Jim Hopkins: $3.4m - that's the price of being Super

That the $3.4 million cost of the Maori Statutory Board lands on Auckland ratepayers proves the shears really are out in Wellington. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Council's Maori board to cost $3.4m - shocking Herald headline.

Well, you could sneer. [insert sneer here] You could jeer. [insert jeer here next to sneer].

Or you could decide the twits just keep on coming and dismiss this whole schemozzle with a loud and scornful hoot. [insert loud and scornful hoot here next to sneer and jeer].

But there's a question to be begged. Perchance we should hush, not rush to judgment. Mayhap we should postpone derision. Let's concede this board bizzo does look like a waste of space and money.

Let's agree, on the face of it, the singing Mayor has done it again - Every time it rains, it rains Lennies from heaven. Clearly, when Mr Brown spoke glowingly of trains, no one realised he meant those of the gravy persuasion.

Let's accept that Parliament's potty pollies have gone stark raving MAB (Maori advisory board) and lumbered Auckland's bling flingers with a totally pointless expense.

Then let's put all our caveats to one side, place a weight upon your jerking knees and think again.

Because, when you get right down to it - as it seems we have - statutory advisory boards (Maori or otherwise) are marvellous things. We need more of them. One is not enough - though 'tis a damn fine start, m'dears.

You'll recall the Prime Mincer earlier this week announcing, to the amazement of none, that our bureaucracy was "bloated and inefficient". It must be cut, he said, rigorously and vigourously, with energy and purpose. Wastage must be eschewed at all cost.

Within hours, we've seen that eschewment begin. Auckland's statutory Maori advisory board is proof positive that the shears are out. Wellington's bloated bureaucracy is being cut. Well, okay, not cut, but at least moved north so other people - Remmers rollers, Manakau magnates, Newmarket forces and all those other dudes of dude hall in the new, improved Super City - can pay for it.

Sadly, some of those so burdened have taken umbrage. There's been binding in the marshes and flapping of the gums.

But stay thy plaints, Super citizens. Embrace your board new world. All those other footling little pothole-filling Councils don't have them. Only really important people have SAB's. Having any at all means Auckland has at last arrived. After years of subjugation, the City's hit the big time!

Except it hasn't. Not quite. It won't really hit the big time till it has more boards; a stack of boards. Auckland should already have a statutory advisory board advising it about the advice it gets from statutory advisory boards. Because there is hubris here, dear friends, that trumps our schadenfreude.

Are you serious? - Ed. Never more so, sir. This is the price Auckland must pay if it wishes to be great.

Just as it was writ in the stars that the Greens' heroic bid for Botany would be cruelly undone by the roading network they've fought to confine, so too the Super City is preordained to assume the mantle of Board-dom if it truly seeks to be an alternative nation state.

There's an inescapable fact here, folks. Statutory advisory boards are a bureaucratic status symbol.

Not quite as important as commissioners for this or that and not quite as influential as a minor and splendidly irrelevant ministry but, heck, they're up there. Statutory advisory boards matter, if only because they don't.

Bear in mind the power of that magic word, "Advisory". "Advisory" means people listen attentively, have morning tea, and then say, "No!" Unless it suits them to say "Yes." And politicians only say "Yes" if the little filter in their brain tells them the advice they've received will get them re-elected.

The reason people have statutory advisory boards is to show they can afford them - and prove they're important enough to need them. $3.4 million is a small price to pay for your coming of age, Auckland.

Grasp the nettle, people. Carpe the diem. Put your honeyed tongue in your councillor's ear and tell them to press ahead, hell for koha. We should all be on statutory advisory boards, for crying out loud.

Doing things is messy. Building things is hard. Making things is tough. You've got to mix concrete and chop wood and plough paddocks and maybe accidentally stand on an endangered snail.

Far better to whack the rates up, keep borrowing $300,000,000 a week and stick everyone on an advisory board. Let us advise ourselves to brace ourselves and make the switch today.

Read reports. Make recommendations. Feel the thrill of utter futility.

Do your duty as a ratepayer. Advise the council it should make you an adviser.

Only those bereft of ambition would settle for being Greece in slow motion when we can get there flat out.