KEY POINTS:
Just a week ago we had Auckland Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker seeming to suggest ratepayers hand over their bottles of fizz and packets of potato chips to help the city council plug the holes in its creaking wastewater system. Across in Manukau City, the situation is similarly dire. Yet when a fairy godmother flies in from Canada dangling $860 million in the faces of the city fathers and mothers, the answer seems to be, "No thanks, we don't need it".
It is, I guess, just possible that the rejection is a bargaining ploy to force the price up and if so, I'll be the first to congratulate the poker-faced negotiators. But I suspect it's not.
Both councils seem to want to hang on to their minority shareholdings in Auckland International Airport, which is what the Canadians are after, for both "strategic" and financial reasons.
First the strategic reason. Back in March 2000, when Auckland City councillors went through an earlier dithering session on the matter, council treasury manager Glennis Christie rather rubbished the idea that Auckland City's minority shareholding (and it then held 25.8 per cent, double its current holding) qualified as a "strategic asset".
She agreed the airport itself was a strategic asset for the city, the region and the country, but argued that Auckland's minority holding gave it little opportunity to influence the airport company into adopting policies which favour the city's strategic objectives.
She further argued that the council could in fact be "supporting and promoting [through the provision of funds] the development of some aspects of Auckland International Airport's businesses as competitors to Auckland businesses". You only have to look at the vast industrial and commercial estate being encouraged on the Manukau City-located airport land to get her point.
As for the shares being a savvy investment, too golden to quit, commentators over the past day or so have been quick to argue how much richer, for example, Auckland City would have been if Mayor John Banks and his allies had not sold half of Auckland's shareholding back in 2002. But that's a bit like someone saying, I wish I'd held on to that Ponsonby villa I sold in 1996. If I had, I'd be rich now.
The point surely is to sit down with your budget adviser, consider your outgoings and your incomings and decide whether you can afford a huge investment ticking away across town, while you're sitting around in sackcloth and ashes with Mercury Energy threatening to cut the power and sewage spewing into the harbour every time it rains.
No doubt there will be economists and ideologues queueing to point out the flaws in this argument, but I reckon this is one piece of family silver it makes sense to sell, in order to avert the rates and water price blow-out we being offered as the alternative.
Across the region we face some major infrastructure bills in addition to the cost blowouts in roading and public transport, for which the new fuel tax looms.
Manukau City needs $400 million over the next 30 years to replace its wastewater system. Auckland City is looking to spend $1.4 billion over 20 years to stop sewage overflows into the two harbours. It also wants to raise water bills by about 10 per cent a year for the next decade to help pay for that. I say spend the reserves. What's the use of hoarding the family silver service, if you can't afford to eat off it?
Politically it would be a smart move too.
One of the big obstacles in persuading other councils to support a single integrated regional water company is their fear of inheriting the repair bill on Auckland City's ancient-in-parts system. Spending the airport money on fast-tracking the much needed upgrades would go a long way towards removing this obstacle.
Talking as a selfish Auckland City ratepayer, cashing up the shares to invest in water pipes would also ensure that when Auckland finally gets one supreme governing council, the rest of the region won't be able to get their hands on one of Auckland City's most valuable liquid assets.
North Shore and Waitakere councils both sold their modest airport shareholdings long ago. Why should they get the chance to double dip into the Auckland City ratepayers' pot as well?
Converting it into concrete pipes buried underground means they won't get the chance.
