David Thornton: Roads plans grim news for ratepayer

COMMENT

The Government's transport package "to get Auckland moving" has provoked a mixed reaction from some civic and business leaders. While all parties welcome the increased funding, there are conditions attached which contain the seeds for considerable discontent.

First, the good part - the money. Auckland local bodies have long been asking for more money, and were probably surprised at the quantity that has been promised, even though it is spread over a decade.

But there are fish-hooks. The ability of the construction industry to build the roads that will complete the motorway network within a 10-year framework is virtually nil - "buildability", as the Government announcements describe it.

Nor, of course, is there anywhere near enough funding in this package to pay for all that work.

This will inevitably mean that much of the new capital will initially be spent on infrastructure and rolling stock for a public transport system - trains, buses, ferries, and appropriate stations to make up the network.

Many will agree that an efficient, reliable and fully integrated public transport system is the most likely option to get people out of their cars. Such a system needs attractive rolling stock and a safe and pleasant operating environment.

But here is the rub: this new rolling stock will require a strong maintenance programme, plus a depreciation regime for future replacement, which will need to be funded, almost certainly, from local and regional rates.

There may be hopes that congestion charging will help to relieve that burden on ratepayers but, if so, there are no indications in the package about when or if such charges could or would be introduced.

For ratepayers the outlook is grim. But perhaps even grimmer is the prospect of the huge increase in powers being given to the Auckland Regional Council.

There is an apocryphal comment attributed to the first regional council chairman, the late Philip Warren, that the 1999 election victory of Helen Clark would lead to a return to the council of all its old assets and powers.

The long-awaited funding package for Auckland contains all the ingredients for that return. Both the Prime Minister and Local Government Minister Chris Carter have made it clear that the extra millions of dollars for Auckland will come only if the proposed new governance structure is accepted by the councils of the region.

And that new governance structure will see the regional council as clearly the top dog in local government in the Auckland region. Not quite the supercity some dream of, but certainly the dominant party in terms of the two critical areas of local government activity and expenditure - transport and planning.

Indeed, Helen Clark has made no bones about the Government's position. Announcing the package last Friday, she said: "This Government is committed to building up the strength of regional government which had suffered from the demolition job of the 1990s."

This is music to the ears of the successors to Mr Warren, but anathema to those who still feel that the old Auckland Regional Authority was a profligate, high-spending outfit which failed to solve Auckland's transport woes in the 1980s, and who cannot see its reincarnation being able to perform any better under this package.

Ratepayers, too, will have little confidence in this new structure, which gives such enormous power to the very regional council against which they rebelled and continue to rebel on the rates issues.

Local councils, too, must have reservations about the new structure, which will give the regional council the final word on arterial roading, plus a virtual veto on land-use planning matters.

Local and regional government is full of long-held grudges, prejudices and local power battles.

The Auckland City Mayor, John Banks, has made his views known on this latest package. While gleefully accepting the money, he is strongly opposed to the level of control being given to the regional council.

Other mayors have been more muted in their response. But they are only mayors, and when they get back to the reality of their own councils they are only one vote on those councils.

Local councillors, more in touch with their ratepayers than the more remote regional councillors, may feel pressure to resist the return to strong regional government advocated by the Prime Minister.

Those councils must consider the issue in the coming weeks and make their decisions by early February. Their deliberations will no doubt be tempered by the Prime Minister's words. The funding package is conditional on Auckland local bodies agreeing to a new governance structure.

For the region's ratepayers, who have lost all confidence in the regional council, this ultimatum is not good news.

* David Thornton is the chairman of the Glenfield Ratepayers and Residents Association.