Editorial: Super council must control all functions

Opinion

A question for the committee of MPs sitting in Auckland this week to hear public submissions on the governance plan: When is a Super City not a Super City? Answer: when it cannot control all of its primary functions.

When the Government drew up its design for a supreme Auckland Council, two elements of any city were considered too important to be entrusted entirely to Auckland's local government. Transport and waterfront development will be run by appointed agencies answerable to the Government as well as to the council.

A free-standing regional transport authority will have control not only of arterial roads and public transport, as the royal commission proposed, but of all the streets.

A waterfront development agency will take over the planning and promotion of projects for enhancing the waterfront and its connections to the central city.

It is hard to think of a more pressing public concern than those. Transport congestion is always nominated as the single greatest problem facing Auckland and is the most glaring illustration of the need for more co-ordinated governance. The waterfront is the great unrealised visual asset of the city centre.

But the Government clearly does not have sufficient faith in a single Auckland council to let it deal with them. To a degree the Government cannot be blamed. Auckland's local bodies are quick to call for taxpayers' assistance for city projects, and the Super City's proponents insist it will need the Government "at the table".

Furthermore, Auckland's leaders do not have a glorious record of sound investment in economic infrastructure. The previous Government had to rescue the regional council from paying a grossly excessive price for rail access. The same council's needless buyout of Ports of Auckland has been a setback for the country's need of port mergers.

Yet, however unpromising its antecedents, the Super City council should be given a chance. If it is worth the cost and upheaval, the new creation has to be more competent than the sum of its present parts. If the Auckland Council is to be effective it needs to control all elements of urban development. Roading and public transport are essentials.

Under the Government's plan the council will be able to influence the decisions of the regional transport authority's only through the "spatial plan", which broadly aims to shape the city's growth, the location of residential, commercial and industrial activities and infrastructure such as water, sewerage and roads.

But present regional growth and transport plans are complementary; so much so that the growth plan is designed to support the public transport plan rather than vice-versa. The priority needs to be reversed and it could be, without removing transport from the purview of local politicians. A single council elected across the city should be less susceptible than the regional council to public transport purism.

It is only five years since the Labour Government put Auckland's transport under the control of a regional transport authority answerable to the regional council, replacing the standalone agency Infrastructure Auckland, that had inherited a fund built by the preceding National Government's Auckland Regional Services Trust.

With so much administrative restructuring it is no wonder progress is slow. The latest plan threatens to continue the institutional confusion. If we are going to put our faith in a single council, we should give it all the responsibilities it needs. Transport is crucial.