KEY POINTS:
Consultants are beginning to line their pockets from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Auckland.
The giant accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is the first out of the blocks, picking up a $60,000 fee for providing advice to Auckland City Council.
Last night, Auckland City chief executive David Rankin said he expected to continue making use of consultants for what was going to be a hugely important project.
But Deputy Mayor David Hay, who chairs the council's regional governance committee, said the council would not be a party to any gravy train during the course of this year's inquiry into the future shape of local government in Auckland.
He said there might be a need for some outside help to begin with but the council would come up with its own ideas about the future of Auckland.
Up the road at the Auckland Regional Council, chairman Mike Lee said: "We don't intend to use consultants."
The widespread practice of hiring consultants has come under the spotlight since new Mayor John Banks and his C&R allies were elected on a platform of ending a culture of waste.
The council has spent $91 million on consultants in the past three financial years. The council spends about $8.4 million a year on outside lawyers alone.
Mr Rankin said PricewaterhouseCoopers was hired to help the council get its head around a huge amount of material on governance, provide ideas and shape how the council would approach a submission.
The company had strong capabilities around Auckland, infrastructure issues and governance issues to date.
"At the end of the day it is our councillors who would make the decision about what they are going to say in the submission," Mr Rankin said.
PricewaterhouseCoopers helped prepare an information package for the royal commission, councillors and community board chairs.
The 43-page information package calls on the commission to be bold, visionary and work towards change for the region. "Tinkering with the status quo is unlikely to lead to resolution, as past history has shown."
A memo from council strategy manager Teena Pennington said the package reflected "early thinking" and the council did not have a view on what local and regional governance changes were required to help develop the region into a world class city.
The package suggested a process for the commission to consider to overcome entrenched positions by some councils and stakeholders.
It said debate around a "geographic" approach, such as one city versus three or four city models, had led to stakeholders taking fixed positions early on and making change extremely difficult.
It went on to say the royal commission provided an opportunity to find consensus on the key issues required for regional success before moving to solutions.
Mr Hay, who was mayor of Mt Roskill before the last big local government reforms in 1989, was not wildly enthusiastic about the focus in the report around a world class city.
"We need to be a bit more upfront about how we empower people," he said.
Commission chairman, retired High Court Judge Peter Salmon, QC, last week said submissions would be called for by March.
"Our hearings will be very informal and people won't need to have lawyers," he said.
The aim was to report back to the Government by December 1 on a form of local government to serve Auckland well now and for the next 50 years.
