An excellent interview of Rodney Hide by John Campbell last night on Campbell Live. Click here to watch the video.
I really struggle to understand how having Auckland Transport operating in secret will help improve accountability of this agency. Yesterday I wondered whether we would see some big changes to Auckland Transport or even whether it would survive the media thrashing it’s getting at the moment. Judging from this interview and comments from John Key in today’s NZ Herald, it seems unlikely there will be any significant changes made to the legislation to improve the accountability of this CCO. Which is a disastrous outcome.
If I were to ask Rodney Hide or Steven Joyce one question about this set up, it would be: “who do I complain to when my train’s late for the 10th time in a row?” The elected councillor who can do nothing about it or the unelected CCO staff member who doesn’t need to give a damn about my problems?
May soon become time for protests outside John Keys house.
Judging by Key’s comments today and Hides on Campbell live I would say there is now an excellent chance no changes will be made. I love the part where Hide basically says that reporting quarterly with secret meetings and no agendas or minutes is the model of transparency.
Surely… surely the secrecy stuff will be changed. Surely?
The other thing I was thinking is they are using the ploy of pretending not to listen and saying they know best then make some small changes that everyone applauds and the general public then think the issue is resolved. This then distracts the public from the fact the major issues are still there and the other interest groups are made to look like wingers.
Even David Farrar from Kiwiblog commented that he thought the select committee would fix up the secrecy parts. I still think the Council make up a majority on the board of Auckland Transport. If that happened then I would be reasonably satisfied that it would be the Council making the decisions.
That screen grab of Wodders is scary. He looks like some evil cartoon character personified….
Heh Christopher, that was actually the best of a bunch. In most of the others one or the other had their mouth open looking really really stupid. (In other words, he always looks like that).
“That screen grab of Wodders is scary. He looks like some evil cartoon character personified….” He does have the look of some sort of manevolent Bond villian. The fact that he seems to be turning orange does not help matters.
There is an opinion piece in the Herald this morning from Rodney Hide and Steven Joyce trying to say how wonderful their plan is. One quote in the middle of the piece really stood out at me.
“Auckland Transport will essentially be a duplication of the NZ Transport Agency, which operates at national level.”
So we will have an organisation that is only focused on roads then?
Link to the piece: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10630949
The answer to the question “who do I complain to when my train’s late for the 10th time in a row?” is that you will complain to Auckland Transport, who will presumably have a customer complaints service, as does ARTA now. The idea is that Auckland Transport is responsible for implementation and Auckland Council for strategy. I actually agree with Rodney that this will make it clearer who is accountable for the day-to-day issues you are talking about. The main problem will be if Auckland Transport isn’t required to comply with the strategy direction set by the Auckland Council and this is where some amendments are required to the Bill (ie. to require Auckland Transport to give effect to AC strategies and regional plans). Also, why should there be a majority of AC councillors on the Board if those people don’t have the requisite skills, experience for the job? Surely, the best qualified people should be appointed to the Board? The other main factor that will effect the success of Auckland Transport will be its ability to work effectively with Kiwirail and NZTA and I would support having a non-voting Kiwirail rep on the Board for this reason. These are all points you have agreed with previously but in the last couple of weeks you seem to have moved to a less constructive approach to just oppose the proposals entirely. Auckland Transport is already in the process of being set up, that’s not going to be changed, so why not focus on trying to ensure it is as effective as possible in actually improving Auckland’s transport system?
Katie you make some good points. A few responses:
1) I don’t see why splitting the strategic elements of transport away from the delivery arm will make things more accountable. I can see advantages that we will be able to get things done easier, in particular necessary but ‘difficult’ changes like reducing parking supply and building more bus lanes. I don’t see how that is better accountability.
2) In terms of the board’s make-up, I suppose that if the council sacks Steven Joyce’s board on day one and replaces it with one of its own (quite likely I think as it would be a good campaign policy) then I would be OK with only 2 councillors on the board. I agree 100% about having a KiwiRail representative.
