KEY POINTS:
There once was a rule in politics: parties rose in Auckland and died in the south. It's more complicated now but Auckland is still critical - but is that just for being big or because one day it might live up to an elusive promise of dynamism that works for the whole country?
As Labour recovered in the 1990s, it started its ball rolling in the provinces. National, on the rise in 2005 after a thumping in 2002, built its strength in the provinces.
In the 2005 election Labour's boosted vote in South Auckland was critical. National since the 2005 election has targeted Auckland urban liberals, particularly women, whom it thinks critical to its 2008 vote.
Thus the "Auckland" vote is not a lump. It has many faces.
Take the two major parties. Labour from the 1970s to the 1990s went from a class-based movement (the working class) to an "identity group" movement, representing "minorities" such as women, non-European ethnic groups and homosexuals.
National, meanwhile, went white as a ghost. Brown faces at its conference last year could be counted on two hands.
So in Auckland in national elections Labour has its areas, defined in part by skin colour and in part by pockets of affluent social-liberals, and National is largely in the white suburbs, with pockets of less affluent social-conservatives - though, of course, there are large overlaps and social liberals and social conservatives, interventionists and free-marketers can be found in all suburbs and all ethnic groups.
So in national politics there is no "Auckland". There are pools of voters with different identities and different allegiances. The well-off have their City of Sails. Maori and Polynesians have their world capital.
Seen from Wellington, this diversity encapsulates national politicians' government tribulations with their northern urban jumble.
Diversity has often been a mark of vibrant cities: London and New York on the rise are examples. But in Auckland's case disparity seems to be a disintegrator, not a multiplier. The region lacks a cohering force that would turn all those who live there into "Aucklanders".
The fragmented and fractious administrative arrangements spell incoherence. Fiefdom-like district councils are often at odds with each other and with the regional council - the northwest councils see themselves as distinct from the isthmus and the south and bag the regional council for restrictive land zoning that constricts business development and forces their citizens to trek long to work.
Divisions over Rugby World Cup arrangements have consigned the final to a tarted-up provincial football ground. "Auckland" can't even agree on roads despite most citizens' strong desire for more of them and fast.
Nor has Auckland city taken the lead. The sad dance of its internal politics underscores its village mentality. Having an neophyte as mayor (after a rogue elephant) hasn't helped.
There are three layers of power: the regional council, the mayors and the city and district councils. Another dimension has been proposed, a "greater Auckland council". Complainants about rate rises might ask why so many are needed to run so little.
The good news is that the "greater Auckland" idea, even if unambitious, is at least the result of cross-fiefdom agreement. That has got a tick from a frustrated but hopeful cabinet.
National leader John Key has wisely ducked a firm statement of intent. Something would be done, he told the local government conference last week, but he couldn't say what.
Business in Auckland chafes, but is spared the political reality which Auckland-based Key and Auckland-based Helen Clark have to bother about.
That reality is that nearly one-third of Parliament's electorates are in the region and a comparable proportion of list candidates have bases there.
A major party which gets offside with too much of "Auckland" potentially handicaps itself in national elections. Forcing change on local rangatira to bring order and rationality is off-limits. Labour's 1988 rationalisation, which liquidated small boroughs, cannot realistically be replicated.
The result is that talk in the capital of the need for a "world city" to lift the country's competitiveness with countries which contain actual "world cities" is lost in the Babel of strategies, plans, working and action groups.
To lift itself into the "world city" league, little Auckland needs something very special that makes it more than just a big bit of New Zealand Inc. Auckland's quaintly suburban airport access route instantly categorises it, and will for years, as very unspecially provincial.
Turn to the economy. Michael Cullen in opposition categorised Auckland as a deadweight. The most powerful generators of wealth now are dairy farmers. Auckland is a domestic place which, decades late, is just beginning to see its waterfront as a door to the world instead of a defensive barrier.
Auckland does a lot of bright things, in biotechnology, IT, specialist manufacturing and boats. There is a real energy in pockets. But Peter Jackson and the premier international arts festival are Wellington, the IT cluster is in Christchurch and AgResearch is in Hamilton. What is special about Auckland? Grey-suited office workers in tower blocks?
There is a temptation to turn to Great Man wistfulness: if only there was a Robbie to conjure a stunning, brilliantly branded future (and some great managers to make it real).
But Great Men (women are usually too sensible to rollick in capital letters) can be great only if there is a great energy for the Great Man to catalyse. For all the earnest (and in the past couple of weeks noisy) business action groups, there is less of that sort of transcendental energy in "Auckland" than down on the farm.
Hence the frustration in Wellington. Clark would have loved, Key would love, to get in behind such an energy. Then Auckland would drive national politics, instead of complicating it.
* ColinJames@synapsis.co.nz
