A bid for Rodney and Waiheke Island to break away from Auckland has failed and the battle will move to Parliament. Photo / Greg Bowker
A bid for Rodney and Waiheke Island to break away from Auckland has failed and the battle will move to Parliament. Photo / Greg Bowker
Northern Rodney's four-year fight to break away from the Auckland Super City has lost its key political backers, as well as being ditched by the Local Government Commission.
New Zealand First list MP Jenny Marcroft, who lives at Matakana in the rebel area, said her party failed to get agreement from the Labour Party for a binding referendum on the secession proposal.
Party leader Winston Peters, who was then MP for Northland, and Warkworth-based MP Tracey Martin both promised before the election that they would support changing the law to allow a binding referendum on the issue.
But Marcroft said the idea did not make it through the party's coalition talks with Labour.
"Unfortunately we only ended up with 7.2 per cent of the vote and the district voted in two National Party members," she said. Peters lost his seat to National candidate Matt King, and National MP Mark Mitchell retained the Rodney seat.
"With 7.2 per cent of the vote, it was very difficult to get all of our wishlist through in the coalition with Labour, and that was one of the ones that didn't survive the coalition talks," Marcroft said.
However she said Martin had spoken to Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and "has made her aware of the issue".
Mahuta said she was bound to respect the Local Government Commission's decision. But she urged Auckland Council to "reach out" to Rodney people and address their concerns about poor services.
Commission staff said in a background paper that the commission "may want to address a number of operational issues raised by the original applicant, alternative proposers and the community which do not fall within the scope of a reorganisation proposal".
The commission has ruled against proposed new unitary councils in both Northern Rodney and Waiheke Island, saying that both would be too small to take over Auckland Council's regional functions, particularly managing "sensitive marine environments".
Auckland Council, created by Parliament without a referendum in 2010, is one of the country's five unitary councils, which combine the functions of regional and district councils.
Northern Rodney, with 24,000 people, and Waiheke (9000) would be smaller than three of the other four unitary councils Tasman (50,000), Gisborne (48,000) and Marlborough (45,500), although bigger than the Chatham Islands (600).
The proposed Northern Rodney unitary council would cover the area from Puhoi to Te Hana
A report for the commission by consultants Morrison Low found in August that a Northern Rodney unitary council would face a deficit of $13.5 million a year based on the current costs of Auckland Council services for the area and current rates.
It said rates would have to jump by 48 per cent to cover the deficit.
However a report by Rotorua-based APR Consultants for the Northern Action Group on November 14 challenged Morrison Low's assumption that the costs of Auckland Council services for the area would not change.
Instead, APR assumed that costs per person would be about the same as for the Tasman, Gisborne and Marlborough unitary councils, and estimated that the operating position of a Northern Rodney unitary council would be between a $5.5m deficit and a $5m surplus.
The commission's final decision says Morrison Low overestimated the amount of debt, and costs related to "regional sports, other overheads and finance", that would be taken on by a Northern Rodney council. On this basis it now says a Northern Rodney council would have a deficit of between $5.6m and $7.6m, requiring a rates increase of 20 to 27 per cent.
It says a Waiheke unitary council would have a deficit of between $1.2m and $2m a year, requiring rate hikes of 8 to 13 per cent.
It found that splitting either area out of Auckland Council would also "fragment the current and future metropolitan areas of Auckland and constrain the council's ability to manage growth in an integrated way".
Northern Action Group chairman Bill Townson, who has led the Rodney group since it lodged its bid to leave Auckland in 2013, said the group would now move to "Plan B and Plan C".
"Plan B is we are seriously considering legal action. We have to get in before December 22 and we'll be talking to our lawyers," he said.
"Plan C is the promised binding referendum that New Zealand First has promised, and they are working on that."
The action group has already gone to the High Court once to challenge the commission's initial decision in 2014 not to assess its application. The court ruled that the commission was wrong in law, and the commission then agreed to consider the application.
However the political option looks bleak. National MPs Mark Mitchell and Matt King said they opposed a referendum.
"We don't feel a binding referendum is necessary, but we understand that during the election campaign NZ First leader Winston Peters promised one to the Northern Action Group," they said. "The Deputy Prime Minister is now in a position to deliver on this promise."
Townson said an opt-in poll of 2000 people through polling booths in local shops in 2013 found that 94 per cent of Northern Rodney people supported a breakaway.
A UMR poll of 289 people in the Wellsford and Warkworth subdivisions of the Rodney ward, taken for the commission in October, found that 70 per cent supported "a change in the way [local government] is organised" in the Rodney area.
Across a wider sample of 600 in the whole Rodney ward, the main reasons cited for change were a need to invest more in infrastructure (28 per cent), needing more benefits for the amount paid in rates (22 per cent) and Auckland Council being "too big" or "inefficient" (15 per cent).
Rodney Local Board chairwoman Beth Houlbrooke said she was satisfied and relieved by the decision.
"We wouldn't want to be split in two. We have a small enough budget as it is. Halving that would not have been a good outcome overall," she said.
Local board member Tessa Berger also welcomed the decision.
"The Local Government Commission has refused to turn the clock back 63 years on regional governance, and determined that a Northern Rodney unitary authority is unviable," she said.
"This will be no surprise to those who have an understanding for huge range of expertise and services that a unitary authority is legally obligated to deliver. Ratepayers can't be expected to stump up another 20 per cent for rates, and transition costs on top of that."
The commissioners
• Sir Wira Gardiner (chair), former chief executive of Ministry of Māori Development.
• Geoff Dangerfield (led this inquiry), former chief executive of Ministry of Economic Development.
