Matt McCarten: Hubbard's push for tolls is electoral suicide

Well, auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard is proving why self-made business entrepreneurs don't necessarily make good politicians.

After a closed meeting with Manukau's Barry Curtis and Waitakere's Bob Harvey, he volunteered to pop down to Wellington to lobby the Government to allow the three mayors to impose road tolls.

Hubbard's City Vision and Hobson Action allies on the Auckland City Council must have put their heads in their hands.

Curtis and Harvey aren't standing next time anyway, so they don't have to face the music in the unlikely event the Government agrees to their request. These two are wily enough not to do the dirty work themselves.

The other two main players, North Shore Mayor George Wood and regional council chairman Mike Lee, aren't having a bar of it.

As a businessman, Hubbard would see the business case, in that the Government is not putting enough money into building roads.

An experienced politician sees the obvious, which is to lobby the Labour Government to give back more of the petrol tax Aucklanders already pay. The Government keeps two-thirds of this money.

Hubbard should be reminding Prime Minister Helen Clark that Auckland saved Labour's butt in the last election and this is the bill.

Trying to sell the idea of road tolls in Auckland is electoral suicide. John Banks must be smirking. After the Queen St tree culling backdown, I wonder if Hubbard has anyone in his team who knows anything about public relations.

He can't blame Bruce Hucker any more because Hucker agreed to maintain a low profile so he wouldn't overshadow the mayor.

Hucker, if Hubbard had consulted him, would never have allowed this lone ranger mission on road tolls. But Hubbard's decision to go to Wellington to lobby for a further tax that falls mainly on the poor is electoral suicide.

One city councillor, Eden-Albert's Cathy Casey, attacked Hubbard's decision to act unilaterally before his council had made a decision.

Casey pointed out the bleeding obvious that most of the workers had no choice but to commute to the city each day for their jobs, or students to city campuses.

They would be hit worst by Hubbard's brainwave.

Aucklanders work 90 minutes on average each shift just to cover their transport costs getting to work. The average Auckland household already spends nearly 20 per cent of their income on transport.

What's Hubbard proposing? Surely he's not saying these commuting workers can afford to live in the city?

That is unless, of course, he is suggesting minimum wage workers pool their meagre earnings and three or four are squeezed into those one-room slum apartments.

Regional councillor Robyn Hughes, who stood on the Residents' Action Movement (Ram) ticket last election, believes that as roads take up over a quarter of our city's area, we don't need any more.

She believes you have to get Aucklanders wanting to use public transport. The solution is much easier than we think. She argues that for a fraction of the cost of building roads, we could offer free public transport in Auckland.

The bus drivers' union says that if they didn't have to take fares, the trips would be a third faster.

At the moment, Auckland households average nearly two cars each. Ram advocates say that a large number of households would flick the second car if they didn't have to pay for public transport and therefore no more roads would need to be built.

At the very least, Hubbard might make better use of his time lobbying Clark for more subsidies for public transport, rather than devising ways to get the poor to pay for unworkable solutions.

Auckland, it seems, might be making one-term mayors a habit.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY