Brian Rudman: History is being rewritten at every turn

Illustration / Peter Bromhead

Len Brown still has another year as mayor, so I'll leave the eulogies to another time. Except to say, I won't miss the hyperbole. And the rewriting of history that has become part of the first five years of the Super City.

A couple of weeks ago we had Rodney Hide, the Local Government Minister who ushered in the Auckland local government reforms, talking up his brilliant achievements. Then on Sunday we had the inaugural mayor doing the same, as he announced his intention not to contest the 2016 elections.

It was as though they were the 21st century equivalent of Sir John Logan Campbell and business partner William Brown, huddled in their tent in April 1840 at the bottom of what we now know as Queen St, plotting to make a killing when Captain Hobson and his government arrived.

Mr Hide wrote that before he came on the scene, Auckland and its eight councils was "a nightmare ... The major infrastructure works that Auckland needed couldn't happen". He says "all that is now different", claiming central government can now talk to Auckland Council and get answers which "previously was not possible". He added "the failure of Auckland's mayors and councils ever to agree meant nothing much happened. Infrastructure development in Auckland was forever stalled".

He even came up with the nonsense that before the era that began with Rodney and Len, "much of Auckland's water was not safe. Now it is".

Mayor Brown took up the chorus. The achievements of the first five years "have been extraordinary". We're more confident and positive, we're "becoming a true international city and the symbols of our optimism are all around us". He listed these as electric trains, double-decker buses, a growing network of cycleways, new ferry routes, and foremost, "the City Rail Link - the most important piece of infrastructure to be built in Auckland in decades". As though that's not enough, he points to "award-winning civic amenities", the yet-to-be financed "SkyPath" and the saving of the iconic St James Theatre.

Sounding like the Pol Pot twins, 2010 was Year Zero, and history began from that point in time.

Even allowing politicians certain freedom to exaggerate, the level of braggadocio indulged in by the midwives of Auckland Council has become ridiculous. I mocked Auckland Transport chairman Lester Levy when he started having visions along similar lines a year or so ago. He had a dream of a transport system where buses and trains turned up on time, and provided comfortable, clean, reliable, airconditioned service. He then attacked the past record of Auckland Transport, saying his dream wouldn't come to reality if his organisation "slavishly adheres to legacy thinking, decisions and projects".

Like Mr Hide and the mayor, he ignored the history. The central rail link, for example, was part of Auckland's transport plans well before the Super City.

Auckland was also acting regionally well before 2010, despite what the rewriters of history now want us to believe. Ask councillor Christine Fletcher, who was the Auckland City mayor responsible for inaugurating the Britomart Transport Station and associated developments. And more than 10 years ago Mike Lee, as Auckland Regional Council chairman, was battling Finance Minister Michael Cullen over the funding of the electrification of the rail network. It was the regional council and Auckland City that were behind the opening up of the waterfront, and the purchase of Queens Wharf, which we're now told is the fruit of the Super City.

Of course there's been progress over the past five years, but it distorts history, and insults those who laid the foundations for the current growth, to pretend no-one had a vision before 2010. The award-winning art gallery building, the acoustically celebrated Town Hall grand hall are products of the past. So is the world-acclaimed network of regional parks - which, to its shame, the new Super City has not added to.

It is to be hoped the next mayor can embrace past achievements, without claiming all the credit.