Brian Rudman: Promotion best left to the invisible hand of the market

Wailing over the corpse of the V8 street car race, Auckland city councillor Scott Milne, who with former mayor John Banks was its main cheerleader, beat his breast in disappointment, declaring Auckland would "become a laughing stock if we don't get our act together and plan and budget a major events strategy".

I hazard a guess we'd have become an even greater laughing stock if the event had taken place and the whole city had gridlocked for days on end.

As for his call for a "major events strategy", it's hard not to see it as much more than a smokescreen to try to divert attention from the calamity Mr Milne was set on leading us into.

After all, if there is such an urgent need for such a strategy, why didn't he promote it some time in the past three years when he was part of the Citizens and Ratepayers Now majority and chairman of the relevant committee? And why did he preside, two years ago, over a $97,000 cut in the city's events budget?

This flurry of support for becoming an "events city", with seed funding from the ever-beneficent ratepayer, has rapidly gathered a head of steam after the V8 race collapse.

Mayor Dick Hubbard enthused about it at last week's mayoral breakfast for business leaders. Also leaping on the bandwagon have been Tourism Auckland chief executive Graeme Osborne and his Heart of the City counterpart Alex Swney.

They point enviously to Wellington City, with its dedicated events manager and his development slush fund of $1.15 million which he can sprinkle about, enticing "events" into the capital.

What I don't understand is all the long faces and the rushing about for quick fixes. What's broke? The loss of the car race from central Auckland is surely a thing to celebrate, not mourn.

And even if you disagree, it's certainly not something to trigger a knee-jerk, on-the-rebound, search for instant solutions we could later come to regret.

The suggestion, as I follow it, is that the city should gather together a pot of ratepayers' money, set up a special department of bureaucrats, put a politician in charge, and tell them to go off and find events to spend our money on.

Now perhaps I'm a little thick, but isn't that just how we got into the V8 mess?

I don't disagree that the city council has a role in supporting and encouraging community events. The Farmers Santa parade and Auckland Festival leap to mind.

But when it comes to commercial events, such as yacht races, V8 car races, Cirque du Soleil and even the World of Wearable Arts, we should think very hard before assuming a bunch of bureaucrats with ratepayers' funds know better than the invisible hand of the market. Good Lord, did I really write that? But we are talking the riskiest business in the world here. Entertainment.

Also, as any independent economist will tell you, the so-called economic benefit to the host city of any of these events is at best small, and guaranteed to be unevenly spread.

Certainly the ordinary ratepayer is last in the queue for any profits and first port of call for making up any shortfalls.

It's crazy to look so enviously at Wellington. They only have their subsidised events strategies to try to keep up with Auckland.

Wellington and the country's other small towns have to hunt so desperately for passing events because it's the only growth industry on their agendas.

 

Here in growth city we're lucky. The big shows are going to come here anyway, thanks to our population base. Cirque's a good example. It tried to take over a prime spot in inner-city Victoria Park, hinting it was there or nowhere, but meekly went off to the Showgrounds when push came to shove.

The best major events strategy we could have is to ensure adequate venues are available, which I do see as a community task. That done, let's sit back and let the entrepreneurs do their work.