Christchurch stadium debate: Mike Hosking - yes vote today would crown you NZ's best city

OPINION:

If there is hope to be found in metropolitan New Zealand, Christchurch is the place to look.

Auckland is a basket case, the people who have overseen the destruction of the landscape, access and functionality of the place should hang their heads in shame, or if they don't want to do that, then maybe just resign.

Wellington has become farcical, with its mix of exploding pipes and sludge being shipped all over town by truck while a combination of the council and the central government offer yet more examples of dysfunction and lack of delivery by trying to explain to us with a straight face that the Let's Get Wellington Moving programme is actually moving.

Which light rail system will actually get finished? One, Auckland? Two, Wellington? Or three, we won't know because we will all be dead by time they get around to it.

Which leaves us with Christchurch.

For a variety of personal reasons, I have been in the city a bit lately. I am from the city originally.

Clive James, who was a hero of mine, once did a TV series called Postcard From ...

He did one on his home town of Sydney, a line from which I have never forgotten: "When I was growing up and Sydney was all there was to see, I couldn't see it, but now I can."

I feel that way about Christchurch.

At the moment, I am a mix of excitement and despair about the place, which is why today is so important.

Today should be a fait accompli, today should not even be a "thing".

But we all wait, hoping the city council makes the right decision on the stadium.

The fact we are where we are is a disgrace and that is where my despair comes in.

Each time I have gone back to the old home town of late, you are hit with the old familiarity, the drive from the airport to Hagley Park really hasn't changed in 40 years, that in its own small way is the beauty of the city ... easy access to the airport, I wish Auckland thought about that.

Hagley Park is still the central lifeblood of the place, but then having arrived in the CBD you see what makes the city potentially the jewel in the New Zealand metropolitan crown.

The precincts, the places that are finished, the bits that are changed are the parts where you see and feel the future.

An artist's impression of Christchurch's proposed multi-use stadium. Photo / Supplied

The advantage that Christchurch has, of course, is something no one else has and something no one else wants, so while Wellington and Auckland fiddle and twiddle and mess the places up, Christchurch had a seismic event that allowed a blank canvas.

But, and here is your make-or-break part, this is all taking too long.

The stadium should have been finished by now, it should have opened and been welcoming fans.

The Crusaders should've won several of their titles in that stadium and coach Scott Robertson should never have had to make that emotional appeal a few weeks back calling for the city leaders to be brave.

"Why are we not brave?" he asked.

The fact he had to pose the question is the crime.

Crusaders coach Scott Robertson has questioned the lack of action on the stadium. Photo / Getty Images

You don't have to go too far through the centre of the city to pop out the other side to the emptiness, to the gravel carparks.

This is the make-or-break part of town, this is the part that completes the story and turns Christchurch into this country's best city, and fulfils the promise of it being the best small city in the world ... or not.

It says something insightful and perhaps a bit sad about leadership or lack of it, that when given such an astonishing opportunity, that it hasn't been seized upon more aggressively.

There hasn't been enough "kid in a candy shop" about the rebuild.

Momentum is everything, and it has been in danger of being lost, and the stadium and its trials and tribulations is perhaps the best example.

Seventy-seven per cent of submissions last week said yes do it, build it.

The fact we were having submissions 11 years on is your issue in lack of leadership.

But today is another step in the right direction.

When it's done, and it joins the conference facility and justice precinct, and the riverside market, and the new downtown housing projects, and the many businesses (including NZME's) return to the city, it will be testament to what a small country at the bottom of the South Pacific, when faced with adversity, can actually do.

At a time of great national malaise, Christchurch has the chance to stand tall and lead the way - what an honour.