Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray want a helipad at their new property. Photo / NZME
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
OPINION
This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s new weekly newsletter, Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. To sign up, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
Auckland Transport “must be the most loathed organisation in council”, said Mayor Wayne Brown last week. Perhaps you agree, perhaps you don’t. But is that the sort of thing bosses should say in public about their own organisations? Is there a universe in which sneering at your staff is a good way to improve performance?
Brown has announced plans to restructure the work of AT and most of the other semi-independent council-controlled organisations (CCOs), bringing them directly into the central council operation.
He needs the Government to change the law governing AT and he says Transport Minister Simeon Brown is sympathetic. But he needs only council approval for the rest.
It might be a case of being careful what you wish for.
The Browns are right, in the sense that AT doesn’t please enough of the people enough of the time. But it doesn’t follow that we all agree on what it should be doing. There are conflicting demands. There are also complex reasons for some of the failures.
Speeding up bus trips, for example, is critical to improving patronage. But that requires getting car parks off arterial roads and lots of people don’t want that.
My personal bugbear is that the AT app and the electronic signs at bus stops can be disappointingly at odds with the truth. But I know that, in the steep budget cuts the council adopted this year, AT’s information systems were hit hard. The mayor and most of the councillors voted for that, so I can hardly blame AT.
Or take congestion, which everyone wants less of. But how to do it? More roads and higher speed limits, as the minister says? Or better management of when and where people drive, as AT says? It’s supported in that by council policy, by the way, and by roading authorities all over the world.
Many people seem ready to go to war over which of those two answers is right. Either way, the solution depends less on AT efficiency than on Government funding, large parts of which have been cut.
What exactly does Mayor Brown want to do to fix transport in Auckland? He very rarely says anything specific, unless it’s to complain about road cones. But that’s a regulatory matter the minister has to fix.
What else? He says AT doesn’t listen, that it’s not doing what the public wants. But 79% of the public responses to AT’s draft Regional Land Transport Plan this year said it had identified the issues and spending priorities well. (Three-quarters of the money, by the way, goes on roads.)
The mayor also says AT does not follow council instructions. And in this he’s right, it doesn’t always do that. But the biggest example is Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri: Auckland’s Climate Plan.
Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri calls for a 64% reduction in the city’s gross transport emissions by 2030. Five years after it was adopted in 2019, we are not significantly closer to this goal.
Councillors – especially Waitakere’s Shane Henderson and North Shore’s Chris Darby – call on AT often to say how it’s lowering emissions, but it rarely can.
Is that what the mayor has in mind when he says AT isn’t listening?
Or is he saying, as the transport minister does, that cycleways and speed bumps are an irritating waste of money? Is that what this is really about?
It’s true that some people don’t want those things, and often they’re noisy about it. But many other Aucklanders are very keen on safer cycling, slower speeds and safer streets.
To be clear, I’m not unsympathetic to the notion that AT needs reform. There’s a whole bunch of things it should be doing better, so yes, let’s find ways for that to happen.
But it would be great if the mayor was specific about what he wants done differently. Then, instead of just moaning, we could try to agree on what we want and whether we think moving the management desks will make a difference.
Mayor Brown has been reported saying there will be no public input on this. That’s wrong. The reform proposals will go to public consultation as part of the draft 2025-26 budget, probably in February-March next year.
What was the great feast of Remuera?
Answer at the end.
Whirlygigs in Westmere, helicopters in Herne Bay
The birds now live in fear, the issue never goes away
Rich listers hate being stuck in traffic but the public gets to have a say.
Sorry, there’s just something about the beautiful and very peaceful coastline of the inner harbour, rich in birdlife, pōhutukawa and beaches, that brings out the admittedly terrible poet in me.
Ex-All Black Ali Williams and his billionaire wife Anna Mowbray are still trying to build a helipad on their coastal property in Westmere but their plans have been publicly notified, which means anyone can make a submission. The deadline is November 26 and there’s more information on the Quiet Sky Waitematā website.
In May, Williams and Mowbray released a report by consultants Bioresearchers, who surveyed the area quarterly for a year and concluded the couple’s plans for up to four flights a day would not bother residents much or disturb birdlife.
I assume Bioresearchers got the address wrong and did their surveys not in Westmere Auckland, but in another Westmere, perhaps some great barren western seabed on Mars.
In previous helicopter proposals just along that coastline in Herne Bay, almost all the locals have been strongly against.
But Auckland already has a salutary warning of how bad this can all get, and how quickly. Quiet Sky Waitematā estimates there are now 60 or more helipads on Waiheke, up from 20 in just the past five years.
It’s not that 60 homeowners use helicopters. It’s more that they’re the new status symbol: a helipad increases the value of a property the way a swimming pool does. Except swimming pools are fun for everyone.
But, because I’m an optimistic person, I have an idea. Williams and Mowbray could chuck a few hundred million at Auckland Transport to help it build cycleways and better public transport. Then the roads would have fewer cars and they wouldn’t have to worry about getting stuck in traffic. And we’d keep the peace on that beautiful coastline.
