Dialogue: Auckland must go it alone

By FRAN O'SULLIVAN

Auckland does not have a competitive future until it forces Wellington to cut the umbilical cord and becomes a fully fledged super city able to compete for talent and investment with other burgeoning city states.

It must set an agenda for itself to be a Pacific Tiger: a successful modern city state along the lines of Singapore or Hong Kong; or even Brisbane which under Lord Mayor Jim Soorley has refashioned its future.

It is Soorley's contention that "city states" - particularly those that are also "information states" - will ultimately become more important than nation states.

In Soorley's words, both Canberra and Wellington are "absolutely irrelevant" right now, and that is what worries central government politicians.

Politicians from Prime Minister Helen Clark through to Auckland Issues Minister Judith Tizard last week acknowledged that successive central governments may have kept local government powerless by design.

But they still shied away from backing the amalgamation of Auckland's seven territorial authorities into a single powerhouse, equipped to support the development of the urban area where 50 per cent of New Zealanders are predicted to be living by 2050.

A plethora of reports have focused on the future for New Zealand's largest urban region.

These include the examination by David Irving's private sector-led Competitive Auckland of the steps required to get Auckland's economic performance up to international benchmarks, the Auckland Regional Council's economic strategies and a recent Treasury paper which concludes Auckland is likely to be a critical force in New Zealand's long-term economic development.

To varying degrees, all these reports point to the urgent need to support the development of a single Auckland city as the forces of agglomeration increase the migration of New Zealanders to the region.

Both Clark and Tizard - longtime Aucklanders - profess that central government would not be threatened by the emergence of a single Auckland City. Their concern is for the loss of community representation if the seven existing territorial areas are rolled into one entity.

But without amalgamation, Auckland will be hard-pressed to market itself internationally to obtain the necessary foreign direct investment which is critical to a lift in living standards for the average Aucklander.

Already the trend is for many New Zealanders to bypass Auckland and go straight to Sydney, says Treasury in a recent report, Geography and the Inclusive Economy.

Competitive Auckland figures show Auckland and Sydney's GDP per capita were on a par in 1990. But Auckland has had zero growth in real local currency terms in the past decade, while Sydney has powered ahead. The city must lift its economic growth rates to 5 per cent annually by 2006 and sustain them, if it is to even partially close the current GDP per capita gap with Sydney.

Other forecasts estimate that to catch up with Sydney on a GDP per capita basis, Auckland would need the equivalent of 35 America's Cup campaigns, 26 million extra international visitors or an 80-fold increase in our marine industry.

This gives some idea of the size of the challenge.

The Auckland Regional Council headed up by chief executive Jo Brosnahan has long proposed a single unitary authority to govern Auckland as one of several options for local governance.

The current structure "does not threaten the role of central government", the ARC says. A single authority would be better able to coordinate and distribute the funding necessary to meet the growth being experienced across the region. The management of urban growth, land transport, water and wastewater are key regional problems that require regional solutions.

While a single authority would dominate local government in New Zealand, it would provide the Auckland region with a much more authoritative voice with regard to central government and be better placed to compete internationally for investment with other cities, such as Brisbane.

Such a prospect is anathema for the Kiwi internet loonies who raged against the recent Treasury report , which applauded the process of agglomeration to Auckland, as a piece of lunacy from right-wingers bent on shooting down New Zealand. Treasury-speak is all about inclusiveness these days, but there is no denying the empirical evidence that shows:

* Auckland region currently pays one-third of taxes but has less than one-third of the population;

* The region's economy accounts for 33 per cent of the country's total, or $33.4 billion.

But the main issues, those that worry not just the big end of town but everyone at a community level as residents or workers of Auckland - roading and public transport services, how to arrest the brain drain of the young and not-so-young, putting Auckland on the international map as a destination for foreign direct investment and tourism - are languishing.

Despite the negatives, Auckland is still the fastest growing region in New Zealand: its almost 1.2 million people are predicted to increase to 1.5 million within 20 years and to double within 50 to nearly 3 million people. But to grasp the opportunities, Auckland needs local authority leaders who are able to inspire Aucklanders to lift their collective game, are prepared to put Auckland's advancement before their own and get the city's blood moving.

To get ahead Auckland must take three steps:

The first step is to stop the fragmentation and bring together the seven authorities into one large single authority to manage Auckland.

The challenge to Auckland's mayors must be for them to press for a referendum on the issue at the October local body elections.

Step two is to get an immediate concentration on creating an internationally competitive environment. The Irish Government decided to push economic growth before its roading development reckoning that if it did not first spur growth, extra roading investment would be redundant.

The third step is to sort the traffic congestion out.

An Auckland Transport Action Group led by ARC's Brosnahan has developed a strategy through consensus which concentrates on:

* Wider powers for the regional land transport committee to prioritise projects;

* Flexible funding by both private and Government sectors;

* Finishing the strategic transport plan, using a combination of tolls, Government and Infrastructure Auckland grants for funding.

In the mid-1960s Singapore was a Third World country with a population of 1.9 million that mainly depended on British military bases. When the British left, it had to turn to its own resources and build itself as a city-state.

Global trends show that cities have come into their own again and are fast becoming the place where most people will spend much of their lives. In the 1950s less than one-third of people lives in cities - now that is up to about one half. Predictions have been made that within 25 years there will be more than 500 cities in the world over the million mark.

If this trend plays out it will indeed be the reality that the person who is Auckland's mayor may be more important to our future than the Prime Minister. Perhaps Helen Clark should come home and lead Auckland to its own bright future.