Back then, these were local roads being pounded to death by logging trucks carrying the wave of wood going to Port Marsden. The local authorities protested that this was a national issue and NZTA took over the route. This was in exchange for a commitment to form an alliance to work together to extract better value for money in creating a better functioning Northland roading network.
Against all odds and considerable political scepticism, the Northland Transportation Alliance was created. The transportation teams from the local authorities came together in a collaborative working relationship with NZTA in a Shared Services Business Unit.
Its role has been to deliver roading and transport services across Northland including, transport planning, policy and strategy, asset and network management, capital project delivery, the regional land transport programme, public transport and road safety initiatives. The final message reflects solid positive achievement.
The thing is that transport and roading is a network. In a Northland sense, it starts at Cape Reinga and comes out at Wellsford. All other roads with a range of usage classifications and maintenance schedules, come together into this network. The purpose of the network is to facilitate trade, attract investment, reduce transportation costs, boost tourism, generate employment, provide access to markets, stimulate growth and create inter-sector linkages.
To be effective this network is all joined up with a common sense of operation and purpose. The closure of the Brynderwyns and Mangamukas is testament to how problematic the failure of one part of the network can be.
In a local authority sense, this network joining up is quite different from all other services they control. Wastewater, stormwater, drinking water, parks and reserves and all the other services they control are not joined up like transportation services.
The problem for local authority politicians is if they rely on the whole network functioning in a transport alliance, then the individuals in that alliance aren’t under their thumbs in the same way as their other services are. They perceive that they lose control, and don’t fully understand the benefits of collaboration.
So these Northland local authority politicians have canned a highly effective alliance, which was held up nationally as a model of collaboration as to how essential services can be delivered. Now, these local authorities have to rebuild and duplicate the systems, shared expertise and culture of achievement within their own bodies - and candidly that is a forlorn hope.
It is ironic that, in the same week that these same local politicians have closed down a collaborative alliance with a demonstrated track record, they publish an aspirational to-do list of gunna-do priorities with a commitment to work together to achieve.
The list is the sort of thing that comes out of a two-day strategy session comprising politicians and executive, which is then published and pinned on various walls for approbation. The participants then crawl back into their boltholes and get on with their real work.
There are some great and worthy aspirations on that list which do require real collaborative effort, but there is an awful lot of fluffy stuff as well. Call me cynical, but they’ve just destroyed the best example of what collaborative operation is all about.
Calvin Thomas and his NTA team can hold their heads up high in showing what collaboration really means.
