Brian Rudman: Mayors must storm the ramparts and seize waterfront for citizenry

COMMENT

Marie Antoinette, blissfully unaware that telling starving Parisians to eat cake was pushing the citizenry a little too far, ended up with her head in a basket. Now, out-of-touch Ports of Auckland chairman Neville Darrow seems to be stumbling to a similar fate thanks to a similar piece of foot-in-the-mouthery.

We Aucklanders are a supine lot when it comes to rising up in defence of our city. We put up with motorways being built through the sides of volcanos and instant slums creeping across suburbia.

Thankfully we have a bottom line, and Mr Darrow found it when he said the port company was hocking off Westhaven Marina to the highest bidder - foreign or otherwise.

It was like a call to arms - yachties, local politicians and citizens united in outrage. Better still, he got Minister for Auckland Judith Tizard inviting Aucklanders to come up with ideas for legislation that would revolutionise the ownership structure of the waterfront and ensure privatisation of this gem did not go ahead.

"Ports of Auckland are being irresponsible," says Ms Tizard. "They're behaving like rampant profiteers with no concern for the wider public interest."

She says she's happy to promote such legislation: "The public has said very clearly they do not want to see the waterfront alienated and privatised."

Hands together then for Mr Darrow. Without him, the revolution might never have dawned.

My only worry is that the region's mayors - hardly a revolutionary bunch - who meet today to discuss the issue, might not realise the ramparts are theirs to storm, and will decide to play the port company's game instead,

Conservative Auckland Mayor John Banks is already showing dangerous signs of Fletchering around on the issue.

Two weeks ago, he demanded the port company hand over the 80 per cent publicly owned interest in Westhaven to the people of Auckland and that a way be found to buy out the 20 per cent private holding.

But yesterday he was talking port company language, suggesting the city buy Westhaven and the surrounding land, and pay for it by selling bits for commercial and residential use. Which surely defeats the point of the exercise.

Where's the victory if we buy this gem to stop it falling into foreign developers' hands, and then sell bits of it ourselves?

The mayors should take Ms Tizard at her word and ask that the ownership and governance of Auckland's waterfront become part of broader discussions between Wellington and Auckland about Auckland's local government reforms.

It's a nonsense that the fate of a large stretch of Auckland's waterfront - from Queen St around to the Harbour Bridge - relies on the commercial imperatives of Ports of Auckland, which, though 80 per cent publicly owned, has no brief to consider anything other than the profits it can return to its owners.

To compound the nonsense, the official owner of the public shareholding, Infrastructure Auckland, is bound by statute to ignore the broader public good. Its sole imperative is to raise as much as possible for roads and drains.

You can, of course, query how the port company came to own Westhaven and some of the surrounding land which they now claim is surplus to requirements.

After all, in the great carve-up of the old Harbour Board lands just over a decade ago, they were supposedly only to acquire land required for port-related purposes.

The rest went to the relevant territorial local council.

Westhaven's function hasn't changed one iota between then and now, which leads one to assume if it is not involved in port-related activity now, then neither was it back then. In which case, its rightful owner all along was Auckland City and it should be handed over for nothing. With apologies.

In their deliberations today, the mayors should also follow up Auckland City councillor Penny Sefuiva's proposal that a waterfront authority similar to the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority be established "to reconcile the competing demands of port interests, transport, community and private users".

It's a call that certainly appeals to Ms Tizard, who refers to Mrs Sefuiva's "vision and leadership" in raising the proposal. Ms Tizard says such an authority could either be "a stand-alone" or more likely, part of "a bigger transport authority which took a regional view".

To me, that sounds very much like an invitation to revolt from, of all people, a minister of the Crown. I just hope the mayors get the message and join in. The Auckland waterfront can only be a better place if they do.