Brian Rudman: Key in trouble whatever he does with Clark's governance hot potato

Former Prime Minister Helen Clark will be chuckling all the way to New York about the time bomb in the shape of the Royal Commission report into Auckland Governance, she has left in her successor's top drawer.

Not only is John Key going to have to upset influential Auckland supporters, whichever way he jumps, but if he does endorse the recommendations he also faces a wave of opposition from the governing classes in Wellington, and from the wider New Zealand audience about Auckland getting too big for its boots.

As one senior Auckland politician said to me yesterday, "the commissioners were asked to streamline Auckland local government. They've created a mini-state instead." He could have added a mini-state with an elected monarch, able, on a good day, to eyeball the Prime Minister. It is not a position, he said, that canny past leaders such as Helen Clark or Jim Bolger would have inflicted upon themselves.

Back in 2007, when Helen Clark announced the royal commission, I doubt it was part of some Machiavellian plot to leave a Trojan horse behind for the next PM. After all, she had hopes it might be her.

What she was doing was kicking the incessant problem of Auckland squabbling out of play for a while. At the time, the region's mayors had been hatching increasingly mad ideas for governance reform, and adding to the cacophony was the lobbying by business and roading groups hiding behind high-minded noms de plume such as the Committee for Auckland.

The Wellington establishment just wanted a bit of peace and quiet so they whipped out the time-honoured stalling device of a royal commission and told them not to come back for a long while.

The best that any royal commission can hope for is that at least some of their report is found politically possible. The worst is that it ends up as a doorstop, which was the fate of the 1987, five-volume royal commission report on social policy.

I suspect the governance model that emerges from the current report will be significantly watered down.

My initial reaction to the report was shock at the return to the "at large" voting system, one swept away by the Bassett reforms of the late 1980s in an effort to ensure better local and minority representation. The left always saw the "at large" system as a way of disenfranchising them in favour of the wealthy business groups who could afford city-wide campaigns.

In the present situation, the "at large" proposal also threatens to exclude fair presentation from the existing outer cities. One suspects that National loyalists all over the region will be expressing their displeasure by ringing their MPs, many of them Cabinet ministers such as John Key himself.

Like Pol Pot, the commission declares Auckland needs "a new start" with "fresh institutions to signal and deliver a clean break from the past". At the centre of this revolution will be "an inspirational leader, inclusive in approach, decisive in taking action ... who can speak for the region."

Ironically, the commissioners go on to say "Aucklanders do not want the same face of local government with a hasty makeover ..." Could that be a dig at wannabes like John Banks, who are drooling to take over.

The new paragon of leadership will get his/her own office staff and have the right to pick the deputy mayor and heads of committees from elected councillors. The commissioners have stepped back from giving the super mayor full executive powers. The city budget and plans, which are the mayor's to draw up and propose, will require majority support from councillors. However, given that the mayor has the right to select his own "cabinet" of committee heads and thus decides which councillors get the six-figure salaries, getting his own way shouldn't be too hard to arrange.

For central government, the scary bits come later. "Having created an effective Auckland Council as the commission proposes, central government should then allow the Auckland Council to influence government decision-making, working in partnership for the greater good of Auckland and New Zealand."

There's talk of a notional budget for Auckland, of a senior Minister for Auckland, of "joint decision-making boards" in areas of social development and transport. Heads of government departments would have to come to Auckland to attend these meetings - deputies not accepted.

Next step, our own flag and Auckland anthem?