KEY POINTS:
Governance is not a word to set the pulses racing; it is not even the right word for the subject a royal commission is to study for the improvement of Auckland. The techniques of leading a city are not under discussion, only the power structure.
Those who lament the multiplicity of metropolitan councils believe that if the structure is unified, leadership will follow. Perhaps they are right.
Their publicity over recent weeks has certainly moved the Government. A royal commission is probably more than the lobby led by the Employers and Manufacturers Association expected when they urged the Cabinet to put aside some minimal proposals agreed by Auckland's eight councils and set up an independent inquiry.
The standing Local Government Commission would have seemed adequate for the task. It handled the nationwide reorganisation of local bodies 18 years ago and has specialist knowledge that the royal commissioner(s), as yet unnamed, will have to acquire.
But a royal commission is at least a signal of unlimited possibilities. Though its terms of reference have yet to be written, it should be able to look at Auckland through eyes unconstrained by national considerations. If the ideal governing body of Greater Auckland seems to be a regional council more powerful than its counterparts in the rest of the country, so be it.
Auckland has a population more than three times that of any other region. It would not be the first time special governing arrangements have been made for it. It was given the Auckland Regional Authority many years before regional councils were introduced everywhere. And the ARA, as it became known and feared, was a more powerful beast than the largely environmental councils that other regions were given.
Aucklanders who remember the ARA will wonder whether today's single city campaign is reinventing the wheel. The ARA came to grief because it was too powerful for the comfort of its constituent councils and ratepayers, and too disputatious to command citizens' respect. The difference between that sorry experiment and the Greater Auckland Council imagined by those who have pressed for the inquiry is that the constituent councils would be abolished.
There would be nothing between the Greater Auckland Council and the elected community boards that would continue to deal with local services. Community boards, set up in place of borough councils 18 years ago, have proved the enduring value of representation at that level. The division of roles and rating powers between communities and the region could be issues as vexed as any for the royal commission.
But it is the bigger proposal that needs to capture the public imagination. It will not do so by simply claiming cost savings in the way some lobbyists have done. A single council in place of eight would eliminate some duplication of offices and agencies, but most people are wise to the ways of public bodies.
The bigger they are the bigger they think they need to be. A Greater Auckland Council might give Auckland one voice but it likely would be just as bloated a bureaucracy as the sum of its parts at present.
That could be a price worth paying if indeed it does enable big, exciting projects to be conceived and carried through. Things like a cross-harbour tunnel, the development of Whenuapai airport, the late, lamented Waterfront Stadium, the Tank Farm and most big transport projects.
Auckland is too divided, its four cities too parochial and its regional institutions too weak. With good, inspiring people at the helm it could make the most of its scale and its natural blessings. A royal commission cannot craft leadership but can give us a better platform for it. It is a start.
