There is widespread recognition that more needs to be done to get kids active in sport and recreation in South Auckland. Photo / File
The ugly split between Aktive Auckland and Counties Manukau Sport has highlighted a great divide in the often ignored world of community sport. Dylan Cleaver and Dana Johannsen report.
Auckland is a big city. It is a diverse city. The fourth-most culturally diverse in the world according to a recent report, behind only transitory destinations Dubai and Brussels, and cosmopolitan Toronto.
It is an outdoorsy type of place. With two harbours, close to 50 volcanic cones, hundreds of city parks and forests close by, there are plenty of opportunities to indulge in your favourite recreation.
Problem being, not enough people do. For every sail that billows on a sunny Sunday or chain that whirrs through a derailleur at a mountainbike park, there are many more bored and listless youths without the resource or wherewithal to use their leisure time constructively.
That famed diversity makes things a little more complicated too, with different cultures having different recreational interests and expectations.
With under-resourced and risk-averse primary schools less inclined to offer sport and recreation options for their students and the rise in sedentary leisure options, there has been a rise in ugly statistics in childhood obesity and diabetes. That is measurable.
The knock-on effect harder to gauge is the what the children miss out on by not connecting to sport and recreation early in life: work ethic, camaraderie and the heightened self-esteem that comes from trying and occasionally succeeding.
The need to get large chunks of Auckland's citizenry active is acute. For years the onus fell on the four regional sports trusts (RSTs) - Sport Waitakere, Harbour Sport, Sport Auckland and Counties Manukau Sport - to develop and deliver programmes.
Money was tight and largely sourced from central government or gaming trusts, actual return on investment was hard to gauge (participation numbers were often easily puffed up by one-off events with little legacy worth) and a culture of self-interest saw several notable sports figures lose faith in the RST system.
One of them was Sir John Wells. As influential as any individual in the boardrooms of New Zealand sport over the past three decades, Wells raised eyebrows recently when he called the RSTs a "dog's breakfast".
His more diplomatic explanation was that with the creation of the Super City, "the RSTs had lost their relevance in terms of a political interface".
Aktive Auckland Sport and Recreation was quietly formed in the logistical mayhem that followed the Super City merger, not to replace the RSTs but to service corporate buzzwords like "streamlining" and "efficiencies" while acting as an umbrella body.
Less than four years after Aktive's formation, Counties Manukau Sport (CMS), the largest of the region's RSTs, have been cast into the rain. The split came against a backdrop not just of mutual mistrust and flat-out dislike, but confusion around the respective roles of each organisation.
Wells, one of Aktive's architects, said there were obvious efficiencies to be gained from a one-Auckland strategy and that funding sources, particularly gaming trusts, were demanding a co-ordinated approach so they could save time, if not money.
Even this fairly fundamental point is challenged, however. Richard Jeffery, chief executive of Manukau's Vector Wero Whitewater Park and Vodafone Events Centre, believes this expedience has been over-valued.
"Funders should not abdicate responsibility for delivering to the community to a centralised system just because it makes their own lives easier," he said. "They should not abdicate responsibility to a single point of contact in one of the most demographically diverse cities in the world."
Aktive were formally anointed Auckland sport's new overlord in 2013. Sport NZ investment previously channelled through RSTs flowed through the new organisation. It was to be helmed on the ground by Sarah Sandley while Raewyn Lovett took control at board level.
CMS and their bristly chief executive Russell Preston agreed in principle to the formation of Aktive, but pushed for a clear business case to be developed to support the move. He says Sport NZ are unable to produce evidence this was ever done.
"This is inaccurate," said a Sport NZ spokesperson. "There was a set of foundation documents, rather than a single business case, but each of these documents was developed and approved by a body on which Counties Manukau Sports was represented and played an active role."
A steering group - all four Auckland RSTs plus Auckland Council and Sport NZ - was created in April 2012 to determine the best model for the new Auckland body, and this group created a heads of agreement which all four RSTs signed in October that year. An establishment board was formed the next month, which was chaired by Wells and also included representatives of all four Auckland RSTs. This group developed the trust deed which created Aktive and also had cross-RST subcommittees dealing with establishment issues relating to funding, programme delivery and shared services.
It was clear early on that three RSTs, to varying degrees, were willing to buy what Aktive were selling, relinquishing their autonomy to become a delivery agency. The Herald understands there was plenty of hand-wringing behind the scenes but the largely volunteer boards were not built for a fight.
Down in South Auckland, they thought a bit differently.
From day one they challenged Aktive to demonstrate how a one-size-fits-all approach would benefit what they saw as the unique challenges of South Auckland. Never satisfied with the answers, the arranged marriage was devoid of affection.
