David Thornton: Logical way to filter time-wasters

David Thornton

Opinion

No V8 street race. No eastern highway. And now, it seems, no second commercial Auckland airport at the Air Force base at Whenuapai.

Is there any important project in Auckland that is likely to go ahead? Why have these projects failed to materialise?

It was not the oft-maligned Resource Management Act that scuppered them, but more that the projects were ill-thought-out at the start.

Who would put a V8 race in a location that would gridlock a nation's biggest city for up to two months every year for seven years?

Who would think of building a highway that would choke at its entrance to the city, and at a time when all the strategic plans call for a reduction in the number of cars on the road?

Who would want to establish a second airport when it was neither necessary nor financially viable, and which would compete with an existing airport which had 40 years capacity left, and at a time when the aircraft industry is building bigger planes, leading to fewer flights and a reduction of landing capacity requirements at airports?

How would we pay for all three of these projects at the same time?

And let us not forget the tens of millions of ratepayer and taxpayer dollars that have been spent on these abandoned projects.

How do we avoid wasting these huge sums in future?

Can we establish a forum where such projects can be scrutinised before they become battlegrounds between opposing interests?

There needs to be a filtering system, a method whereby all these bright ideas are independently scrutinised at the beginning before millions of dollars of rates and taxes are spent on eventually unworkable or unacceptable schemes and projects.

Under a filtering system, every concept would need to pass some simple tests.

Will this work? Will it be financially acceptable in terms of what it will cost? Who will pay for it? Will it be environmentally acceptable to those whose environment will be threatened?

So what sort of filter would be needed to pose such questions?

Many of these failed projects have involved battles between businesses and residents. Business lobbyists rightly promote what they perceive to be the economic advantages of a project that will provide jobs and make Auckland a truly global city - whatever that might be.

Residents groups are concerned with the needs and desires of daily living - concerns of home, neighbourhood and community.

To reconcile the differences between the parties will often appear impossible and such reconciliation is seldom, if ever, achieved by institutions such as the various units of local government, which, in any case, are often both initiator and decision-maker on new projects.

In this warlike setting there is little room for the most necessary ingredient of both assessment and reconciliation - common sense. That is what our new filter must be, a tribunal of common sense.

A filter serves to remove rubbish from a regular flow of something, or prevent rubbish getting into a system. That is exactly what we need to prevent these often politically inspired projects that ultimately cost ratepayers and taxpayers so dearly.

What could emerge from our filter are guidelines for the future cleansed of most imperfections.

To achieve its objectives, a tribunal of common sense must be composed of people of common sense - from all perspectives.

It would have a base membership, with additions as required on particular issues - ethnic groups, business groups, residents groups, even local elected politicians.

No one with an axe to grind on an issue would be eligible to serve on the tribunal when that issue came before it.

And the tribunal must be free of any interference from government at any level.

Common sense is a vital ingredient of life, often denigrated because of its simplicity.

But had the test of common sense been applied in the early days to the proposals for Whenuapai, the eastern highway and the V8 race, who could doubt that the ultimate decisions on those projects would have been arrived at much sooner and at considerably less cost?

* David Thornton is a former North Shore City councillor.