Brian Rudman: Super City boundaries now political football

If the future governance structure of Auckland wasn't so crucial to the economic well-being of the country, the present tinkering by Government politicians could be seen as something of an amusing farce. Maybe Maori seats, then none, 12 wards then six, eight "at large" councillors a week ago, now none.

Then there are the proposed Super City boundaries that seem to be shrinking after each visit from a farmer lobbyist. At last count, raiders from the north and south seem to have walked away with several of Auckland's Hunua water supply dams and many of its existing regional parks.

Future generations needing a reminder of the perils of leaving such matters in the hands of politicians will be able to look back on the birth of the new Auckland 2010 and wonder why such unskilled midwives were let near the delivery suite. It's a basic error the authors of the radical local government reforms of 1989 bravely avoided.

In a 1998 review of the earlier reforms, local government expert Peter McKinlay noted how, before 1989, local government had been "a reformer's graveyard" because of political interference. Successive central Governments had interfered on an ad hoc basis, "often to pander to pressure from local elites within their own party organisations".

To protect the 1989 reforms from such interference, the responsible minister, Dr Michael Bassett, handed "unprecedented" power to the Local Government Commission. Mr McKinlay admiringly acknowledges this willingness "to put in place a process which was, quite deliberately, insulated against political interference; decisions were to be taken by the commission in accordance with a legislative mandate, and not by the Government".

He said the major lesson from 1989 for those contemplating effective local government reform was "to move quickly, so that there is insufficient time to build up opposition to change, and use a process which is, as far as possible, free from political interference". The Key Government might have got it right on the speed front, but as far as avoiding political interference is concerned, the failure has been total.

Last week it emerged that Local Government Minister Rodney Hide was intending to hand the northern half of Rodney District - the northern extremity of the proposed new city - over to Kaipara District. This piece of ad hockery seems to have more to do with lobbying from the three mayors of districts north of the Auckland region who want to establish independent fiefdoms of their own than with any concerns for the greater Auckland or national good.

For some time, the mayors of Far North, Kaipara and Whangarei districts have been lobbying to have the Northland Regional Council scrapped and its functions absorbed into three "unitary" councils based around the existing districts.

On August 12, they issued a joint statement calling for the "elimination" of this "unnecessary layer of local government". They noted that Far North and Whangarei both had populations of 60,000 to 80,000 but that "Kaipara lacks sufficient size to be viable". However "the addition of rural Rodney would result in three broadly similar population sizes". The mayoral statement proposed "the new authorities should be established at the same time as Auckland's problems are resolved".

Unfortunately for the Kaipara expansionists, the Government is proposing to hand over more territory than they wanted. The Kaipara mayor only wanted to annex the sparsely populated farmlands around the Kaipara Harbour, but the Government seems to want to toss in the Auckland-looking towns of Wellsford and Warkworth, as well, which, populationwise, would swamp the numbers living in the present capital of Kaipara, Dargaville, moving the centre of power dramatically.

But these are the perils of ad hoc boundary drawing.

Of greater concern are the planning consequences such as those highlighted by the Environmental Defence Society. Senior policy analyst Raewyn Peart says cutting northern Rodney off from Auckland "would be a disaster for the coast". She says "it is essential that the new Auckland Council controls rural land to the north of the metropolitan urban limit to avoid development jumping the fence. Rodney District has some of the most stunning coastline in the country and because of its close proximity to Auckland there is enormous pressure to develop it ... Kaipara District Council is a small rural-based entity and is simply not geared up to manage this kind of pressure."

These are the sort of issues an independent local government commission could have rationally weighed up. Instead we're left to the tender mercies of put-upon politicians.