it remains that the Council has been unable to gain the support and trust of the Auckland community to the extent that it needs to.
The answer in my view is to somehow bolster regional support for the Auckland Council. The selling of the Council’s worth to the wider Auckland region has not been compelling, so perhaps the Council needs to be more engaging and involving in developing and sharing its plans. It could be seen to be a council for all of Auckland by taking action to more evenly spread the rates burden, by ensuring that large projects are for the benefit of all Aucklanders to the fairest extent possible, by being more responsive to concerns around the unitary plan, and really just getting Aucklanders on board with a sensible strategic direction for Auckland’s future rather than allowing endless sprawl and endless traffic and motorways.
Only once Aucklanders are united behind the Council can we expect to generate the political pressure needed to properly plan for and fund the region’s future needs. Until then we are exposed to the kind of expediency demonstrated by the likes of Gerry Brownlee and Bill English.
DavidB said: ‘Definitely a lot of opposition to the super-city is down to huge rates rises for many in the region, while others enjoyed reductions or negligible rises.’
My understanding is that rates went up in the wealthy suburbs of the East, North and central Isthmus, but went down in the west and south. Can anyone elaborate?
My take is that there are a large and vocal contingent of wealthy, grumpy and influential grey haired people. Unfortunately, this group is most likely to vote, not too mention seriously lobby younger family members. This group at a visceral level will be deeply suspicious of change of any sort in Auckland away from the sorts of direction that Auckland took when they were younger. That includes the whole notion of a Super City, as well as activities such as the Unitary Plan, intensification and spending money on rail.
So, to be fair to Auckland Council’s planners, this group was always going to be extremely difficult to get on-board. It does all come down to communication…and demonstration. There have been some excellent posts on the Unitary Plan on this site over recent days, in particular one showcasing the Hobsonville Point development – http://greaterakl.wpengine.com/2013/05/22/unitary-plan-is-there-a-devil-in-the-detail/ Thanks to Andre de Graaf.
Maybe a good way out would be for the council to facilitate other demonstration projects around the region of an exceptional design standard that will sell their vision. Surely a government couldn’t quibble with that.
Yes down in old Waitakere area to balance with others, also anyone facing new valuations [like me] because of crazy market got a big rise too. Not so businesses though.
Except it’s not nice to read on your rates notice that the reduction is capped and the difference is being used to subsidise elsewhere – ie. we’re still paying more than we should (West Auckland). So, pre Super City, we were paying more for rates, compared to other parts of Auckland, and now do not get the discount to level the playing field (especially once water charges are entered into the equation).
Well that depends on whether you have the view that rates should be proportional to house valuations, or proportional to services delivered, or somewhere in the middle. To the cost of the many people with higher house valuations, the first of those three options was chosen, and that has turned a lot of Aucklanders off the new council despite the fact that it has a lot of great ideas and the will to move Auckland forward.
It’s a bit of a divide and conquer strategy by the government, and it seems to be working for them.
From canvassing work colleagues who lived all over Auckland, I believe your rates rise/fall comment is generally correct. However, what wasn’t taken into account was the overall home costs when you consider all the services we get e.g. Auckland City was already using Metrowater/Watercare pricing. The Westies who were joyful at the rates reduction were subsequently wailing when they got their new look water bill, including waste water charges. Similarly, Auckland (and Manukau’s?) refuse and recycling services remain superior to the West and North services – not sure if they are intended to be rolled out AKL-wide eventually? I suspect the costs all balance out in the end for a similarly priced house wherever it is in Auckland.
Are they really superior. Nth Shore has a good user pays refuse system. I would hope the bag system is adopted as it is simple and effective in incentivising people.
It’s no easy answer for rubbish. Wheelie bins are much safer for collectors.
From 2015 the council intends to move to user-pays wheelie bins in all urban areas, with only fortnightly collection. I think the intention is to RFID-chip all the bins, and scan them at pickup. You’d get a choice of different sizes at different prices. If you don’t leave the bin out on collection day, you won’t get charged.
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/en/environmentwaste/rubbishrecycling/wastemanagementandminimisationplan/Pages/home.aspx
“If we did start to see some really bad projects being progressed ahead of much needed ones – well more than they are already – I wonder what ability the council will have to withdraw funding for them? If they say that they won’t provide any rates funding unless the projects proposed meet the councils goals then we could end up in a very public power struggle.”
Perhaps one of our legal beagles could address that issue. What would happen if the council refused to fund projects the govt wanted, but they didn’t?????
