Last December, when Simeon Brown was still Transport Minister and announced the proposal to restore Auckland Transport’s policy-making powers to the Council, Wayne Brown was enthusiastic about the relationship between the pair.
“The Government is recognising that most of their voters are here,” he said.
“So it’s a very sensible thing and I’ve enjoyed working with the Minister because it’s something we’ve both been working for.”
Simeon Brown is now easing out of the picture with his Transport portfolio being assigned to Chris Bishop and his Local Government job to Simon Watts.
That he got along with Brown was important because Wayne Brown’s relationship with the Prime Minister seems slightly more restrained.
That the Auckland Mayor has employed two of Christopher Luxon’s biggest critics, the columnist Matthew Hooton and the former National Party political advisor Tim Hurdle, to run his re-election campaign won’t have enhanced his relationship with the often overly defensive Prime Minister.
There may be a hint of that in the way that even the frequency of “catch-up” meetings between Brown and Luxon has apparently begun to decline.
The test will now be whether he can establish the same rapport with the new Transport Minister, Chris Bishop, that he had with Simeon Brown.
However, it is Wayne Brown’s idiosyncratic personality that defines any relationship he has.
One of National’s Auckland MPs said Brown’s political appeal was bipartisan because the left liked him because he was anti-government and the right liked him because he was anti-bureaucrat.
Ministers are wary of him because he does have such widespread political appeal, yet at the same time, Auckland is so big and so economically important that they know they have to try and work with him even if, from time to time, they groan that it is “Wayne being Wayne”.
The Government’s involvement with the Auckland Council is more complex than that of most other councils.
Unlike most New Zealand local bodies, many of the big issues that confront the Auckland Council require bespoke solutions, often meaning specific legislation.
That is evident now with the “time of use” road charging legislation heading off to a select committee.
Already, it is evident that the same issue that the council objected to in last year’s legislation to separate Watercare from council control is evident in the Land Transport (Time of Use Charging) Amendment Bill.
Once again, the council is pushing back against Wellington’s proposal to run any charging scheme Auckland may introduce.
The bill proposes that a charging scheme be run by a joint council-New Zealand Transport Authority board on which the NZTA would have the casting vote.
That is similar to the original proposal for Watercare, which would have a Crown monitor appointed by the Minister of Local Government to prepare a charter for Watercare and then monitor its performance against it.
This was eventually changed to having the Secretary for Local Government consult with the Auckland Council on the preparation of the charter and then for Watercare to be accountable to the Crown monitor for its day-to-day performance against the charter.
The council wanted to be consulted on the appointment of the Crown monitor, but Simeon Brown did not agree with that.
Nevertheless, the Watercare experience underlines the ongoing structural tension between the council and the Government over the dispersion of power between the two bodies.
The council will not be encouraged that there is the will in Wellington to devolve power by some of the provisions in the Time of Use Charging Bill that include, for example, a provision that public transport vehicles will have to pay the charges.
Wayne Brown has always emphasised that the payoff for introducing charging would have to be an enhanced public transport system.
The council and Auckland Transport have released the draft of their submission on the charging legislation, which essentially wants the decisions about which roads would be charged, the pricing structure and the use of the revenue obtained to be made by the council and AT rather than the Government.
The other challenge for the council is that governments have tended to be nervous about imposing tolls on motorists.
Now a councillor, National’s then Transport spokesperson, Maurice Williamson lost that portfolio in the run-up to the 2008 election when National leader John Key sacked him after he talked about a $5 toll on the Southern Motorway.
However, the legislation to allow the Auckland charging was voted against in Parliament by the Maori Party alone.
It is transport that dominates the relationship between the council and the Government.
Legislation this year will confirm the restoration of transport policy-making back to the council from AT.
That will then lead to the development of an integrated 30-year transport plan for Auckland, which will feed into the Government Policy Statement on Transport, which will be published in 2027.
As a consequence of announcements made at the Government Infrastructure Investment Summit that plan will be required to resolve the priority that will be put on a second harbour crossing.
The Government has a number of other proposals which will impact local government generally.
Currently, Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop says he is sitting on a number of proposals from regions for Regional Deals.
These are long-term agreements – often between 10-20 years – which hinge on central and local government agreeing to make joint funding commitments and provide a basis for local authorities to have greater autonomy to deliver a range of initiatives which are basically long-term infrastructure plans for a region.
The structure of the deals might help to reassure the council that it, rather than Wellington, was in control of the infrastructure pipeline.
Auckland Council, like many others around the country, also faces the challenge of how to deal with climate adaptation issues, particularly managed retreat from flood-prone areas or, particularly in Auckland’s case, coastline vulnerable to the effects of sea-level rise.
The new Resource Management Act, to be introduced next year, is expected to contain provisions allowing planning authorities to decline land-use consents or attach conditions where there are significant risks of natural hazards.
All of this legislation points to future areas of agreement between the council and Government and, maybe, a slow-growing recognition in Wellington that the council’s desire for autonomy on major issues is not just a political move but also a practical response to its greater local knowledge and responsibilities.
This has been confirmed with the Government’s agreement to legislate for the Auckland Future Fund.
That legislation is now before a select committee.
Ultimately, however, most of the static between Auckland and Wellington comes down to money.
The big-ticket item on the financial agenda is the operating costs for the central rail loop when it opens in 2026-27.
The rail project is to be funded jointly by the Government and Auckland Council, and the council is expected to bear a significant portion of the annual operational costs.
The project is estimated to cost the council around $220 million in operating costs from the first full year of operations.
The Government and the council have yet to agree on how the funding will be split, but given the fiscal pressures facing the Government, those could be tense negotiations.
What is clear is that under Brown, the council has clawed some power back from Wellington.
With the power issue now more or less under control, and with big-ticket items likely to be on the agenda like the operations of the CRL and a possible second harbour crossing, it could be money that begins to dominate the relationship over the next few years.
