Simon Wilson: An angry night with mayoral candidates and the Taxpayers' Union

Taxpayers' Union supporters at an Auckland mayoral debate in Greenlane this week. Photo / Simon Wilson

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The Auckland Ratepayers Alliance, aka the Taxpayers' Union in local costume, held a mayoral candidates' question session this week, in a community hall in Greenlane packed with its supporters. Given the enormous depth of economic knowledge, business acumen and superior common sense in the room, I was confused.

Mayor Phil Goff was there, along with two challengers: John Tamihere and Craig Lord.

The challengers said things that suggested they might not fully grasp the basics of money, budgets and fiscal prudence. They've said them in many previous encounters, but on this night they were in a room full of people endlessly proud of their money smarts. Surely they'd get called out?

Nope. They got applauded. Even Jordan Williams, the Taxpayers' Union head honcho who was chairing the meeting, did not challenge them. In fact, as a rule of thumb, the less connected to reality the candidates' statements, the more noisy the appreciation from the crowd.

I want to be clear. I think there are many things wrong about Goff's mayoralty and I'd like to see them debated. I've written about them, and there's more below. But this crowd, as they say, was something else.

Tamihere produced his standard line that: "You shouldn't use ratepayers' money as a personal ATM for the mayor."

Does he mean the mayor has been withdrawing money from the council accounts for his own private use? That would be outrageous, if true.

But no one asked for any evidence. The crowd cheered loudly.

Tamihere also said: "The council is 265 per cent over its credit limit in regard to its credit card."

Again, loud cheering. But hang on. Did this fiscally educated crowd really think a government body could be that much over its "credit limit"? Wouldn't the sky have fallen – in the form of auditor-general alarm, credit rating collapse and Government intervention?

In fact, the number is right, but not the rest of it. The council debt equates to a little under 265 per cent of revenue. That's a self-imposed limit it has observed rigorously. It's less than the 270 per cent limit imposed on council by the ratings agencies.

The debt is not "over" any credit limit. It's under. It's not out of control, it's tightly controlled. And, seriously, it's not on a credit card either.

Lord said, "Temporary elected custodians have no right to get rid of public property." He got a very big cheer for that.

It's an odd thing for a business person to say. The council buys and sells pieces of land all the time. Mostly they're small and we're notified in advance.

It buys and sells with two aims. One is to fulfil public-good objectives: buying land for a park, for example. The other is to meet business objectives: if it wants to buy that land for a park, say, where will the money come from? What if it sells another bit of land it doesn't need anymore?

You'd want a public debate about the merits of the sale. But why have a blanket ban on selling anything? Retaining the ability to sell surplus assets is good business practice. Neither Lord nor any of the self-appointed Taxpayers' Union experts seemed to grasp that.

Actually, it was even worse, because Lord was referring to the public golf course at Chamberlain Park in Mt Albert. But it's not for sale. The comment was factually wrong, no one pointed it out, and the cheers rose up regardless.

It went on and on like this. Lord ended the evening by declaring the city should "stop the niceties and ride out the necessities". More cheering, etc. He meant stop spending money on things we don't need. What are they? From stage and floor, the biggest attacks of the night were on basic infrastructure like the seawall at the harbour's edge, public transport projects, cycleways and even public art. Instead, why doesn't someone just build more roads! Quickly.

And that's what it was really all about. The one thing making these guardians of fiscal prudence really angry is traffic. In particular, the roadworks on Quay St. Several people in the hall were apoplectic.

More transit, like the electric trains, is the key to managing congestion on the roads. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Those roadworks are happening because they're replacing the seawall under the road, which has had almost no serious maintenance for 100 years. It's true a pedestrian plaza will be built at the western end of the road, but that's not why the disruption is happening now.

It's the seawall. The edge of the city is at risk of crumbling into the sea. Why is anyone still complaining about this?

Tamihere said, as he often does, that the strategy of Auckland Transport (AT) is "all about restricting traffic". In his view, "The board is on steroids to make war on the motor vehicle." Hoots and cheers.

That's partly a reference to road safety. Deaths and serious injuries on the road have climbed steeply in Auckland, and half of the rise relates to people not in a car. Cars hitting people.

But there seem to be people who don't want anything done about this. Not slower speeds, not safer intersections, nothing to calm the traffic. One man in the crowd told me proudly – and angrily – he had stopped a pedestrian crossing going in near his home.

The "war on motor vehicles" also refers to congestion. Here's a question: what's the best way to ease the daily snarl-up on the northwest motorway? Add more car lanes? Capacity will rise by 600-1600 people an hour, depending on how many people are in each car.

But traffic will grow too. It's Economics 101, as the Taxpayers' Union may know: if you increase supply of a commodity like a road, you will probably increase demand to use it.

Or do you put in rapid transit lanes? They can carry 10,000-25,000 people an hour.

We can actually do something about congestion, or we can reduce the debate to this: Get out of my way, I'm driving my car now.

It shouldn't be party political to argue the value of rapid transit. It's the accepted mainstream approach on the left and right all over the world.

As for Goff, here's what's wrong with him in all this. He understands the theory and promotes it. But he has not ensured that Auckland Transport delivers. Big developments to the south and west are happening without comprehensive public transport plans. The cycleway programme, even though it takes a tiny part of the budget, is plodding along. Auckland Transport makes mistake after mistake in suburbs like Mt Albert, and too little gets done about it.

Bikes are part of the fix for traffic congestion too. Photo / Alex Burton

As JTamihere rightly points out, the targets set by AT and the Government are pathetically low. They don't plan to increase public transport use even to 10 per cent of all trips. Goff says the uptake is the biggest in the world, but it's off a low base. Over the next 20 years they should be targeting 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 40 per cent. That's how you fix congestion. How you genuinely help the people who need to use roads, reduce carbon emissions and promote public health.

This isn't just about who will be mayor. Ward council and local body candidates have critical roles to play: the boards put up projects and the councillors approve budget.

As for that grumpy crowd at the Taxpayers' Union meeting, they're part of the problem, because Auckland Transport seems terrified of them. Why? People who thought like them used to run this city, back in the bad old days when not planning was considered a virtue. They created this mess. Why listen to them now?