Fran O'Sullivan: Message to the PM - Please don't be afraid of change

Leadership and courage - two words which have been missing from public discourse in recent weeks as the ramifications of the "dirty election" consumes politics at national level.

Political leaders of all hues will continue to indulge in their mammoth butt-covering exercise this coming week as they prepare to counter the release of the Auditor-General's report into the plundering of Parliamentary funds to pay for their election campaigns.

But in Auckland where the rubber too frequently hits the road a quiet revolution is under way with yesterday's launch of the Metro Project.

There have been plans by the bucketful over the past decade but until now there has never been one plan on the table which has secured broad behind-scenes endorsement.

City leaders, including the businesspeople who have had the guts to put their reputations on the line by championing change in our languishing metropolis, deserve some plaudits for getting the one plan this far.

So far there's been too much chiselling over the "anti-democratic" way in which the key regional players initially tried to come together and force change on Auckland through a new greater Auckland council.

That failed at the first hurdle when Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey - one of four Auckland mayors who pledged to put their egos to one side - found he couldn't command support on his home patch to sacrifice his existing operations for the greater good. It also failed because the attempt to put the Auckland Regional Council out of business was plain clumsy - it would have been far better to transform the existing body.

It takes leadership and courage to try to get some concerted movement in a town which has all too frequently been divided by parochial interests and mayoral egos.

The mayors didn't get there.

But leading business players like Michael Barnett and Nick Main, together with the commercial leaders they have persuaded to champion the process, have worked up an exciting action plan which has the capacity to transform Auckland - "if". That "if" is a big one.

Transformational change will not gain sufficient momentum or speed to arrest Auckland's relative decline on an Australasian basis unless there is top-down legislative support from Prime Minister Helen Clark's Government to force through local-governance reforms in Auckland and empower new implementation agencies to drive the action plan.

Government insiders suggest that Clark's worry beads are working overtime where Auckland is concerned. Clark is a notorious worry-wort when it comes to change. She still blames pushback over the Rogernomics economic reform era of the 1980s for Labour's 1990 election loss and nine-year period in opposition.

She is also a keen political student and relies way too much on opinion polls and focus groups' research before committing her government to action.

Putting a rocket under Auckland is a major plank in her government's third-term economic transformational agenda. A cross-functional government departmental team is now based in Auckland and has been liaising with business leaders on the Metro Project and acting as Cabinet's ears and eyes on the business revolutionaries.

This is all good PR for the Government.

But the central issue - which has also been urged by the Government's Growth and Innovation Advisory Board - is the necessity for Cabinet to take a leading role and display the necessary courage to force through a much needed regional amalgamation.

And to devote a big budget to fund the action agenda to develop an international-standard infrastructure, make Auckland a world-class destination for events and business investment, develop a skilled workforce so that high-value-add businesses will invest here, and increase the city's export strength.

This will take a lot more hard cash than that already invested by the Government to speed up roading projects. This does not all have to come from government coffers - a regional "bed" tax to help promote Auckland as a visitor destination, regional road and sales taxes are just some of the creative avenues that could be explored.

Such steps would require central government to loosen the apron strings and let a beefed-up regional body decide where the new funds would be deployed, as well as legislation and cross-party support.

Cabinet ministers like Trevor Mallard, now in the Economic Development role, have quietly warned the Growth and Innovation Advisory Board that there are still reverberations from the last major local body reforms which took place in 1989, when the last Labour Government was moving towards its death bed.

Clark - with an eye on a fourth term in Government - will carefully weigh the impact on the Labour Party's future prospects before deciding how far to move.

She's chasing the wrong legacy. If Clark and her Government want to be remembered they need to demonstrate a commitment to bold change and demonstrate they have the courage to take the type of actions that are now urgently needed to secure New Zealand's future.