Brian Rudman: Revamp lining us up for replay of a pointless battle

Only 20 years ago, Auckland regional politicians won a battle with their Waikato counterparts for control over the Hunua Ranges. Unfortunately, thanks to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, Aucklanders now have to relitigate the whole issue.

The Government, following the commissioners' lead, is proposing to shrink the southern boundary of the new Super City north to the middle of the Hunuas.

In danger of being left outside are Auckland's two largest water storage dams, the Mangatangi and the Mangatawhiri, and three regional parks, as well as assorted kokako and other ecological treasures that regional council rangers have been nurturing for decades.

Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee abandoned the diplomatic niceties this week and told the Auckland governance parliamentary select committee the proposal was "nuts!"

If not nuts, it sure is a case of buying a fight for no good reason. After all, if the commission's chairman, retired High Court judge Peter Salmon, was worried about the legal niceties of the existing boundary, he could always have fallen back on the precedent set in 1989 when Acting Chief Justice John Jeffries endorsed it on appeal.

That followed a torrid battle between the two councils and the Local Government Commission about where the boundary would lie.

That was at the time of a national re-organisation of local government.

Before then, the area fell under the Auckland Regional Authority for planning and transport purposes, but the Waikato Valley Authority for water management issues.

As a result, the ARA paid water-use charges to the Waikato Catchment Board for water taken from the dams. In 1988, when the Labour Government announced local government reform, the ARA went for broke, proposing that an expanded Auckland region absorb the whole of the Coromandel Peninsula and the Waikato River basin north of Rangiriri.

Sceptical deputy chairwoman Jean Sampson quipped it was "like Queen Victoria sitting down with her paints and painting the whole world pink ...".

This imperial fantasy soon came crashing down. In January 1989, the commission's draft proposal shrank Auckland's existing southern boundaries in the Hunuas, putting its two prize dams in the Waikato region. Two regional parks went south as well.

Commission chairman Brian Elwood said he was legally required to conform to water catchment boundaries as far as practicable, and his only alternative would have been extending Auckland to Lake Taupo.

The humour was lost on ARA politicians, who feared the Waikato Catchment Board would increase water charges to take advantage of Auckland's superior financial base. ARA chairman Colin Kay, mirroring chairman Lee's recent remarks, called the proposal "farcical".

On appeal, the commission unveiled an eminently pragmatic decision, enabling it to abide by the legal requirements about catchment boundaries, while also giving Auckland full control of its dams.

It ruled that as more water now flowed from the damns through giant pipes to Auckland than flowed on to the Waikato River, the dam crests now formed the new - if artificial - catchment boundary.

The commissioners also agree it was desirable Auckland maintained control of parts of its water supply.

Still hungry for the Waikato basin as well, the expansionist ARC appealed to the High Court - and lost.

The court upheld the commission's revised boundaries, which are the ones still in place.

Last year, in submissions to the royal commission, the ARC again played Queen Victoria. It wanted to expand to the banks of the Waikato River this time. As last time, the response has been a whack on the nose. Hopefully, commonsense and the status quo will now prevail.

In its submissions to the royal commission, Environment Waikato made a sensible comment.

"No regional boundary will ever align with all functions and all communities of interest. "There will therefore be a need for mechanisms to deal with cross-boundary issues to ensure that difficulties associated with boundaries are minimised."

It cited the Auckland-Waikato inter-regional committee as such a vehicle.

But we're talking about the folk on either side of the Bombay Hills, not the warring tribes of the Balkans, or of North and South Korea.

Common sense says leave the boundaries where they lie in the Hunuas.

The pragmatists of the Local Government Commission came up with a workable solution in 1989 and the chief justice of the day endorsed it.

Why scratch a spot when it ain't itching?