Cries of bias as council plans $120,000 history

Cartoon / Rod Emmerson

Auckland City intends spending $120,000 on a history of itself, in a swansong that minority councillors fear will glorify the ruling Citizens and Ratepayers faction.

The council's finance and strategy committee voted yesterday to seek expressions of interest for the work, to cover the period since the local government reforms of 1989.

But the idea has infuriated the left-wing City Vision faction, which would rather see the money spent on furniture for Aotea Square shaped like "critters" - an American term that generally refers to domestic animals such as cows, horses or mules.

The author of the history book will be paid from money saved by a freeze in the past two years on fees of council and community board members.

City Vision head Richard Northey blasted the project as irresponsible, saying: "It is totally inappropriate to use ratepayers' money contributed by elected representatives across the political spectrum to pay for a book to glorify the actions of the C&R councillors."

Fellow City Vision councillor Glenda Fryer said the result would be a "political treatise", and claimed that a former Labour Cabinet minister aligned with Rogernomics, Michael Bassett, had been touted as a favoured writer.

Dr Bassett confirmed last night that he would be interested in undertaking the history, saying he would be unbiased. "I don't get my marching orders from anybody. If you were to look at the many books I have written, you will see that I haven't been an apologist for anybody. I have written about conservative, liberal and Labour prime ministers."

Another City Vision councillor, Cathy Casey, said that "in no way will I support a hagiographic [idolising] portrayal of Mayor John Banks and his C&R cronies".

Mr Banks believed the project was an economical way of recording the council's history. "Whether or not this history records my mayoralty is not very important to me, because the people of a greater Auckland are going to be the judge of my leadership."

Deputy Mayor David Hay - also a C&R member - said the council had been looking at ways of marking its passing, without wasting money on "a big booze-up", but other proposals for public art or a commemorative video had hit snags.