KEY POINTS:
If ministers in the new Government need any encouragement to set about pruning public expenditure I could take them to a beach.
It is almost the only beach on Auckland's east coast where they might get their feet wet in a stroll along the shoreline. This is not a big problem; quite a number of nearby residents saw no need to build a footbridge across the stream that empties into the bay and becomes too wide to jump at high tide.
But I sided with those who thought it wouldn't hurt to put a simple wooden crossing between the grassy banks to make the lovely walk from one bay to the next a bit easier, particularly in cool weather.
This wasn't a big problem and wouldn't require a big solution, we thought. A residents' association backed the idea and an energetic community council member, Andrew Williams, now mayor of North Shore, put his considerable tenacity behind it.
That was years ago. Nothing has happened, at least nothing on the beach. Forests have fallen to fill our mailboxes from time to time with the council's latest work on the project.
Plans have been circulated, revised and recirculated. Our formulaic applications and objections have been copied to every submitter more than once. The latest resource application, prepared by a consultant, runs to 25 pages, as does a reserve management plan attached.
We have been furnished with photocopied aerial maps of the entire suburb as well as ground-level views of the beach and stream from every conceivable angle, with and without an imaginary footbridge.
Several architectural designs have been drawn over the years. The little wooden structure has curved and grown, been suspended in different artful concepts and much thought has gone into the size and safety of the handrails.
We are talking of crossing a gap of perhaps 17m from bank to bank with steps to the sand 3m below. If you were doing this at home what would you expect to pay?
Now double that sum to account for the instability of a coastal site and the durability required of a public amenity. My guess is you are still below $20,000.
We hear that at the council's latest estimate, the cost of our footbridge will be around $400,000.
Four hundred thousand dollars. As one of the initiators of the request I don't want it at that price. It is unconscionable. But nobody within the council seems able to make that judgment. The paperwork is proceeding.
There are familiar lessons here for National's intended revision of the Resource Management Act but I think the problem is wider. Even before the notifications, impact assessments and design modifications the council apparently priced the construction at $200,000.
Something insane seems to happen when perfectly sane people are spending public money. They run up costs they would never accept if they were spending their own.
I suspect the same psychology is at work when private enterprise sells services to public bodies. Engineers, construction companies, consultants of all kinds load their charges with impunity when they know the customer is paying with public funds.
Under National's agreement with Act, Rodney Hide will join the Cabinet's expenditure control committee as Minister of Local Government, Minister of Regulatory Reform and Associate Minister of Commerce.
He will be given an assistant from the Treasury and a number of task forces are to be set up, chaired by appointees from the private sector, to review base spending. But the ambit of the exercise, as set out in the agreement, might not go far enough.
Initially at least, the reviews appear to be limited to assessing the worth of programmes. They probably need to get down to the level of contracting to change the culture of public finance.
It will be difficult. The aforementioned mayor of North Shore would be as determined as anyone I've seen. He has no respect for the notion that elected politicians should talk only to chief executives and never interfere down the chain of command.
Williams has been taking flak in local newspapers lately for his irascibility and demands. National will need the same courage to trim costs in line with their tax cuts. Ministers will face the common misapprehension, encouraged by public servants, Labour politicians and the media, that a cut in funds is always a cut in service.
National knows that organisations in the private sector often have to produce the same output with reduced resources. It is happening now as the recession bites.
Since productivity improvement is one of the new Government's economic priorities and a third of the economy is in the public sector, I offer my $400,000 footbridge as a measure of how much more efficient we could be.
