KEY POINTS:
In matters of government, as elsewhere in life, you get what you pay for. Whether you are buying a chicken, a car or a house, if it's cheap, it's usually because there's something about it that makes it worth the price: the chicken is fatty, the car blows smoke, the house leaks.
Canny buyers know this - but voters always seem to forget it between the triennial elections. So it's a good time to remind ourselves of the ageless truth as we enter the local body elections - voting papers will be sent out this week and must be returned by October 13 - and candidates start touting for our votes by promising to do more for less.
A candidate for one mayoralty put it best: "I have been voting [as a councillor] for rate decreases every year," he said. He uttered the sentence as one might hold aloft a badge of honour but what he should have said was "vote for me and I'll sell you short".
The cliché is that councils are there to deal with "roads, rates and rubbish" - although that rather understates their duties, particularly when the role of regional government is taken into account. And the eternal reality is that voters expect the roads to be fixed and the rubbish to be picked up and the rates to stay the same. A candidate who promises the last of these three is more likely to succeed; a candidate who fails to deliver it is destined for the scrapheap at the next poll.
Knowledge of this immutable fact is doubtless what has prompted John Banks to announce that, if he gets his old job back as mayor of Auckland, he will tell the Government that the city won't be contributing to the upgrade of Eden Park for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. In doing so, he hopes to steal a march, on the eve of voting, on the incumbent, Dick Hubbard, who will, Banks hopes, look like a spendthrift by comparison.
Banks, who would have to carry the new council with him if his announcement is to be more than hot air, will not be alone in resorting to such stratagems. But neither he nor the others who promise to cut spending will be prepared to adopt a campaign slogan that gives such a promise its real name: delivering less for less. Hubbard's deputy, Bruce Hucker, was disowned by his City Vision colleagues when he stuck to his argument that ratepayers would have to accept a massive increase in water bills to pay for the upgrade of the city's Victorian-era stormwater system. The rest of the ticket knew that telling voters the unpalatable truth was electoral suicide. Better to feed them something sweet until all the votes are in - and then start concocting the bitter pill.
Voters considering Banks' headline-grabbing position may like to consider how they would feel about it if they were living and voting in, say, Tauranga or Timaru and the mayor of the biggest city wanted the taxpayer to pay an extra $23 million for a regional amenity. The city sensibly rejected the grandiose waterfront stadium, but it is still getting good value if it has to cough up barely 12 per cent of the $190 million cost of the upgrade. And a candidate for the mayoralty has the right to announce policy - but not to welch on deals already made.
The contest in West Auckland heated up this week too, as Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey appeared alongside a television star and a former All Black in council-funded advertisements against family violence.
His main rival, former Labour MP John Tamihere, cried foul, saying it conferred an unfair advantage - a bit rich, coming from a man who is not relinquishing his high-profile radio show during the voting period even though it gives him extra access to voters. The man more entitled to be upset is Maori Party MP Pita Sharples, co-chairman with the mayor of the city's anti-violence task-force, who was conspicuous by his absence from the advertisement.
Voters considering whether Harvey's move is more sincere than opportunistic may draw their own inferences from that absence.
