KEY POINTS:
What if they held a war and nobody came? was the message of a classic poster of the Vietnam War era. The way things are going, it could well be dusted down and recycled as the catchphrase of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance.
Fickle folk that we Aucklanders are, no sooner had Helen Clark succumbed to the frenzied campaign by Auckland business politicians to do something about reforming Auckland local government and announced an inquiry, than we totally lost interest in the whole matter. Another week, it seems, another topic du jour.
Even given the short attention span of most Aucklanders, I had rather expected radical reform proposals that included the eradication of whole cities to have popped up in the electoral battles now taking place across the region. But so far, the life and death of the existing political structure doesn't seem to be exercising the minds of either voters or candidates a jot.
It doesn't feature, for instance, on the websites of either of the two main Auckland City mayoral candidates, Dick Hubbard and John Banks. Public drunkenness gets a mention on Mr Banks' site, but not a word on One City. Mayor Hubbard has had focus groups to "tease out" the issues that are bothering us, the voters. Governance doesn't rate.
The only candidate I could find who really addressed the issue was Auckland mayoral hopeful Alex Swney, who wants to be the last mayor of the present Auckland City, advocating a One City solution, with 21 community boards based on parliamentary electorates.
Another Auckland mayoral hopeful, John Hinchcliff, rather vaguely promises "integrating infrastructure and amenities through regional governance" and provides a link to the business lobby group site.
South in Manukau City, mayoral hopeful Len Brown wants to keep "our unique South Auckland City", but wants to strengthen the existing regional council by giving the region's mayors voting rights on the ARC. His main rival, Dick Quax, welcomes "bold" reform, but doesn't say what that means.
Out west in Waitakere City and across the harbour in North Shore, there is a similar lack of interest in reforming the status quo.
All of which makes you wonder what all the yelling and screaming was about last year. Those were revolutionary times that the big four mayors probably now wish not to be reminded of.
It was just on a year ago that they came up with their plans for a Greater Auckland Council, complete with Lord Mayor, to replace the existing ARC, which was incapable, they decided, of delivering regional leadership.
The mayors were egged on by millionaire businessmen front group "Champions for Auckland".
The proposed GAC was an undemocratic hodgepodge of elected and appointed members, including government appointees and the mayors of whatever cities remained at the second tier. One of their proposals had just three cities.
This brainstorm lasted a week, before it was laughed out of court. Both before and after, the business underworld continued to stir the pot, only a month ago, relaunching a "Fix Auckland" campaign for "transformational reform of local government". This was to counter a minimalist proposal to change submitted to the Government by the combined councils of Auckland.
Sick, one presumes, of the endless to-ing and fro-ing, Prime Minister Helen Clark ended the game by grabbing the ball and booting it over the grandstand into the carpark, setting up a royal commission of inquiry that won't report back until well after the 2008 parliamentary elections.
Proponents of reform were ecstatic at what they deemed was a breakthrough, then began frantically lobbying over terms of reference and preferred commissioners. The rest of Auckland, politicians included, went back to sleep.
The charitable interpretation for the lack of battles about governance in the present local campaign is that, civilised folk that we are, we're happy to leave it to the royal commissioners to decide, and that we feel it would be impolite to try and skew the debate beforehand. But more likely, most punters have such a jaundiced view of local politics that it's going to take more than the promise of structural reform to convince them anything might change for the better.
