Editorial: Supercity seeks super power

Photo / Kenny Rodger

In the pre-MMP era, all Members of Parliament represented an electorate. These days fully 50 of the 120 seats in the House are occupied by people for whom no one, except faceless party apparatchiks, ever voted.

But Aucklanders are rightly wondering whether it's time for a bit more old-fashioned representative democracy.

The idea of an Auckland Party, simmering since it was raised by North Shore City Councillor and former Alliance activist Tony Holman a year ago, is back on the boil.

Not a few folk north of the Bombay Hills are annoyed that blokes in the Beehive - including the member for Epsom and Act Party leader Rodney Hide - are bulldozing through arrangements for the new Supercity with too little regard for what its Supercitizens have to say.

Labour leader Phil Goff's suggestion that Auckland's mayor should sit in on Cabinet meetings when major decisions affecting the city are discussed doesn't go anywhere near far enough.

The figures show that Auckland puts about $4 billion more into Government coffers than it takes out of it. If we're going to carry the country, the least we can expect is that people sitting in a wind-ravaged, earthquake-prone town down south might show some respect. We don't want to sit at the Cabinet table; we want to take it home with us.

Auckland has a couple of dozen electorates. If they were all held by Auckland Party MPs, it would make a pretty powerful force. The so-called main parties would be falling over each other to do anything we wanted. Not a minute too soon.