Wendy Clark: Draw the line at unwieldy mix of town and country

The Rodney representative will have to consider both urban and rural concerns. Photo / Alex Robertson

Opinion

The Auckland governance legislation committee has come to a very different conclusion over Auckland's boundaries from that of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance.

And it goes without saying that they can't both be right. What is clear, however, is that the royal commission has done a much better job of the task.

The commission's findings for the new Auckland boundaries were well reasoned and attracted little criticism. On the other hand, the rationale behind the parliamentary select committee's decision is just plain bizarre.

Even a cursory glance through the committee's report reveals flaws in its reasoning.

For a start, the committee believes the northern boundary for the Auckland region should be based on a line between the mouths of the Puhoi and Makarau Rivers - yet the southern boundary is to be based on the Waikato river catchment.

How can the committee possibly claim it is okay to split catchments to the north of Auckland, but not to the south? Surely the Puhoi and Makarau Rivers in the north and their catchments are just as important to the people of Rodney as the Waikato River is to the people of Franklin?

The select committee's report describes the southern parts of Rodney as "undoubtedly urban or at least partly urban". Yet an overwhelming bulk of the area south of the Makarau River is the exact same rural farming land found throughout New Zealand.

Warkworth is far more urbanised than most of southern Rodney, but it is destined to become part of the Kaipara District.

The select committee says if northern Rodney were included in Auckland, "it would probably incur a disproportionate amount of work for the council when it should be focused primarily on urban issues". Yet the northern and southern sections of Rodney are roughly the same size. It is difficult to see how Rodney's northern area would generate any less work for the Kaipara District and Northland Regional Councils.

In fact, those councils' offices are much further away from northern Rodney than metropolitan Auckland, so the costs of undertaking that work can only be proportionately greater.

Then on the one hand, the royal commission emphasised the importance of ensuring Auckland's boundaries remain some distance away from its metropolitan urban limits. Yet on the east coast, the select committee's proposed boundary is no more than 5km from the metropolitan urban limit line on Rodney's Hibiscus Coast.

What's more, the select committee's proposed northern boundary diddles Rodney out of its fair share of representation on the Auckland Council. This flies in the face of the royal commission, which emphasised the importance of keeping rural Auckland electorally separate from metropolitan Auckland. It suggested this be done with rural seats based largely on rural Rodney and Franklin.

The Rodney seat would include rural parts of North Shore and Waitakere, leaving metropolitan Hibiscus Coast with its own seat that could also contain a part of upper North Shore.

The select committee makes the mistake of reducing Rodney's entitlement from two seats to just one and its councillor will be expected to represent the interests of both metropolitan Hibiscus Coast and southern, rural Rodney.

Rest assured, the select committee's proposed boundaries will also produce some perverse outcomes. For example, farmers near Puhoi and Makarau will bizarrely fund the Northland rescue helicopter through their regional council rates, despite the fact Auckland's rescue helicopter and associated emergency services are much closer.

The select committee's decision will also result in the major reorganisation of local government in Northland, Waikato and in particular, Kaipara. People in those areas have had little opportunity to have their say on what this means for them.

Kaipara is, in fact, smaller than northern Rodney and its mayor and eight councillors will have to be blended with northern Rodney's mayor and three councillors. If efficient representation is to be achieved, there will need to be a major overhaul of Kaipara's wards.

This could well mean at least half of Kaipara's councillors and one of the mayors will find themselves out of a job come local body election time.

I fail to understand why the Government has picked this political fight when there is no need for it. Redrafting these boundaries is like throwing a rock into the lake, the ripples of which will be felt across a much larger area than just Auckland.

The select committee has made the task of building the new Auckland unnecessarily complex and playing around with Auckland's boundaries is a job that could have been left to another day.

The regional councils of both Waikato and Northland are seriously looking at rationalising their local governance, which would certainly present a much better opportunity than currently exists to review their boundaries with Auckland.

Parliament must reconsider its proposal for Auckland's boundaries and at the very least restore them to the locations proposed by the royal commission.

But Federated Farmers also wants the southern part of Franklin included in the new Auckland because its community is aligned more closely with Franklin and Auckland than Waikato and Hamilton.

* Wendy Clark is Federated Farmers Auckland vice-president.