More recently, CMS's supporters have tried to position the inevitable divorce as class warfare.
CMS represents the poor, the downtrodden and they do it all on core government funding of $1.41 per capita, easily the lowest in the country. Their chief executive, not so much rough around the edges as rough all over, is lionised as their buffer against the ruling class.
If you give credence to that sketch, then Aktive become the elitist insiders.
Sandley and Lovett play perfectly to this narrative. Sandley is a former Sport NZ board member and Lovett, a lawyer, a former chairwoman of Netball NZ. They are paid executive-level salaries and board fees respectively, something that was used against them by former CMS chairman David Kennedy who said his board received nothing more than "a bottle of wine at Christmas".
The vociferous support of Wells and the backing of Sport NZ boss Pete Miskimmin for Aktive only burnished the idea that CMS was taking on the ultimate Insiders' Club.
CMS chairman Nick Fletcher attempted to go over the head of Miskimmin and compel the Minister for Sport and Recreation, Jonathan Coleman, to act. In a four-page letter outlining his concerns, Fletcher only briefly touched on the root cause of the split: that Aktive were demanding complete contractual control over all programmes and initiatives delivered by CMS, regardless of their funding source or purpose.
Coleman's response was to kick it down the corridor to Miskimmin, whose cursory response appeared to make it clear what horse Sport NZ was backing.
With Fletcher's pleas for central government intervention ignored it instead became a grassroots political football.
"Dr Sandley is struggling to do her job and is not particularly competent," said South Auckland councillor Daniel Newman in a broadside last week. "Aktive is an utterly inefficient failure that leads to excessive corporate overheads, when it should be going to the deprived communities that need it most."
While Sandley did not respond, Lovett said the board had complete faith in the job she was doing. Indeed, the wheels appeared to be spinning fast when they announced a new delivery partner for South Auckland, Community Leisure Management (CLM).
"Aktive's efforts and investment in the Counties Manukau area will continue to increase," Lovett said in the media release. "We are confident in the partnership with CLM, an organisation with strong leadership and high professional standards, whose team will work to increase participation through boosting local delivery capability."
As predictable as the corporate language was, the response was even more so. And it was again Newman, doubling down on his previous criticism.
"CLM manages facilities for councils. This partnership is less than ambitious and does not bode well for my constituents in Manurewa and Papakura.
"Where did Aktive gets its mandate to treat the communities of Counties Manukau in this way? This appears to be a scrambled effort to rewrite history by people who have little or no relationship with the south."
Newman's has been the loudest on-the-record voice. Many others wanted to speak truth to power, but not on the record, fearing funding relationships would be permanently damaged.
On the flipside, there have been representatives of sporting and community organisations that have contacted the Herald under instruction, and others highly critical of CMS and Preston in particular.
A representative of one South Auckland sporting organisation wrote, off the record, that Aktive represented a level of bureaucracy that should not have been needed but the arrogance of CMS justified its existence.
There has been a suggestions that CMS were not so much mavericks as manipulative, that this fight against Goliath was a way of deflecting from David's obvious management shortcomings.
The flurry of barbs from both sides, however, has clouded the ideological question central to the dispute: What does effective community sport governance look like?
Is it about assisting sporting bodies and local clubs to build their capability to increase participation in organised sport? Or is it about rolling up your sleeves and delivering the programmes on the ground?
Supporters of Aktive have pointed to the organisation's ability to open doors for them, offer strategic advice and generate cost-savings through the shared services model.
Aktive's detractors say they don't need well-paid consultants spouting corporate jargon and pushing cookie-cutter strategies. Or, as Rick Pickard, who heads Sir John Walker's Find Your Field of Dreams foundation, put it: "We don't need bureaucrats, we need people who are passionate about the kids."
Hopes of a meeting of the minds on the issue have long faded.
Aktive have been knocking on doors in South Auckland looking for alternative service providers to take over the contracts previously held by CMS. In CLM, they have found one, and the company CEO Craig Carter has been quick to tout his South Auckland credentials.
It's a start, but it likely won't be the end. If nothing else, the fight seems to have mobilised the South Auckland grassroots sport community.
"It's a travesty of governance that the two parties have not been able to reconcile for what surely is the betterment of the kids in the South Auckland community," Jeffery said.
"Perhaps it's timely that an independent reviewer reassess what is best for the kids at the coalface because that's what we're here for."
Otherwise, CMS' best hope for continued relevance in the sector might well be a change of government, an idea not as far-fetched now as it was a month ago.
If that happens, expect this complicated sector to shift again. Until then, one corner of the Earth's fourth-most culturally diverse cities will still be figuring out the best way to get their most vulnerable kids off the couch and into exercise.