The increasingly visible corruption of the constitution by this government (crony appointments, blatant disregard for the law, a subversion of parliamentary process, overt mendacity, etc) is, from one perspective, deeply disheartening. But it’s all symptomatic of an administration on its way out of office. Hopefully the opposition parties will in the next eighteen months grow a pair of agricultural metaphors just to ensure that the haere ra actually happen.
It would help if it didn’t happen every god-damned time though. Both sides of the house have a dark history of abusing the unicameral system.
Time we had an upper house.
How would that help? Presumably a government would have a majority in both houses, and New Zealand’s parties tend to be very united. The last time we had an upper house it was so deep in the government’s pocket that it voted for its own abolition!
MMP is our cheap version of having an upper house i.e. parties normally need support from other parties to form a government so there are some checks and balances. The current government has the barest margin of a majority, propped up by its tea cup crony.
They’d replace the council with a commissioner.
Shss don’t tell the Nats, but they could just outlaw the oposition and bring forth some good old fashion North Korean style one party elections! Long live the Dear Leader, SIR HRH Lord of the Realm Key!
Centralised planning and controlled from Moscow,….. sorry Wellington, Joe Stalin would be proud of Key and English. I find this hard to say but bring back the nanny state, it was far better than this Fijian styled democracy.
Just leave some empty cardboard boxes in the dining room in parliament and they can pack them when we give these undemocratic sods the boot on election day one day Herr Key and the rest his followers
Yes but who’s to say that 2014 they do a Florida aka 2008, fidle the ballot boxes, squeak in and claim they have a mandate now to get rid of this voting nonence! Claiming something like this just slows down the great work they have planed.
Then they can sell everything to the highest kick backer!
patrick m- Did you just say “Auckland Party in the elections next year”?
Call it the City Party instead, no need to alienate every other person who lives in an large urban area instead.
National made the supercity with the expectation that Banksy would be mayor and it would be effectively controlled by National. Now the opposite is true, so they are trying to take power away from Auckland to Wellington.
As far as I’m aware, no other council has such strict controls and government intervention as Auckland does. Well, I take that back. Christchurch is totally controlled by Brownlee and co.
It staggers me that National is still popular. I genuinely dont understand why.
Malcolm, I very much doubt that “Banksy” as you call him wanted to continue as mayor, hence his almost total lack of canvassing for votes. OTOH, Len Brown seems to have mellowed a bit over the last two years and appears to be genuinely seeking balance.
As for Christchurch, the dysfunctional council there speaks for itself, whatever you may think of the government’s input. All I know is that many thousands of my tax dollars are going into Christchurch, and I’m very happy to contribute.
Regarding the government’s continued popularity: I’m a bit puzzled too but the most likely explanation is their competent handling of the economy despite the Christchurch earthquakes and the GFC. Most people seem to recognise that the other lot are economically naïve, so suck up aspects of the present lot that they disagree with. Once the economy is fully sorted out, the other lot will be back (probably in 2017) to spend up large again.
Jonno, It is my sad duty to have to inform you that you have been scammed. None of your tax dollars are being spent in Christchurch and the earthquakes are helping not hindering the economy.
In January last year Bollard gave a speech to the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce in which he stated that the earthquakes were costing insurers $20bn for building damage and $10bn for business interruption, rental assistance, engineering and geo-technical investigations, claims processing and stock and contents damage. Add to that the $5.5bn government earthquake recovery fund and $1.5bn ratepayer spending gives a total cost 18 months ago of almost $40bn. At that time Treasury estimated that the total rebuild (capital replacement) cost was $30bn, this being the sum of building, contents and infrastructure replacement costs. RBNZ have not publicly revised their figures since then so it’s possible that Treasury’s revised $40bn estimate is simply the result of including the non-capital costs and adding the extra costs to ratepayers of the grandiose anchor projects and counting the hospital redevelopment as part of the rebuild even though it was included in the NHB’s ten year financial forecast before the earthquakes.
Treasury’s BPS2013 briefing to the Finance and Expenditure Committee forecasts that earthquake spending will add between $10bn and $30bn to GDP over the next ten years. This positive result is due to our almost universal earthquake insurance coverage and the funding for the insurance payouts will be coming from reinsurance and reserves (the Australian owned insurers pool their reserve funds with their Australian parent companies) and from Government and council borrowing ($4.7bn and $2bn respectively). This inflow of funds over the five years is equivalent to increasing export revenues by 20%. It is this inflow of funds that has keptthe economy from officially being in recession and, due to the insurance freeze in Canterbury, has caused a spike in Auckland property prices between March 2011 and January this year.
In short, if the boost GDP is shared equally by us all then we will all be $2500 – $6000 better off by the end of the rebuild.
