Bill Ralston: More power to the Supercity

An Auckland Party in Parliament? That is the suggestion of veteran local body politician and North Shore City councillor Tony Holman. He takes the view that Auckland has long been short-changed by central government, that the major parties don't really represent the region and Wellington bureaucrats don't give the city a fair go.

Actually, he is right on everything except the viability of an Auckland Party itself. Even under MMP it's hard to see how it could capture 5 per cent of the entire country's vote, despite having a third of New Zealand's population.

Holman is of the old Alliance wing of the left so is used to the divisive nature of small, third-party politics.

However, as the debate over the Supercity concept shows, it's hard to get Auckland to speak with one voice on anything, so maintaining a unified Auckland Party in the face of so much parochialism would be almost impossible.

Still, Holman's claim that Auckland misses out to vested interests in Wellington when it comes to state spending is correct, sadly.

That cultural curmudgeon, arts commentator Hamish Keith, has complained long and hard about the gross imbalance in arts and cultural spending. By far the lion's share goes to the capital with just pennies for Auckland and the south.

As with many other areas of state sector funding, the amount allocated to the Auckland region on a per capita basis is far less than the amount spent in Wellington.

With the arrival of the Supercity in 2010 there is a strong argument that the Government should look to a devolution of power in the way it spends its budget.

The Supercity is designed to create a more efficient infrastructure to service the region's needs. When it comes to, say, social services currently provided by central Government, why shouldn't the super council be the one to decide where and how Auckland's slice of the nation's budget be spent? Or, for that matter, its share of road, rail, housing and health spending?

In theory the super council should be far more in touch with community needs for Auckland than a bureaucrat in Wellington.

We could see evolving a more federal structure, in which central government looks after the national interest and several super councils around the country look after regional requirements.

We did have a similar system a century or so back, provincial governments. Central government eventually abolished them and rugby's NPC teams are perhaps the only shadow left of the old provinces and their boundaries.

At present, though, the path to the creation of a Supercity structure and its role is becoming the subject of increasingly heated partisan debate. The "Auckland disease" of bickering, back-stabbing and blathering has infected central Government's attempts to get it up and running before October 2010.

The Mt Albert byelection isn't helping. Labour has decided the Supercity is one of the two big issues that might get it votes so it is hammering the proposal hard. Quite what it would do instead of Rodney Hide's vision is unclear.

Basically, Labour has simply gone into mule-headed opposition mode knowing that there are votes to be had because almost as many people oppose the Supercity as support it. According to the polls Labour voters tend to oppose it. National voters tend to support it.

You would not want to be the person running the proposed establishment board that is supposed to manage the transition from several cities to a Supercity. They would be surrounded by half a dozen plotting mayors and many dozens of councillors who now realise they are an endangered species, all out to ankle-tap the establishment board to protect their own patch.

As the transition has to proceed fast it is inevitable redundancies will occur so the trade unions will start to attack en masse.

Meanwhile, whipped to a frenzy by the Labour opponents of the Supercity, concerned residents will start raising a ruckus.

This will get very messy. For its part, the Government has no choice now but to press on, ignore the criticism, and pray the new Supercity is beginning to run well by November 2011, when the next general election is likely to be held.

Next week the Government introduces under urgency a bill to legally establish the Supercity council and the transition board.

A second bill creating the boundaries and nature of the council goes to select committee for submissions and becomes law in September.

A third bill that defines the powers and functions of the Supercity is then introduced and becomes law by April 2010 in time for the super council elections the following October.

Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.