Garth George: Politicians beware - the people's revolt has started

It has happened at last. Citizens fed up with the arrogance of politicians who think they can do what they like once they are elected are striking back.

It is fitting that the revolt is against the Auckland Regional Council, which has a long history of getting far too big for its boots.

It was knocked back in the last big reformation of local authorities in 1989 - having cost ratepayers untold millions of dollars wasted in naked empire-building - and it looks like it needs to be knocked back again.

The late Phillip Warren QSO, who as chairman deftly guided the leaned-down ARC into its new role of providing environmental oversight, regional parks and transport subsidies, must be spinning in his grave. You can be sure that had he lived, this contretemps would never have arisen. Mr Warren was far too much a gentleman for that.

But it has, and I just hope that citizens realise how important - nay, vital - it is that they widen and sustain the revolt that is taking shape thus far on the North Shore and in Rodney.

It is vital because if it succeeds it will warn politicians in local and national government throughout the land that they had better consider carefully before they trample over the wishes of the electorate.

It is probably too much to expect that it will cause Auckland mayor John Banks and his sidekick David Hay to pull their heads in, but some powerful Labour politicians, more than a few of whom hail from this region, will be given pause.

The extent of the ARC's underhanded attempt to extort tens of millions of extra dollars from the citizens it purports to represent is almost breathtaking. And the public relations campaign designed to justify this thievery - for which we ratepayers are paying - is simply pathetic dissembling.

It is all in the name of public transport - which is used by a small minority of ARC ratepayers anyway. Indeed, tens of thousands are nowhere near public transport, road or rail.

My nearest railway station is several kilometres away and, while I would be happy to take a train to and from the city daily, I certainly will not leave my car all day in an unprotected carpark at the mercy of vandals and/or thieves. As for the bus service, who wants to spend well over an hour making a trip that takes 25 minutes in a car?

I might visit a regional park once every few years - they do not provide the sort of outdoors I enjoy - and anything to do with "the environment" and conservation leaves me cold.

It has long puzzled me that environmentalists and conservationists, who are invariably evolutionists, do everything in their power to stymie evolution by trying to save species of all realms from the fundamental evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest.

But that's another story. For hundreds of thousands of people who have the misfortune to live in the Auckland region, if the ARC ceased to exist tomorrow it would cause no inconvenience at all.

Whatever slack there might be could be taken up by city and district councils in whose operations we all have a vested interest. The regional council tier of local government should have been dismantled in 1989; it is a pain in the neck.

Another bit of good news is that the National Party is rediscovering some of its old courage and is setting about making a stand on another thing that is way out of hand - the Maori if-it-doesn't-move-claim-it-and-if-it-moves-claim-it-anyway industry.

National has at last come out unequivocally against ceding ownership of the foreshore and seabed to Maori, has undertaken to bring all Maori claims to a close within a year of being elected and to abolish the Maori seats in Parliament.

Its policy billboards announcing "One standard of citizenship for all of us" will have struck a chord in the hearts of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders. That the billboards have brassed off the Green Party is merely evidence that the message is spot on.

And National is starting a process of softening its attitude to the banning of nuclear ship visits, one of the most embarrassing blots on our escutcheon left from the last time we had a bright pink Government for any length of time.

The sad thing is, of course, that the chances of National getting elected in 2005 are almost negligible, thanks to one Maurice Williamson, who proves once again that the egomania of some politicians verges on the insane.

Just when the party is starting to make a real comeback, to commit itself to policies sure to make its traditional supporters at least take a fresh look, along comes Mr Williamson and throws a spanner in the works.

Whether his whinging is valid is irrelevant; the place to settle differences, particularly in a party fighting for its very survival, is in the privacy of the caucus.

I hope that caucus has the resolve to throw him out - and quickly.

* Email Garth George