Editorial: That's no way to say goodbye

Local Government Minister Rodney Hide. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Local government Minister Rodney Hide has managed to rile many people in the Auckland region with his high-handed approach to the formation of the Supercity.

But hard-pressed ratepayers will applaud him for firing shots across the bows of the would-be big spenders on the various moribund local authorities.

Councils are planning to splash out on farewell functions and other activities to say goodbye to themselves, in the process spending money collected, compulsorily, for other purposes entirely.

The most conspicuously extravagant plan is that of Auckland City, where they propose to spend $87,000 on a staff knees-up and $120,000 on a book documenting the council's history since the last re-organisation in 1989. (The name of historian Michael Bassett, who was the Local Government Minister at that time, has been linked with the latter; there is something faintly spooky about somebody writing the history of something he created).

When Hide challenged the wisdom of this extravagance, the council said it might cancel the staff do, which is evidently less important than a record of their glorious administration.

With good reason, the term for a book you pay someone to write about you is "vanity publishing". Whatever the expertise of the writer, the historical value of a project thus financed will be suspect at best. And it will not appear for several years, by which time it will be of primarily archaeological interest.

Other councils' plans range from Manukau's 10-day, $85,000 community festival to Rodney's commendable idea of having staff working for nothing for a day with local community groups.

That the more expensive options are being reconsidered is the very least we might hope for. Staff of private businesses that close are not commonly shouted a big party and public-sector organisations should be more, not less, frugal than that.

No one associated with the Supercity plans has yet suggested that our rates will go down as a result of the re-organisation.

The idea that councils should spend public money patting themselves on the back is quite beyond the pale.