Rudman's city: Contestants claiming credits where they may not be due

By BRIAN RUDMAN

The messianic infection that finally overwhelmed Prime Minister Muldoon seems to have rubbed off on two of his ministerial colleagues now contesting the Auckland mayoralty.

In the case of incumbent mayor Christine Fletcher, it's surfaced in a campaign brochure where she's at risk of claiming credit for every flower that's bloomed and dysfunction (a favourite word) that's been untangled in the city in the past three years.

As for rival John Banks, he's promising to solve Auckland's woes with one of the biggest spend-ups since the pharaohs built their pyramids. Muldoon-like, he's simultaneously pledging "to take a yard-broom to all the unnecessary spending to help the hapless ratepayer with their ever-increasing rate burdens".

Just how does he plan to hold the rates yet at the same time build his latest promise, a grandiose tunnel beneath Hobson Bay? I'm all ears.

No doubt it was purely coincidental that this "Think Big" carrot was dangled on the day voting papers were dispatched across town.

Mr Banks wants to put the mayoral Volvo limousine up for auction and give the proceeds to the City Mission. Given his grandiose road-building plans, it would be more prudent to put the cash aside for a truck or three of asphalt.

Just whose piggy bank he thinks the money for his Hobson Bay tunnel will come from he doesn't say. He says you and I will not be lumbered, suggesting instead that tolls or the sale of airport shares could be the answer. Airport shares, he says, could raise $250 million.

The reality is, whether tolls or airport shares or rates, the ratepayer will be paying one way or another. And my sources suggest it will cost a lot more than $250 million. One advised me to multiply that figure by four. The only reference figure I have to go on is the $60 million Watercare* says it will cost them to underground the ageing existing sewer across the bay.

Mr Banks' grand scheme involves a great tunnel carrying not just the sewer but the main trunk railway line and a four-lane eastern highway as well.

He's not the first to have this vision, offering as it does a Hobson Bay reconnected to the adjacent harbour. It's a fabulous fantasy, offering, as he says, the "residents of Orakei, Parnell and Remuera" (of which he is one) "the most fabulous outlook imaginable".

But to build it would be to beggar the rest of the city's ratepayers. It's not a designated state highway so there's no way taxpayer-funded Transfund is going to fork out. And somehow I don't see Tranz Rail, or whichever public body ends up with the rail lease, diverting its precious funds on this dream scheme.

Mr Banks also says he "supports the completion of the Auckland motorway network by the year 2007". This is so equally fanciful he might as well have said "by the end of this year" and be done with it.

Even the most dedicated of pro-roaders - Transit New Zealand - knows such a scheme is not possible. Its Auckland State Highway Strategy is based on a 10-year road building programme. And, even if this ambitious timetable is kept to, there will still be plenty left to build before Auckland's motorway network is complete. The word from Wellington is that the Government regards this timetable as over-ambitious and unaffordable.

To give an example of the impossibility of Mr Banks' promises, the extension of State Highway 20 through Avondale is not scheduled to start until 2008. And that's if there are no further hiccups. The extension runs through Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate and opposition to it is widespread from the top down.

Furthermore, the Mayor of Auckland doesn't have the power to make such decisions. He or she has one vote on a council of 20. As far as regional roads and public transport are concerned, that's all laid down in the regional land transport strategy. This is drawn up by all of the region's local authorities, not just Auckland City and certainly not by Mayor John Banks.

Still, I suppose you can forgive Mr Banks his messianic impulses when you read Mrs Fletcher's brochure. "In three years I've got Auckland up and moving forward again after many years of near-paralysis." Cleaning up the sex industry, ridding the town of graffiti, solving the public transport crisis - it was all Super Christine's work.

I do wonder at the wisdom of one piece of bragging, though. "I've got our city back in the lucrative Volvo Ocean Race," she proclaims. With the race about to leave Europe and not one sponsor for the Auckland stopover secured by Mrs Fletcher's crack team, Auckland ratepayers could end up carrying a seven-figure loss.

It's not something I'd be seeking credit for.

* CORRECTION: The original version of this column incorrectly stated that the $60m plan for the Hobson Bay trunk sewer was Metrowater's.