KEY POINTS:
If Local Government Minister Rodney Hide is genuinely interested in improving the governance structure of the Auckland region, now might be the time to stop beating up on those currently doing the job. With the royal commissioners about to deliver their reform proposals, what does the minister hope
to achieve with his ongoing bagging of incumbent politicians and bureaucrats?
No doubt making the change from parliamentary street fighter to minister of the Crown must be hard. But his Cabinet colleagues seem to have succeeded without much trouble.
Yesterday he criticised Auckland City Council for advertising for marketing and economic development staff on the eve of the "shake-up". He says they should just "get by" because "everyone else is having to".
Given the mass hiring of communications staff going on at the Beehive in recent weeks, this is not even accurate. Indeed, the Government's hiring of spin doctors might explain why Auckland City has been unable to find a suitable applicant to fill its vacant spinmeister-in-chief vacancy. That, to me, is the big news from Town Hall. Why, despite more than 50 applicants, was none deemed suitable and the post readvertised? What are they looking for? A miracle worker?
But getting back to Mr Hide's on-going witch hunt against councils for being "over-staffed and over-managed" and his faith that firstly, amalgamation of Auckland local bodies will cure this malady and second, the royal commissioners will deliver this recipe.
Truth is, we only have an expectation that the commissioners will propose a more powerful regional council than Auckland has now. We have no hints about what second tier of "local" democracy will fit in below. Until we know, who can say what size of political and bureaucratic infrastructure will emerge.
As for Mr Hide's belief that bigger is better and more efficient and more streamlined, that too can only be a matter of mantra, not fact. The more one reads the scant research about amalgamations both here - the 1989 reforms - and abroad, the less certain we can be. Even in the narrow area of staffing.
Garry Law, one time senior manager at both the Auckland Regional Council and Brisbane City Council, wrote early in this debate how Brisbane - held up by pro-amalgamators as a model to follow - employed more than 6000 bureaucrats at a ratio of employees to residents 70 per cent higher than Auckland City. "Much [also] has been made of how few politicians it has compared to the many in greater Auckland, yet ... there are many more people involved
in governance on numerous advisory boards."
Late last year, Paul Bedford, the first chief planner of the mega-city of Toronto, which was formed 10 years ago, warned Aucklanders not to repeat their mistakes. Toronto residents were told amalgamation would bring savings of $453 million a year, but a report after eight years found the reforms generated few, if any, savings.
This echoes the finding of Professor Michael Chisholm's review of 1992-95 reforms in Britain. "The financial savings which the Government had expected showed little sign of materialising."
Alongside this, a Deloitte's report commissioned by the Employers and Manufacturers Association and claiming amalgamation would get rid of 700 of Auckland's 6300 bureaucrats and result in annual savings of $132 million sounds less convincing. Particularly when the international consultants added a rider that their figures were "for information purposes only" and they would not guarantee the accuracy of indicative costs.
Trawling through the reports and analyses of the experiences here and in Australia, Britain, the US and Canada, consultants McKinlay Douglas found evidence of reduced costs and/or improved services from amalgamation were "at best equivocal".
McKinlay also highlighted an American review which noted "perhaps the most pertinent conclusion from the literature is that government consolidation can lead to serious morale problems among government employees" which "can persist for several years after consolidation".
Anyone who has worked in a workplace where redundancies are part of the scenario - and that's most of us - knows the enervating impact this can have on production. That's why I'm surprised that the minister of the Crown supposed to be leading and representing the local government sector is so free with his jibes.
Better instead that he spends his time demanding a convincing case for the reforms proposed. One that isn't faith-based alone.
