KEY POINTS:
It's a scary world we live in when the celebrities start to believe they're as important as the gossip column headlines make them out to be.
We know millionaire Hawkes Bay olive grower Paul Holmes has long seen himself as the saviour of Auckland. He seriously contemplated standing for the Auckland City mayoralty a while back, abandoning it only when he realised he'd first have to sacrifice his lucrative on-screen role as conscience of the nation.
Now he's retired from our sitting rooms and boredom is obviously pressing, rescuing Auckland is back on his agenda, according to newspaper reports.
More amazing is that one-time soap star Rangi the ambulance driver, Blair Strang, is also lusting for the job of Auckland's super mayor.
Seems jokester Tim Shadbolt threw Strang's name into the ring last year. Instead of laughing the preposterous suggestion out of court, the actor now says he is taking it seriously, even going to the lengths of being pictured in a boardroom setting with white shirt and tie.
He's got a goodie-list of promises to wow the voters - including a big arts centre on the waterfront and better public transport.
My initial reaction was that everyone, especially celebrities, is allowed to make idiots of themselves.
But then came the nagging worry that if we're not careful, the joke might be on us instead. That unless we're very careful about the design of a new city structure, we risk making it impossible for anyone other than a celebrity to become mayor.
And to me that's an awful prospect, particularly with the hints that the new Auckland supremo will have executive powers, giving him or her unilateral power our existing mayors have never enjoyed.
Of course until the Government releases the Royal Commission's report some time in April, and its reaction to the commission's proposals, we can only speculate.
This hasn't stopped Auckland Mayor John Banks declaring himself for the job and trying to scare rivals off with talk of a $500,000 campaign fund.
His rightwing Citizens and Ratepayers Now co-religionists are similarly building a region-wide election machine.
Predictably, the various Labour-left groups continue to sleep, despite the best efforts of unionist Matt McCarten to shake them awake.
Even if the left does get itself organised, the cost of funding a presidential-style campaign to reach a population totalling nearly one-third of New Zealand's population is going to be a major obstacle.
With his talk of a $500,000 campaign, Mr Banks is obviously hoping the law will be changed, because there is now an upper limit of $70,000, including GST, for any candidate in a local government election.
There's no argument $70,000 is not going to be enough to inform 1.3 million citizens in any meaningful way.
But if you raise the cap to $500,000 or more then, short of state funding, you're turning it into a contest that only the rich - or their friends - can enter.
Along, perhaps, with the odd celebrity who has the benefit of name or face recognition from their former lives.
The solution is to abandon the flawed mayor-at-large system, which encourages the show ponies and the eccentrics, and adopt the parliamentary system we use to govern ourselves nationally.
A parliamentary system, with the mayor chosen by the elected councillors, would automatically have the mayor on side with the majority of his or her councillors. It would mean when the mayor spoke or acted, he or she would represent the council's majority view, not just the mayor's. It would make the mayor accountable, which would also be good.
Under the present structure, if mayors go off on flights of fancy, the worst that can befall the citizenry is a bout of embarrassment.
With only one vote, unless he or she entices a majority of councillors down the same trail, the silliness can be ignored.
But under the system the commission is reported to favour, - an executive mayor, elected at large with powers to hire and fire staff and who knows what else - none of these present protections exist.
Mr Holmes and Mr Strang and all the other reported hopefuls might be fine mayoral material. But if they're serious in the desire to serve us, then surely they'd have no objection to an apprenticeship as a councillor first.
Show us what they're made of before we put the fate of Auckland in their hands.
