ARC poses boundaries for Super City wards

There is a need for balance, says Committee for Auckland's Sir Ron Carter. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

The first ward boundaries for the Super City have been proposed by the Auckland Regional Council.

The council has produced boundaries for 22 wards, including two Maori wards, for the Super Auckland Council, and boundaries for 28 local boards.

ARC chairman Mike Lee yesterday said the boundaries were a good starting point for the Local Government Commission, which has statutory powers to draw up the boundaries.

The ARC boundaries are based on communities of interest and include local boards for Devonport, Howick-Pakuranga, Papakura and one each for Waiheke and Great Barrier Islands.

They include overturning a recommendation from the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance to transfer two of Auckland's largest water dams and three regional parks to Environment Waikato.

It was nuts, Mr Lee said, to give Auckland assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Environment Waikato. He proposed including the contested area in ARC's Hunua ward.

Mr Lee was addressing the Auckland governance legislation committee on the Government's Super City plan for Auckland.

The committee is travelling around Auckland and listening to about 800 submissions on the plan to abolish the region's eight councils and replace them with a single Auckland Council made up of 12 ward councillors and eight councillors elected at large, with 20 to 30 local boards under the main body.

Mr Lee said at-large councillors would have unmanageable workloads with double the number of constituents of MPs and would not achieve equitable, fair and democratic representation for Auckland.

It would be more democratic to have 20 general wards and two Maori wards, he said.

The ARC has gone for a number of local boards at the upper end of the Government plan. It wants the boards' roles and functions set in law, including a new statutory instrument, a community plan, for boards to engage and to be accountable to their communities and the Auckland Council.

The issue of at-large councillors was hotly debated yesterday, with business heavyweights Sir Ron Carter and Employers and Manufacturers (Northern) chief executive Alasdair Thompson presenting opposing views.

Sir Ron, chairman of the Committee for Auckland lobby group, said past practice was parochial behaviour at the expense of a cohesive and unifying vision for Auckland.

"If some people are prepared to stand up and say 'I believe I represent Auckland as a whole', they should be entitled to do so. There is a need for balance between those [councillors] representing local concerns and those thinking about the city as a whole".

Mr Thompson said at-large councillors was an old-fashioned concept. People standing for the Auckland Council would be interested in regional issues, and people standing for local boards in local issues.

Mr Thompson said it might come as a surprise to some members of the committee, but the organisation supported three Maori seats on the Auckland Council. He said the organisation was "a bit Pakeha" in its ways by wanting Maori councillors elected from the Maori roll and not mana whenua councillors appointed by iwi.