Bill Ralston: Is the sky about to fall over Supercity idea?

John Key has just had a quick goodwill tour around the Pacific which I guess must have been important because (a) he went, (b) as did a whole posse of officials and famous folk, and (c) so did a small performing troupe of journalists.

But if he really wanted to strengthen relationships with an emerging super power in our neck of the woods, then he might have been better off touring Auckland.

The Supercity stakes are enormously high. Get it wrong and National is dog tucker at the next election and the country's growth will be strangled by a squabbling, inefficient, feuding Super mess. Get it right and grateful ratepayers will wonder what all the fuss was about.

I think that last sentiment is a forlorn hope because voters are a notoriously ungrateful bunch.

For the Government it is a high-wire act, and last week the political acrobatics began when the Cirque du Select Committee opened its hearings in Auckland into the Supercity bill.

Opponents argue there has been little public consultation. Hello? There was a 14-month-long Royal Commission that came up with the Supercity idea. Now there is a month-long series of public hearings into the law that will shape the new metropolis. It will then have a series of readings in Parliament before being further revised.

The real problem is there is no communication to the wider community who sit at home hearing about the Supercity going, "Wot?" There has been no gentle stroking of public opinion to placate public fears.

If this change was being put through by the last Labour government you would have been flooded with letters from your local Labour MP telling you about this marvellous leap forward for Auckland.

The kindly Labour minister of local government would have sent you a nice, expensively produced pamphlet explaining how your views could be given and heard and how wonderful the Supercity was going to be.

The Auckland Transitional Authority would have been running full-page ads and big billboards with snappy slogans like "Super City! She'll be right!" or "Building a Better Auckland", yada, yada, yada.

By contrast, the Government has confined its reassurances to bland burblings in the media which have been overwhelmed by the screeching of its Chicken Little opponents, and most of us are now anxiously looking at the sky, waiting for it to fall.

The thing about most "public consultation" is that it is usually pure theatre. The Government will do what it wants regardless of what the erstwhile submitters may say.

However, there are signs the Government will give way on one issue and allow more community boards with slightly greater powers.

Auckland Central MP Nikki Kaye opined: "I think there should be more [local boards], rather than less." A lowly backbencher, no matter how feisty, seldom ventures an opinion unless they have been quietly reassured from on high that their view will prevail.

Maori won't win their fight for Maori seats on the council. While Key may have managed to give Rodney Hide and the Maori Party two completely different impressions on where he stands on that issue, a majority of the select committee will hang tough and not put Maori seats into the law.

It will continue to argue that existing local government law would allow the Supercity to create its own Maori seats, should it wish.

The Government seems to think it can, instead, trade off repealing the Foreshore and Seabed Act to keep the Maori Party on side.

Having failed to convince Aucklanders that the Supercity is a winner, the Government will now be hoping the damn thing works well enough by the next election to convince us in retrospect that it has done the right thing.