Bridget Graham: Little value in a democracy without the people

Auckland's Super City structure raises concerns for those who say that democracy at a community level will be weakened. Photo / Richard Robinson, NZ Herald

How refreshing to read the opinion of Grant Gillon from the North Shore on the coming Super City, and hear some support for the long-suffering residents of the Auckland region.

Where is the word "local" in the new form of local body government for the region?

I listened to many local residents making submissions to the royal commissioners and later to the Government select committee and these were based on the same themes:

We want even more input into our local government than we used to have.

We want more personal contact with the same people, not a different staff member every day. We want more decisions made affecting our community at a local level by local people and we want people representing us who have a strong knowledge of local history.

The basic theme was the same. We want local government to be just that, governance at a local level, with decisions made by people locally elected and well known in the community and aware of the needs and aspirations of that community.

At the moment there is no indication that any notice has been taken of what people really want. We know we will have a Greater Auckland Council and now we know about the council-controlled organisations (CCOs).

These are business units in charge of such areas as transport, water, rubbish, community facilities, economic development.

These are very wide areas and control a number of aspects of local government into which many people would like more input.

The huge worry is it seems these units will be controlled by unelected directors. That means there will be a lack of connections between these units and the public - the public don't control them because they are directed by unelected people, and because they are directed by unelected people there is no accountability to the public.

This is clearly not what people wanted at the hearings that I attended.

The next worry with the CCOs is that if all these activities are being controlled by unelected directors, what are the councillors going to be doing?

What decisions can they make about any matter that falls into a CCO category? If there is a shortage of decision-making for this level, what will happen at the local board level?

Will many local decisions be made at the local level? I fear not, as the subject of the powers of the local boards is taking a back seat, so far back as to be forgotten.

A structure the size of this new city needs a strong council to control it. The difficulty it will face is once a bureaucracy gets to this size the officers and workers within the structure become more political than the politicians, but with a different type of politics.

Their politics are internal, and career-based. Delivery to the public is so far down the scale that many workers in the structure don't realise that it should be the raison d'etre of the whole structure.

In the type of structure currently planned, with all these CCOs all directed by non-elected people, the council will need to be very strong indeed.

This will be difficult, as each councillor will represent a huge area with vastly different needs, and councillors will come from a variety of backgrounds, some with little or no experience in local body government, and this is governance at an extraordinarily high level.

Another concern is that the functions of the local boards may be set by the Auckland Transition Agency, but after a set time these functions may be controlled by the council at their whim.

Which brings us to the same scenario that we have at the moment, where the community boards have a strong advisory and advocacy role, but there is no onus for anyone to listen or act on the advice or advocacy.

This situation is far from satisfactory, and this was made clear at the hearings submission stages. So are we undergoing all of this expensive change in structure for no change at all at the local level?

If the local boards are organised and dictated to by the council, the council dictated to by the bureaucrats, the CCOs have nothing to do with elected people or in fact with any people except those organising them, then are the people getting what they asked for and are entitled to get since they are paying the rates?

Surely to achieve what people really want, a better foundation for the new structure, would have been to start at the local level, look carefully at what people want at that local level and then work out what is the best way to deliver this.

People are the major source of income for any city - it is their money that pays the salaries of the bureaucrats working in the structure, as well as for local facilities such as libraries, swimming pools and community centres and the delivery of such services as verge-mowing.

What is the problem with decisions connected with such council activities as these being made at a local level?

Once it is clearly established how to achieve these aims, then everything else will fall into place - that includes boundaries for communities of interest, clear divisions between council and local board decisions and the necessity or not for CCOs.

Submissions on the third bill are due on February 12. Every person living in the Auckland region should be voicing their concerns that the word "local" is disappearing from local body government in the Auckland region, and that democracy is in real danger of being destroyed.

* Bridget Graham is chairwoman of the Maungakiekie Community Board.