Rubbing salt into Canterbury’s wounds the Government has been taking liberties with the definition of “taxpayer” and “rebuild”. The National Disaster Fund is contributing $6.5bn, but that money has come from insurance levies and interest on investments since 1942. It is taxpayer money only to the extent that the Government could have cancelled the EQC scheme and payed the reserves into the Consolidated Account. The rebuild includes GST of approx. $6bn, on spending which, as described above, is additional to Treasury’s pre-earthquake forecasts
To this $6bn + $6.5bn you need to add the $1bn overpayment of RUCs and fuel taxes by Canterbury traffic forecast in Land Transport Policy Statement 2010-2020 and subtract from the Government “earthquake” spending $1bn that was already signalled in Budget 2010 (see Auditor General briefing on Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Fund).
That leaves $0.5bn to be funded from ordinary taxation assuming all the land being bought by the Government is gifted to the city as parkland instead of being rezoned and sold to developers.
Unless you own an earthquake damaged building you will not actually being contributing thousands of tax dollars, even though you are happy to do so. At the heart of the matter are Ruth Richardson’s Cabinet Minute limiting the Government’s contribution to Civil Defence Emergency costs to 60% and fear of a credit downgrade if the they don’t meet their target date for getting back into surplus. The fact is that the rest of New Zealand is not “going without” as Key claimed nor are the earthquakes swallowing most of the revenue from MRF float since the hospital redevelopment is not the result of the earthquakes and was always going to be funded from the Future Development Fund.
The Government’s popularity, especially in Christchurch at the last election, is the result of mobilising an army of spin doctors to produce one of the most audacious examples of saying what the public want to hear while actually spending no new money. It makes Labour’s spin campaign to be seen to be doing something about Auckland’s congestion without giving up the Government’s portion of the petrol tax seem pretty tame by comparison.
To end by getting back on topic, the Government has used its control of ECan to abolish the last vestiges of the Christchurch green belt with a Land Use Recovery Plan that encourages ex-urban developments and by making inner city housing and slow roads the last things to be implemented on CERA’s inner city plan. ECan has also turned the bus system on it’s head with no public consultation and with no real input from the city council.
” ECan has also turned the bus system on it’s head with no public consultation”
Incorrect
“and with no real input from the city council”
Correct – the council made its own submission to public consultation against the proposals. Since then Ecan (the National Party’s puppets) and the council have been pretty much at loggerheads over the direction of the bus network, with Ecan making its own submission to the council’s current 3 year plan as an opportunity to beat them over the head. Why? They could have set up a joint working party as a more productive way of addressing these matters.
Which makes me think, along with the above example, that the long term prospect for Ecan becoming absorbed into unitary authorities for the region is somewhat questionable. Granted, National will push to have the rural authorities become unitary (so there is absolutely no question of any challenge to the irrigation water grab), but they’ll be on a hiding to nothing when it comes to handing over public transport to the city council, which is already planning to spend more money on cycleways and which so far has continually challenged the changes to the bus network.
Same issue in Wellington – the Nats will certainly support the drive towards unitary councils as a way of emasculating GWRC – which leaves the regional public transport operations to perhaps be handed back to Kiwirail as a way of curtailing the expenditure that GWRC has driven towards the rail network in recent years. I can’t quite see the government supporting a Supercity in Wellington or Christchurch.
In summary I don’t just think it is in Auckland that this stuff is going to happen.
“As far as I’m aware, no other council has such strict controls and government intervention as Auckland does.” – we are talking about transport policy, right? Every other region in the country already has to prepare a Land Transport Plan that takes into account the GPS. Since National came onboard and changed the original GPS, that has made for some very unhappy Councils who’ve had to toe the line and cancel planned investment (e.g. walk/cycle projects). Akld, Wgtn and Chch have all made grumbling noises about the mix of projects in their areas; I’m still waiting for the “big three” to call the Govt’s bluff and say “actually no, we think you’ve got it wrong and want to do it this way, thanks”…
Auckland Council should merge Auckland Transport back into Council.
Auckland Council should merge Water Care back into Council before National sells it off.
Auckland Council should merge the national government back into the council.
How about a compromise where Auckland Council arranges to sell shares in National to everyday NZers? You know, the people who don’t normally stand to benefit when National do well? That could be a win-win – National listed subject to the ebbs and flows of capital markets would possibly be more democratic than their current approach.
Or at least make national vaguely accountable by educating their voter base on reality, and telling them that they don’t have to vote for National every year.
Buying shares in National? I don’t think I’d want any of those the next year or two.