Brian Rudman: Councillors will be struggling to cast a fair vote on V8 race

COMMENT

Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard is calling on councillors to have open minds when they decide the fate of the V8 street car race on Thursday.

But how can they, when the briefing document supplied to them is so biased in favour of the event?

No doubt it was going to be hard for staff who had enthusiastically supported the previous council's decision to be joint promoters of the event to be even-handed.

But professional public servants should be able to handle a change in political masters and, when asked, produce an impartial report. In this case, they have not.

Take the crucial issue of economic benefit to the city. The report says "a rigorous economic impact analysis forms an integral part of the Auckland street race proposal. It concludes there will be an annual economic impact of $34.2 million (city) and $36.7 million (region)".

The accompanying press release beats the drum even harder, claiming "the report reaffirms the economic benefit of hosting the event. The net annual economic impact in the city is $34.2 million ... $245 million net over seven years".

It also claims the "creation of 869 person years of employment for the Auckland economy".

Mayor Hubbard quickly latched on to these figures, telling me of "$34 million economic benefit".

But as I reported in July, an economic report prepared for the council by economist Doug Fairgray says the net economic benefit would be only $2.7 million to $4.7 million for the city and $2.9 million and $4.4 million for the region.

It's all to do with the words "impact" and "benefit." The "economic impact" is all the money that tends to slosh around during such an event, much of it often replacing other activity. The "economic benefit" is the bit that stays put as extra.

In July, Mr Fairgray said "it's one of the things that tends to get confused". For promoters of an event, the more confusion the better, it seems. But impartial council officials should be reporting the true economic benefit, not the misleading "impact" figure. Or at least both.

I urge the mayor and councillors to demand a copy of the Fairgray report and read it before the vote.

Another glaring error is the claim that "all local authorities are either no longer opposing the event or are openly in support".

The report notes that on November 4, North Shore City officers recommended to their council "that the council withdraw their opposition to the event" and that "the council resolved to receive the report".

That's true as far as it goes. On Friday, Mayor George Wood confirmed his council "received" the report but "never agreed to them". He said the council's earlier vote opposing the race stood. North Shore wanted to keep its position open in case it had to fight the forthcoming planning commissioners' decision in the Environment Court.

Then there's Transit New Zealand, which runs the motorways and whose support is essential. All the report provides is an out-of-context, three-line quote from Transit chief executive Rick van Barneveld implying all is sweetness and light.

But what Mr van Barneveld told the hearing was that "extraordinary measures" will be needed to reduce motorway traffic flows by 30 to 40 per cent to avoid gridlock. If the organisers could not prove they had mitigation measures such as extra public transport available, "then the motorway ramps will not be closed because we could not allow Auckland to be brought to a halt".

Elsewhere, the report claims that mitigation "will be readily achieved" and "sufficient public transport" will be available "for those needing to use it". Once again, though, no evidence is supplied to back up this claim.

Finally, details of the financial costs to ratepayers are starting to emerge. The ratepayers' interest-free loan over seven years to race partner IMG is to jump from $3.5 million to $4.9 million. IMG is also now demanding $500,000 a year, or $3.5 million overall, from ratepayers for annual running costs.

Unveiled is a hitherto-secret agreement that should the council withdraw from the event after gaining "a satisfactory resource consent, all IMG costs incurred to date would be refunded by council".

Hopefully by Thursday, the planning commissioners will have released a report kiboshing the proposed race venue and rendering this report redundant. But if not, councillors who want to vote with an open mind will need to look elsewhere for the full story.

Herald Feature: V8 Supercar Race

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