Among Mayor Brown’s plans for the other CCOs, he wants to disband Eke Panuku, the agency response for regenerating local centres like Takapuna, Henderson and Pukekohe.
And he thinks the economic development and events agency Tātaki Auckland Unlimited should be stripped of its economic development and events roles. It would retain the management of regional facilities like the zoo, art gallery and most of the stadiums.
Are these good ideas? They might be. While the CCOs do much good work, there’s no doubt they could do better. But that’s just as true of the council itself. The case has not yet been made – at least in public – why eviscerating the CCOs is the best way forward. There’s a lot more to come on this.
One casualty of the CCO restructuring, not to mention tight budgets, could be Te Ara Tukutuku, the proposed headland park at Wynyard Point, formerly known as the Tank Farm.
Inspired in part by Sydney’s new Barangaroo precinct, around from The Rocks, Eke Panuku has created some magnificent park plans and they’ve already generated international acclaim.
The entire Wynyard Quarter has been developed on the basis that land leases and sales have paid for some great public spaces. Eke Panuku is the expert at this, and the approach has always been intended for the headland park. But the agency now expects there will be a funding gap of a few hundred million dollars. That’s a lot.
This throws a spotlight on a proposal rejected quite recently by the council to build a waterfront stadium on the site. That proposal also involved extensive public parkland, boardwalks and coastal access around the point.
It had other advantages, including excellent transport connections and strong potential for growing the nearby hospitality sector. The promoters suggested it would not put a heavy burden on ratepayers.
What was wrong with it? We don’t know, because the council, citing commercial sensitivity, has never released its analysis.
But a clue came last month at an Eke Panuku board meeting, where CEO David Rankin mentioned the stadium proposal “we had to get shot of last year”.
That suggests Eke Panuku engineered the sinking of the stadium plan because it wanted to build its own.
Why was that allowed to happen? Shouldn’t the council be impartial?
Is the Eke Panuku plan really better than the stadium one? And if it’s going to die for lack of funds anyway, does that mean we could get the stadium option back on the table?
If there really is something wrong with it, let’s hear it. And for that matter, why don’t we take a proper look at other proposals for the point, including the museum and exhibition centre known as the LegendNZ Centre.
The thing about all this is that the council operates on the principle of “our ideas good, outsiders’ ideas bad”. Changing the CCOs isn’t going to change that, because the thinking infests the whole council.
At the halfway point in Auckland Council’s financial year, the Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee has announced it’s 48% of the way to achieving its goal of cutting $66m from the current budget.
Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, who chairs the committee, says that $66m, when achieved in full, “will represent 2.5% of rates rises that have been avoided”.
On the day the hīkoi arrived at Parliament, our editorial declared “The haka in Parliament wasn’t hatred, just disgust”. The point: haka are the appropriate tikanga in certain circumstances and perhaps we should stop thinking that Westminster rigmarole is the only appropriate way to behave in a New Zealand Parliament.
In my column on Tuesday, I suggested the Solicitor-General should have resigned over the findings of the Abuse in Care inquiry. In truth, I’m surprised there haven’t been several resignations. Danyl McLauchlan has a novel alternative: strip those responsible of all their titles and honours. “No more honourables, right honourables, knighthoods, dames, KCs or orders of merit,” he says.
Jamie Morton wrote an excellent rundown on New Zealand’s role at the COP29 climate change summit in Azerbaijan, and Rod Emmerson nailed it too.
Christmas carols at the Christmas tree
The festive launch of Auckland’s big new Christmas tree, with Anika Moa, Tami Neilson, the Auckland Youth Choir and lots of singing. Te Komititanga, the public square at the bottom of Queen St. Saturday, November 23, 7pm.
Farmers Santa Parade
91 years young and returning to Queen St complete with a float made of Lego, a K-pop float and all the old favourites too. Sunday, November 24, 1pm.
Laugh till you cry at Q Theatre
Weirdly, but also very wonderfully, two revivals from nearly a decade ago are playing at Q Theatre.
Camping, presented by Silo Theatre, is expanded from the original’s much shorter length and offers the delectable comedic talents of Tom Sainsbury, Kura Forrester, Brynley Stent and Chris Parker as two couples double-booked into the same “romantic” B&B.
“A comedy gem” with “spot-on performances” you “can’t help but love”, said our reviewer Ethan Sills. My takeout: you’ll never see a funnier orgy. Until December 7.
As for Don Juan, from A Slightly Isolated Dog theatre troupe, when this preposterously silly tale of a 17th-century “libertine” first played in Auckland, I remember spending much of the time weeping with laughter. November 26-December 7.
Quiz answer: 4. The week of festivities for 4000 was hosted by Waikato iwi, who greeted the governor when he arrived with a haka performed by 1600 warriors. Those were the days.
Polyfest organisers are blaming the government for not fronting up more cash.