Editorial: Politics is the poorer as Bob stands aside

Bob Harvey. Photo / Greg Bowker

Opinion

Some good things will fade into the background with the creation of Auckland's Super City. One is Bob Harvey, the last mayor of Waitakere. Another is the regional parks component of the Auckland Regional Council.

They are not intrinsically linked, but both added rich character to this place and both survived the turbulence of local government parochialism.

Mr Harvey laid down his mayoral chain and robes with a nostalgic flourish after 18 years as chief westie. He was leader of that big suburb stretching from the harbour to the hills for a whole generation. People born in the year he came to office can vote this time, but not for him and not for his beloved Waitakere City Council.

Too often it is said that greater Auckland has lacked leaders of charisma and personality. Not Bob. The surf lifesaving adman and arts enthusiast helped create what he called an Eco City in the west.

He helped turn the term "westie" into a tattoo of honour and talked up a community of interest, a belonging, that should be the envy of the other parts of the new Auckland Council.

He had his idiosyncrasies and blind spots, his rows and buttock-baring moments to rival an old Waitemata City predecessor, Tim Shadbolt. Yet what was a local government unit riven with political skulduggery and factions seemed to settle under the eco mayor into a go-ahead organisation intent on a west-is-best mantra.

Mayor Harvey had another kind of Super City in mind, one of three parts which left something of Waitakere still standing. At one stage the term Lord Mayor attached itself to his ambition and earned derision. The shame is that, peerage or not, he could well have been the answer to Auckland's Super City mayoralty, a true unifier and a likeable character to boot.

While as a result of the merger he has lost two of his long-term jobs - the other being a director of the Aotea Centre and Edge - Mr Harvey will chair one of the Auckland Council's companies, the Auckland Waterfront Development Agency. It will need his wisdom and spirit in the face of the flint-faced commercialism of the port company and landholders if the city's harbour face is to be all that it can.

The ARC's many years of nurturing and expanding regional parks ends in three weeks. The function will be absorbed into the new body but, with one or two notable exceptions, the commitment of elected councillors is unlikely to match the vision of those who sat on the Auckland Regional Authority and its successor.

Aucklanders paid the price, but should be deeply grateful for the decades of buy-ups of farms from near Wellsford to the Hunuas. Some of the finest coastal beaches and waterways are preserved for public use in perpetuity.

Many hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from the policy from the early days at Wenderholm to the promise of a 27th park, nearby, bought this month. The parks are a unifier, too, of the diverse components of the Super City.

The ARC attracted its share of criticism - its hamfisted rating reforms, the pivotal "No" vote on the waterfront stadium, vacillation over party central plans and its propensity for intra-council litigation - but the parks are its singular epitaph.

Like Mr Harvey, they make Auckland a better place.