Well things have just got particularly interesting in the development of the Super City reforms in my opinion, particularly in terms of the “Council-Controlled-Organisations” such as Auckland Transport. (As an aside I heard CCOs called council controlling organisations the other day which is kinda funny). Today’s Herald Editorial absolutely slams Auckland Transport and how unaccountable the CCOs are likely to be. Here are a few key extracts:
From right to left, from John Banks and Michael Barnett to Len Brown and Mike Lee, Auckland’s local politicians have begun protesting at a distinctly undemocratic element in the constitution being written for the Super City.
Legislation setting up the new Auckland Council threatens to delegate most decisions to a number of “council-controlled organisations” (CCOs), a piece of Orwellian newspeak if ever there was one.
They will not be directly controlled by the council. They will be run by boards appointed by the council but short of dismissing them there will be little public representatives can do to have a say in decisions about Auckland’s roads and public transport, waterfront development and much else…
I think it is very telling that it’s not people of one particular political bent who oppose the CCOs, but people and organisations across the political spectrum. That tends to indicate that something has to be done to fix things.
Another particularly interesting extract is this:
Road congestion is Auckland’s greatest problem, and the task of designing public transport for a city of such diverse travel needs is its greatest challenge. Yet transport is the area in which the mayor and council elected by the Super City this year might have least power.
To add insult to injury, they will be expected to confine their role to writing long-term plans, “spatial plans” and agreed “statements of intent” with the CCOs. Typically these are anodyne documents that beg more questions than they answer.
They leave concrete decisions to the appointed body, which will be able to make the decisions behind closed doors without public scrutiny or participation until it thinks it safe to announce them. This is a recipe for severe disappointment in a Super City that was presented to Auckland as a device to give the city a strong, united voice.
The way it is shaping up, the single mayor and council will be a puppet show, purely for democratic appearances, while the real decisions are made by people the public has not elected and will never see. It cannot stand.
That’s a pretty compelling conclusion there.
An interesting question I think that needs consideration now is “how can things be changed?” The Auckland Transition Agency is already advertising roles within Auckland Transport. Furthermore, the government is a long way down the track into implementing this agency. So I think it’s fairly unlikely that it won’t happen, although there seem to be damn good arguments to that effect. Which leaves us with ways in which to make Auckland Transport better. Here are a few ideas that I have:
- The majority of the “Board” of Auckland Transport should be made up of Councillors from the Auckland Council. At the moment only 2 member of the board can be councillors.
- The board appointments by Steven Joyce (on the advice of the ATA) must all be replaced by a new, Council-appointed, board within six months of Auckland Council coming into existence.
- Auckland Transport must be required to give effect to the Regional Land Transport Strategy and any other guiding documents the Auckland Council releases.
- All meetings that Auckland Transport has must be open to the public, with agendas and minutes published.
- There must be greater alignment between Auckland Transport’s statement of intent and what the Auckland Council wants. Furthermore, Auckland Transport must act within its statement of intent.
- Auckland Council must choose the chair of the board of Auckland Transport.
- There should be some sort of agency that links the Council and Auckland Transport, to ensure better alignment between transport planning and land-use planning.
While I don’t necessarily know if these steps would resolve all the problems, they would certainly result in Auckland Transport being far more politically accountable, and more closely aligned with Auckland Council. After all, it’s meant to be the transport arm of the Council, not the Auckland arm of NZTA.
The amount of objection to the proposed structure is getting pretty loud, I can’t see how the government can ignore it especially when it is coming from all sides of the political spectrum.
I agree Matt, and I guess the question is what can be done to fix up this mess. I’ve made a few suggestions and it’ll be interesting to see if anything like this is carried forwards.
The select committee reports back on May 4th with any recommended changes. That’ll be very interesting.
You’ve missed out the money aspect, your proposed changed would get getting it barely acceptable but the council setting the motorway, PT infrastructure, etc levels of funding or something similiar would be excellent…
Well one would imagine it’s the council who set the amount of money they’re willing to grant to Auckland Transport, so they have some level of control there. And if the Council controls the board through having a majority on it, then one would think the council would certainly be able to influence what the board does.
…. I wonder if I’m going to regret all this if we end up with a roads-obsessed council.
Just have to hope not…
I think we know the type of people (and their obsessions) Joyce and Hide would/will appoint…
I do worry though that all council people with any knowledge of Transport will be working AT, so no one at the council and mayors level will know what they’re talking about. This means the mayor will not be able to argue on a fair basis with AT and increases the likelihood the council will be poorly advised, or will have to engage expensive outside consultants to argue with AT.
Interesting points Luke. Even assuming the currently proposed structure doesn’t change (which I think is unlikely), Auckland Council still has responsibility for high-level strategic transport planning I think. So they will have some transport expertise.
I think a wider issue is how Auckland Council and Auckland Transport are being set up to be quite adversarial to each other, which I don’t think is very healthy. These two organisations need to work incredibly closely together in my opinion.
Jarbury – you might like this article from this morning’s Sunday Star Times by Finlay McDonald. Very complemntary of your blog
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/opinion/3414026/Auckland-drives-us-round-the-bend
Very interesting, thanks for the link Cam.
The Herald has now launched a large campaign against the supercity CCO’s. Its on the front page today focusing on the Waterfront one. Tomorrow transport is being looked at. They also make it clear that opposition is from all sides of the political spectrum. They also mention it was Steven Joyce who forced through the Auckland Transport CCO against the recommendation of many government agencies like treasury.
Excellent! It will be interesting to see how this turns out. I am glad the Herald finally seems to be taking an interest in the local government reorganisation.
The Herald is a newspaper, and (at least) 50% of their choice of what themes they run with is whether those themes are topical (rather than whether they are important). So all they do is “follow the smoke”.
Which still ends with a good result in this case, because there is a lot of fire under this smoke, to further strain my metaphor.
Ingolfson – I agree, they only put up features like this to get headlines and sell papers. In this case it is a good thing but it isn’t always.
Front page usually gets some changes… National knows Auckland is the reason they won in 2008, hoefully the whip will be applied to Hide and Joyce…
I think what really annoyed the NZ Herald is the lack of access to what Auckland Transport is doing. If they can’t get access to information, no stories, and that is a problem for the Herald.
You could always print rumours and conspiracy theories.
That will be the order of the day, if we get transport planning and construction by stealth. Never thought I would end up in a real-world Douglas Adams scenario of waking up one day to have bulldozers running over my house (or may favourite park, or whatever) without even having been told about it in time to protest.