KEY POINTS:
In the next month or two, as election day looms, the dull drone from business lobby groups for more public spending on roads, electricity plants and the like will become deafening.
It's a shame these lobbyists don't also campaign for the other sorts of infrastructure that need to prosper before Auckland can truly become the world-class city they say they crave.
Think what a better city we could be almost overnight if some of the millions the various business claques spend on their political campaigns went instead to the cash-starved cultural infrastructure of the region. If nothing else, the explosion of artistic activity that resulted would cheer them up a little by taking their minds off the traffic jams and broadband bottlenecks they obsess about.
Last week, as a result of the passage of the Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Act, ratepayers of the outer suburbs were signed up - many admittedly reluctantly - to acknowledge that feeding mind and soul is as much a community responsibility as laying drains and emptying rubbish bins. But with rather bad timing, many in the business community seem to have chosen this moment to escape their matching civic responsibilities by scurrying out the back door.
At the launch of Auckland Festival 2009, the day after the funding act passed, celebrations were muted by news that some of the big sponsors of the festival in the past had dropped out, in particular casino operator SkyCity. In 2007, the gambling palace contributed $250,000 for the spectacular free fireworks display put on by French experts Groupe F in the Domain to an audience of 200,000.
And they're not the only ones. Like other arts and community organisations, Auckland Festival is finding this the year of the great drought, as far as sponsorship goes.
Thankfully, Auckland City Council has again shown leadership and ensured the survival of this signature event. But more of the ACC rescue action later.
SkyCity, it seems, was delighted with the value it got out of last year's participation, but the new managerial broom seems to have forgotten earlier commitments to good corporate citizenship and has decided instead to focus on maximising shareholder returns.
Luckily the ASB Trusts, staunch supporters of Auckland's wider needs, are back for another season. Also on scene as the festival's new major sponsor is New Zealand Post.
NZ Post chief executive John Allen sees the partnership as "an outstanding opportunity to celebrate arts and culture within New Zealand's largest and most vibrant city".
He made the point that Auckland is not just the home "to a cross-section of our group business activities, important customers" but also the home of "many of our staff and their families". Also, the festival presents "innovative arts and culture events that are accessible to all sectors of the community". In other words, what was good for all sectors of the community was also good for his work, family and friends.
Auckland City, whose annual funding of around $1 million covered about 40 per cent of the last festival's costs, has come to the rescue after the drop-out by SkyCity in particular. On Thursday night, councillors slipped away from the festival launch party to vote another $425,000 for next summer's event. Of this, $190,000 will support a major free public event. The rest will go to cover the hire costs of various Edge venues.
Arts committee chairman Greg Moyle said the top-up of funds was acknowledgment of how hard sponsorship was to obtain in the present economic climate and also, that the amenities bill had taken longer to pass than expected. This meant region-wide funding would not come on stream until July 2009, rather than this year as hoped.
Of course that doesn't stop North Shore, Manukau and Waitakere cities coming to the party and taking on their regional responsibilities a year before the act forces them to. But somehow one suspects Winston Peters is more likely to be returned as Prime Minister than that ever happening.
Similarly, where are the business cheerleaders when you need them? Whole forests die each year so they can appear before royal commissions and pump out reports and press releases presenting their recipes for creating a world-class city. But you search through the verbiage in vain for their thoughts on nurturing and building the cultural infrastructure that marks truly great cities.
But it's never too late.
