Brian Rudman: Voice to Wellington drowned by bitchy clamour

No doubt hyperactive ideas man Bob Harvey learned long ago to live with the inevitability of blurting out the odd clanger. Such as this week's proposal to create a Lord Mayor of Auckland.

But given the universal rubbishing the proposal has attracted from his fellow mayors, you have to wonder if the Waitakere mayor is not now regretting he didn't pop a Ritalin pill before speaking. Something to slow his over-revving brainbox enough to let the alarm system kick in.

Then again, who am I kidding? Knowing Bob, he's enjoying the furore and organising fittings for his new ermine-trimmed robe of office.

My initial stumbling block was the title. Here in the 21st century, we're supposed to be breaking free from the shackles of our colonial past, not aping the old ruling classes by becoming pretend aristocrats.

Mr Harvey sees the Lord Mayor as being our ambassador to the dark heart of the nation, Wellington. All I can conjure up are tittering bureacrats and politicians, sniggering away as the self-styled Lord and Lady Auckland drive up to the Beehive in their carriage to begin lobbying.

But that's just the cosmetics. The flaw runs deeper. Whether we call our representative Lord or Ambassador or even Citizen the fatal problem is, how can a divided city like ours hope to despatch anyone anywhere, and claim they speak for Auckland? Just look about.

This week, while Mr Harvey was calling for a Lord Mayor, Dick Hubbard, the ordinary mayor of Auckland, was on television news with his pet plan for solving highway congestion. It also leaned to the aristocratic. Mr Hubbard wants a designated "business class" lane, where, for a fee, the lords and ladies of Remmers can zap past the peasants stalled in the poor lanes.

In the United States, they call them "Lexus lanes".

It is a good illustration of why the Government has difficulty hearing us. It's not because we don't have an ambassador in Wellington megaphoning our needs. It's because we're like the Tower of Babel, telegraphing a dozen different messages on the same subject.

The disunity and bitchy rivalries spread to the lowest levels. I was flabbergasted to read in The Aucklander last week that Mr Harvey's council had banned school kids from outside Waitakere from taking free trips through its eco-friendly Henderson learning centre.

The centre teaches kids about worm farms, home composting and growing vegetables. The ban is a tit-for-tat response to Auckland City for permitting a new private refuse transfer station in Avondale, near the border with Waitakere. Waitakere fears the new station will take customers from its Henderson rubbish plant - reducing profits used to run the learning centre.

Now that is petty. Particularly when you consider the free ride Waitakere citizens bludge off Auckland City every time they visit the Auckland Art Gallery, the Auckland Town Hall, the Aotea Centre and the zoo, or attend concerts by the Auckland Philharmonia. All of this cost Auckland ratepayers dearly, but Waitakere contributes nothing.

These Balkans-like spats also popped up last month in Rodney District when councillors made a last-minute bid to rip off the rest of the region's ratepayers, by more than doubling the asking price to Watercare Services for a reservoir site.

Watercare stood its ground and said it would pay the originally agreed $412,500 and not a cent more. Last week, their bluff called, shame-faced Rodney councillors backed off and agreed to the original price.

All of which is by way of saying we need unity at home before we can speak with what Mr Harvey calls "a common voice" in Wellington, or anywhere else.

He rubbishes the idea of a "super city", claiming "it reeks of crassness and election hype", preferring instead "a common vision of sharing and accepting pragmatic solutions" and "welding local authorities together for the long-term haul ... "

But surely "super city", "welding together", "sharing a common vision" are all mere words describing the same thing, and will remain hot air, until Auckland's politicians take them seriously?

If they ever do that, we won't need a lord mayor playing ambassador in Wellington to get our message across.