Tony Holman: Wresting of power slaps democracy in the face

Opinion

It is misguided and reprehensible for the royal commission to propose that 1.4 million people in the Auckland region should be governed by 22 elected members and one appointed person, called the Auckland Council. That effectively gives one elected representative to every 63,636 people.

In April 2008 the Herald printed an article by me about possible changes to Auckland's governance titled "One Voice but not a democratic one". This suggested that self-interested business groups, (eg EMA, Northern Employers and Manufacturers Association, the One Auckland Trust and the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development) were pressing for changes to regional and local government in Auckland so that they could do business more easily.

That plea was supported by the Wellington bureaucracy and the Labour government, hence the royal commission. I contended that their model had strong echoes of the European city-states of the Middle Ages, which were controlled by merchants, guilds and oligarchies for their own purposes.

My fears have been more than confirmed by the proposals of the royal commission which recommends a huge reduction in the democratic representation of Aucklanders in how their local areas and their region is run.

The few elected members will have to try to control a combined bureaucracy of over 6000 staff from across the region, and there are huge implications for the electoral model proposed. Not merely the centralisation of power and the removal of any real "local" government and local determination of wants and needs but the actual equity of representation, both across the region and in comparison with other parts of the country.

Take the South Island. Population: 990,464. Number of elected representatives (local and regional councils): 324. Ratio of elected representatives to population: 1:3057.

Christchurch City. Population: 344,100. Councillors: 13. Ratio: 1:26,469.

Dunedin City. Population: 122,500. Councillors: 14. Ratio: 1:8750.

Proposed Auckland Council (for whole region). Population: 1.4 million. Elected Councillors: 22. Ratio: 1: 63,636.

On that basis, clearly the commission thinks that democratic representation is not important for Aucklanders. Business and economic matters are paramount, not equity, not democracy, not local control over what happens locally.

I suggested last year that there would be an attempt to gloss that over with "inevitable packaging in some democratic jargon".

That too, has come to pass with the proposed device of "local councils". For that label read "ineffective community boards".

"Local councils" will simply be ciphers. The royal commission states that they will be "... subsidiary and accountable to the governing body of the Auckland Council" - not to the public.

In my view this reorganisation is an ill-disguised grab of power from the people, with centralisation matched by a dramatic diminution of democratic input and control. Local identity, local interests, communities, local determination and decision-making will be submerged under economic imperatives.

Homogenised sameness will be imposed across the region, dealt to us by an even larger and more expensive single bureaucracy with weak democratic control and oversight.

The commission's proposed inequity and failure to meet international standards of good democratic representation and the requirements of the Local Government Act are incomprehensible. Aucklanders should demand some respect and require a referendum on these proposals

* Tony Holman is a North Shore City Councillor with 26 years' in local and regional government and 14 years senior management in various statutory authorities.