Editorial: Big events require big vision

Opinion

Some decisions feel wrong when they are made and get more wrong as time goes on. Auckland's failure to go with the V8 Supercar street race is one such decision. It felt ominous for the city's reputation at the time and the impression since then has only deepened that the Queen City has somehow lost its verve. The Auckland City Council, though now dominated by opponents of the V8 proposal, has been looking for a way to change that impression and yesterday announced a strategy to encourage major events.

It is a sound enough strategy, essentially reducing the red tape facing event organisers and providing them with a single point of reference for council consents and assistance. But the events the council seems to have in mind are not exactly audacious. They include the Auckland Festival, Fashion Week, Pasifika, the Rally of New Zealand, the International Boat Show, Matariki, the Lantern Festival and a new biennial waterfront festival to be held over Anniversary Weekend. All but the last are already on the Auckland calendar. They are all valued and worthy events but are any of them likely to set the world alight?

The council needs to think bigger. Not so long ago Auckland was host city to the America's Cup. Not so many years before that, the idea that New Zealand and Auckland might entertain such an idea would have been dismissed as preposterous. But the vision of some Aucklanders and the leadership of the late Sir Peter Blake made it possible. The V8 Supercar race was not in the America's Cup league but it had some of the same audacity.

The very problems it presented were part of its appeal. Any street race in the centre of a city is likely to challenge the patience and imagination of residents and civic leaders. Quite a number of Aucklanders who would have been inconvenienced by the proposed circuit around Victoria Park were nevertheless excited by the idea. But an equal number who faced no personal inconvenience did not like the idea that part of the city should be given over to the noise and culture of car-racing for several days.

In its attempt to recover from that decision the city council gives no sign that it has learned from it. The main lesson of the V8 race is surely that if a council truly wants to enliven the city with major events its members cannot afford to let personal or political taste dictate its programme. Not all the members who supported the race were "petrolheads". As one member, Doug Armstrong, said: "I can't stand car racing but every now and then a city like Auckland needs to shut down and have some fun." If the council is to boost the city's attraction to big events, its members need to be quite businesslike about it.

Unfortunately, its approach sounds more politically correct than businesslike. Mayor Dick Hubbard talks about "tailoring events (to) the psyche and nature of the city". Citing the Indian, Chinese and Pacific Island components of its population, he says, "the Diwali Festival of Lights, the Lantern Festival and Pasifika are absolute certainties". They are all part of the city's multicultural fabric and worthy of the council's full support. But if it seriously wants to excite the city it will need something bigger.

Mr Hubbard says the council is also doing its bit to bring the Rugby World Cup here in 2011. That is more like it. But Auckland could be more imaginative still. Within the artistic, business and sporting resources of the city there will be people with dreams of events that conceivably could happen here. The city council must do more than ease the procedure for consent. It needs to show that its own thinking is big enough, and sufficiently businesslike, to encourage dreamers to speak up. After the V8 lesson, anything seems possible.