Brian Rudman: Got faith, got hope - now where's charity?

If anyone's been waiting for the right moment to rush in with a cheque book and play the white knight to the Auckland Festival, now would be a good time to saddle up.

A report to yesterday's Auckland City Council recreation and events committee shows that as of May 21, the festival trust had raised only $1,548,250 in sponsorship - $1,048,250 in cash and "in excess of $500,000" worth of contra.

By yesterday, that total has risen slightly to $1,664,720, but both figures are well below the $2,232,000 the trust claimed to have raised in cash, pledges and kind when it met the committee in December.

Councillor Victoria Carter, who was acting chief executive cum fundraiser at the time of the December meeting, defends the $2,232,000 as genuine, saying, "It just wasn't a matter of plucking out a random number". She says two big sponsors she signed up, one for $250,000 and another for $100,000 have backed off.

She also says some sponsors weren't happy that she wasn't staying on.

Despite the sponsorship shortfall, trust chairman Lex Henry says a pared-down festival will go ahead, as planned, in late September-early October.

Festival director Simon Prast says he lives in hope of retrieving the two defecting sponsors.

If he can't, the planned $3m budget will have to be cut accordingly and a major free show from Britain will be axed.

Otherwise, he says, "I'm very happy how it looks".

This latest attempt to get an Auckland Festival going began in early 2000 when Ms Carter persuaded councillors to bankroll a festival trust. The council has been dribbling money into it ever since.

So far most of the theatre has been off-stage, particularly the farce surrounding the original director, one Renato Rispoli, who arrived in December 2001 promising the world and budgeting for a $7.4 million festival, of which $4.4 million would come from sponsors.

He managed to raise a miserable $610,000 in cash and $200,000 in kind before suddenly disappearing about nine months later.

A more modest $4.9 million budget was drawn up, and the city council said it would continue its backing if more sponsorship money was raised.

Ms Carter took over the hunt for an extra $900,000. Plans to hold the first festival during the America's Cup regatta were canned.

Ms Carter had until last October to come up with the additional money otherwise the council would pull the plug. She did, and we all cheered. More targets were met in December - or so we thought - and we cheered again.

Now it turns out some of the promises were, shall we say, a bit on the soft side. But the officials' report to yesterday's meeting was not in the mood to nitpick.

"While AK03 (the new name for the festival) may be smaller in financial scale than the event envisaged even as recently as six months ago, the event is happening and within realistic budget parameters," it said.

"The rather bumpy road the Festival Trust and council have ridden to reach this point appears to be, from both local and overseas experience, par for the course for festivals.

"Council needs to view its investment in the festival as a long term one that over time and with continued support will return handsome dividends to the cultural and economic life of the city."

We can only hope.

On to something quite different. On Wednesday I complained about the questions about my race asked in the regional council phone survey about rates.

I got a most disarming call from the official involved thanking me - very worrying that - for my comments. He said the council would drop the question and adopt my suggestion of asking what language the person would prefer to be surveyed in.

I got a couple of other responses. One was from a frequent flyer who wants to know why whoever it is who produces all the forms at airports wants to know whether he is divorced, single or married, which is, I agree, a good question.

The other caller, a pollster himself, had a couple of other dopey survey questions he wanted to share.

He claims passengers entering the United States are asked whether they intend to subvert the Government while they are there, which sounds crazy enough to be true, but said his favourite is the one asked at Australian airports, where they ask if you have a criminal conviction.

His reply, if you can believe a pollster is, "I didn't realise it was still a requirement".

Please, no more.