Brian Rudman: Auckland debate grows beyond regional lines

A few days back I was wondering at the rationality of pouring tens of billions of government dollars into trying to solve Auckland's traffic congestion while we continue to unload 200,000 or more extra cars a year across the city's wharves.

Of course such growing pains are part of the Auckland ethos and have been since day one, as has the solution: charging off to Government and asking for a bail-out.

Today the regional growth forum - a squabble of senior local politicians from across the region - meet to decide how the statutory review of the regional growth strategy, adopted in November 1999, should begin.

For 150 odd years, Aucklanders have seen growth as the natural order - or more accurately, disorder - of affairs and have adapted their lives accordingly. The regional growth strategy was the most comprehensive attempt to guide this expansion, complete with its prescription for infill housing, improved public transport, more roads and so on.

But regional councillors, in their preparations for this review, have started to question whether the sustained growth that we have grown used to is indeed sustainable. Particularly in light of the requirement in the Local Government Act 1974 that the growth strategy objectives be "to ensure growth is accommodated in a way that meets the best interests of the inhabitants of the Auckland Region".

Regional councillors are also suggesting Auckland's growth pains are a national issue and passed a resolution on October 3 "that the ARC explores with the central government ways of effectively dealing with growth pressures facing Auckland and its implications for the rest of New Zealand, including greater input from the ARC into immigration policy and the need to develop national policies, including a national policy statement on growth and development for New Zealand".

ARC chairman Mike Lee says the ARC has been both a growth booster and a hand-wringer over the impact growth was having, rushing off to Government for massive injections into our infrastructure.

"Is there a contradiction there? Is it good for Auckland and good for New Zealand that Auckland is constantly growing disproportionately and the rest of New Zealand is kind of imploding or hollowing out?"

He points to stories of provincial and rural schools closing down "with dire consequences to the health of that community" while at the same time new schools are being proposed on the borders of Auckland's metropolitan urban limits, which will create all sorts of environmental and transport problems."

He says, "We need to reflect on the fact that perhaps these two things are actually linked and what are we going to do about it."

Auckland growth, he says, might be like the weather, and nothing can be done to stop or slow it, but he wants an intellectual examination of the whole problem and some national leadership.

On the ARC's call for national policies on growth and development and immigration, Mr Lee says that since the Resource Management Act, passed in 1991, there have been plenty of district and regional plans and policy statements but no national ones, despite the requirements of the act.

"There's no national policy statements on the factors that influence sustainable management, mainly human population and where it happens. It's all there in the RMA, but it was never politically correct to have national planning."
The ARC wants this to change. In one of the submissions to today's meeting it argues that when increased immigration resulting from Government policy contributes to regional growth then "there should be central government contribution to new infrastructure. Alternatively, to reduce these pressures, the national immigration policy could provide incentives for settlement in regions outside of Auckland".

It calls for consultation with Auckland to produce immigration policies "that better support the sustainable development of Auckland. Sustainability in this sense relates to the ecological carrying capacity of the region and its ability to support future generations".

Auckland's growth, as Mr Lee suggests, could well be unstoppable. And maybe we don't want to stop it, even if it were possible.

But with a growing unease among many Aucklanders about the merits of intensification, particularly within communities targeted for these cheek-by-jowl housing developments, and with infrastructure of all kinds straining to keep pace with population growth, this debate could not be more timely.