Capital rides to Auckland's aid

By JIM EAGLES business editor

Auckland's infrastructural problems are now so bad that even the Wellington Chamber of Commerce is joining the push to get something done.

The chamber's chief executive, Philip Lewin, visited Auckland yesterday to officially launch a strategy paper entitled "Making sure Auckland's economy is fit to grow 80 per cent over the next decade".

To achieve that level of growth the New Zealand Chambers of Commerce & Industry are calling for a three-step programme to improve the region's creaking infrastructure:

* A review of Auckland local government to produce a more efficient and effective structure.

* Increased funding for transport infrastructure, including the use of private capital.

* A change to the Resource Management Act giving greater weight to economic growth.

The paper is the latest in a series by the chambers on how to get the country growing faster.

Lewin said the reason Wellington and the rest of the country wanted Auckland's problems solved was because that was necessary to get the national economy moving.

"Auckland is a major centre of economic activity and we need to ensure that neither it nor any other of our key productive regions is held back by poor infrastructure and constipated decision-making," he said.

The strategy paper suggests that a major factor holding back Auckland's growth is inadequate land transport, water, wastewater and electricity infrastructure.

For example, it says, the cost of traffic congestion to business "is now widely acknowledged to be in excess of $1 billion a year".

To achieve consistently higher growth, it says, "we can't go on making the same mistakes ... We must help Auckland face up to its problems once and for all".

To achieve this it would be necessary to get rid of parochial in-fighting and get decisions made faster and with more emphasis on encouraging economic growth.

The chambers say they "strongly believe that reducing the number of local authorities in the Auckland region would aid Auckland's growth."

They argue that the region's number one infrastructure problem, roading, will never be solved until a more sensible funding system is sorted out.