Rudman's city - Here's a body mayors could bin if they're so keen on reforms

By BRIAN RUDMAN

The members of Auckland's mayoral forum obviously move in different circles to me. In launching their discussion paper on the future of Auckland local government, they say the topic has become an issue of intense debate.

Amongst whom, you might well ask. Maybe such matters do spring to mind when you're lying in wait with fellow politicians for a midnight raid on portraits of the Queen and her consort.

But for me and my friends the issues are rather more basic - rates, the council trying to swap our big wheelie bins for a little one, that sort of thing.

As to reform of local government, or for that matter any other sort of Government structure, I've got the feeling we're just about all reformed out. Trotsky didn't get very far with his theory of permanent revolution and I doubt our mayors will be any more successful.

For the past 15 years our leaders have been unable to resist reforming anything that moved - and lots that didn't as well.

Local government, education, health, public service, voting system. All have been turned upside down, shaken about, then left to sort themselves out. In most cases, more than once.

Auckland local government has been whammied twice. The first was in 1989 when Labour's Minister of Internal Affairs, Michael Bassett, did away with more than a dozen pocket boroughs and came up with four major cities and three outlying districts. In 1992, National's Warren Cooper kept the revolution going by emasculating the Auckland Regional Council and distributing its assets among the cities and a new Auckland Regional Services Trust. The latter, in its turn, was duly killed off.

In a perfect world the old regional council was just what was needed to manage regional activities such as public transport, sewage disposal and water. But the good the ARC did was overshadowed by the scandal of the $238 million headquarters palace the councillors built with our money.

Now our mayors want us to revisit this old territory, to weigh up the advantages of such options as a regional council, a unitary city council stretching from Rodney down to Franklin, a three or four-city region and various mix-and- match options.

Understandably perhaps, there is one institution of our regional constitutional set-up that the mayoral forum does not ask us to consider. That is the mayoral forum. Nor does it make mention of its even more secretive, Masonic lodge-like twin, the chief executives forum.

The mayoral forum started off as an informal little tea party where mayors could let off steam with their peers about mutual problems. In recent times the mayoral forum has begun to assume a political life of its own.

Two years ago, without any delegated or constitutional authority, the mayors assumed the right to negotiate on our behalf over the disposal of the assets of the Auckland Regional Services Trust. The Government, desperate for a resolution, went along with it.

The mayors, instead of each promoting the views of their council, sat down with their CEOs and came up with a forum position. They then presented this forum line to their councils as a fait accompli.

This flexing of mayoral muscle did draw attention to the odd role mayors hold in our democratic set-up. Directly elected, they tend to be independents without the support - or the discipline - of being part of a political team.

If the mayors really want us to undergo yet more political reform, I'd start with them.

I'd abolish the direct election of the mayor, and replace it with the parliamentary system where he or she is elected by a majority of councillors.

This would end the present one-man-band status of mayors, installing people who not only supported majority council policy, but who also had the confidence of councillors.