John Roughan: Tieless one could teach the suits a thing or two

Men who would like to be the movers and shakers of Auckland have been doing a great deal of frustrated muttering lately.

Most of them are in business and some are, or have been, in local government. They think Auckland is going to the dogs.

There is too much snapping and snarling among the four cities and the regional council, they say. Big problems are not being solved and opportunities are going begging.

The Rugby World Cup, for example. It is only five years away and we still don't know who is going to pick up the tab to turn Eden Park into a decent stadium.

Then there's the congestion. It goes without saying.

They shake their heads and agree that what Auckland urgently needs, before anything else, is a "single city". Unite the isthmus, North Shore, Waitakere and Manukau into a single administrative unit, they believe, and magically the right decisions would be made.

More important, the powers that be could not duck their responsibilities to this moribund metropolis. Government is always the ogre in the myths of the boardroom; it is accepted wisdom that governments will never let Auckland get its act together because they fear its potential power.

It is hogwash, all of it. Auckland's metropolitan councils have been united in their solution to its greatest problem, road congestion, for a long time now. I happen to think it is the wrong solution, and clearly the Government has its doubts too, but there is no denying the cities are agreed on it.

The Government pretends to be hearing discordant voices from Auckland when it is asked to fund a lemon, but that is just an excuse. A supercity would make no difference.

We have a Greater Auckland council in any case. Suits in the city have never had much faith in the regional council, now run by a tieless Mike Lee and assorted other lefties, notably Sandra Coney.

The regional council had its wings severely clipped by the National Government and though its powers have largely been restored by Labour, single-city advocates doubt it can recover its confidence.

They may be right, but not about the reason. Socialists like chairman Lee actually understand the economic pitfalls of public investment better than the average business person. Better than Mayor Dick Hubbard, for example.

Mayor Dick's Auckland City Council is confident to a fault. Its writ runs only across the isthmus but it firmly believes it can do a better job than the regional council and acts like one whenever it has the chance.

It went ahead and built the Britomart railway station regardless of the scale of rail the region was likely to afford. Britomart, which will shortly farewell the last intercity railcar, is a magnificent terminal for a train that might never come.

The city is rightly proud of amenities such as its art gallery and zoo that are enjoyed by all of Auckland. But while it complains that other councils don't contribute enough to the costs, it is not about to vest the facilities in the region.

The city would like to own the port, too. Unfortunately that was given to the region. The port company's plans to open up the western reclamation for an extension of the Viaduct have been revised several times at the city's request.

Not content with its zoning power, the city now wants a share of the action.

That could cost ratepayers needless scores of millions.

Auckland's problem is not its administrative set-up but the calibre of those who offer themselves for election.

The city mayoralty is the only position that attracts much interest across the region and it is a less powerful office than it appears.

Poor Dick Hubbard keeps telling us he is a leader and has a vision for Auckland, seemingly unaware that genuine leaders and visionaries never need to use words such as those.

You can tell quite a lot about people from the language they think will impress us. If single-city impresarios want to win my confidence they will have to think of something fresher than "singing from the same songsheet", another of Dreadful Dick's favourites, and "going forward".

Phrases such as those tell me (1) the speaker is incapable of original thought, (2) they are easily impressed and (3) probably therefore incapable of challenging council staff who tell them every cent is being efficiently spent and rates must rise by 10 per cent a year for the next 10 years if they are to do anything more.

All the Auckland mayors except Sir Barry Curtis are singing this song and he seems to be the only one opposed to a supercity. The others more or less support it. Bob Harvey has offered to lead it and George Wood, like everyone in North Shore City, is safely separated by a moat.

When Auckland's administrative jigsaw was amalgamated into the four cities 20 years ago, I was disappointed to see the old boroughs immediately re-invented as "community boards".

How wrong I was. The community board in my locality makes most of the decisions that count for its physical attributes and the board is highly accessible.

It rotates its monthly meetings around neighbourhood halls, two or three of its members keep in close touch with residents' associations and they are never far away when issues arise.

The supercity advocates propose to keep community boards and do away with the middle tier. But the resources community boards can call upon are pooled at a subregional level and I would not like those resources to be more remote. The cities would probably have to be reinvented in subordinate form.

Meanwhile, years would be lost in reorganisation schemes, objections, hearings, appeals, revised schemes, legal challenges and transitional arrangements. And when all has been said and done, the same people would probably be elected.

Reorganisations are usually a substitute for action. If our frustrated movers and shakers are serious they will stand for the regional council next year.

The more they talk of restructuring the less they sound like the sort of people who could make real things happen.