3) In terms of the “fix it or abandon it” question, I suppose that over time I have become more and more worried that Auckland Transport is just a way for Joyce to foist his roads fetishism on Auckland unopposed. The fact that most government agencies advised against setting up this CCO is extremely telling in my opinion.
Matt, yes that line stood out to me too. Very worrying indeed.
4) The secrecy of th agency was the last straw. For me and the NZ Herald I think.
I know some of the people on the Select Committee are okay, and probably trying to fix stuff. But I understand government has no need to listen to THEIR recommendations either, right?
Ingolfson, given that the govt has a majority on the select committee and that its chair (John Carter) its the associate local government minister, I don’t think we can expect them to suggest any changes the govt isn’t willing to implement.
The word efficiency worries me. If its more efficient to ignore social or environmental issues does that mean they get thrown out the window? Think about what that will mean for PT and our public spaces.To be truly efficient I guess we could buildoze the whole isthmus and asphalt everything. Sounds like a dream for the technical rationalist bureaucrats.
Splitting strategy and delivery does make it clear who is accountable for each (this was a response to your specific question about who you would approach about issues with service delivery).
I agree that the AC could review the board composition on day one but why automatically assume that they should all be sacked? They should be removed only if they don’t have the requisite skills and/or are not prepared to implement AC’s strategy direction.
In terms of secrecy – this is no change from ARTA now. Some people are presenting things as changes when they are not.
I really think the important point is the relationship between AC and Auckland Transport and AC’s ability to set the direction. So making sure Auckland Transport is required to give effect to regional plans and strategies. Also, Auckland Transport should be subject to section 64 of the Local Government Act (this would require it to prepare a Statement of Intent, as is the case for other CCOs).
Dont forget that we could end up with a council that is pro-roads, so stacking the Auckland Transport Board with councillors wouldn’t necessarily help in terms of public transport.
I should point out I have no problem with Auckland transport being a CCO or even being directed by unelected officials as I think sometimes politicians get a bit to involved in matters they have no knowledge in. My issue is the lack of transparency in the plans. If they were to be required to publish agendas, minutes and ideally hold meetings in public then that would resolve most issues as anything controversial can be raised with the public straight away.
Katie – I agree, Kiwirail should also have a seat at the table.
What a buch of crap Katie,
1). The legislation has been changed so that AT will not have to “give effect” to the RLTS and pay heed of the GPS but consider both equally, why would they change it back when they have done it to implement Joyce’s wealth destroying, socially damaged, economically dangerous, road focused bullshit..? With Joyce appointing the boards who do you think they will listen to (the RLTS or GPS?)… It is not clear that the council can get rid of the knuckle draggers they’ll appoint, that is SPIN…
2). Councillors should make up the majority of the board because they are ELECTED that is how it works in a DEMOCRACY, as Winston Churchill said, it is the worst form of government… except all the others…
3). No consultation, no open meetings, no control over budgets… Explain to me in small words how that is in anyway accountability..? It is taxation without representation and completely unacceptable in every way…
If you think that this will be okay with only small changes I’d suggest you’d like democracy the way it is done in Zimbabwe… The reforms in AT are just a symptom of the general cancer in the whole reform, thinking they could ram this through in a year and a half was naive at best and a massive ideological asset grabbing experiment at worst…
ARTA do publish their monthly business reports, but I would say that the secrecy of ARTA’s board is actually otherwise a weakness. Plus ARTa are responsible for way less than the new agency will be. The fact that I can’t have my voice heard when ARTA delay opening the Onehunga Line for the 74th time is annoying enough, let alone being locked out of all transport decisions.
The CCO structure could be made to work, but I think it needs a lot of changes to ensure it’s Auckland’s transport agency and not the Auckland branch of NZTA.
Jeremy
Don’t worry its already happening. How much have you heard about the discussions on the ARC-Nat Govt Queens Wharf joint venture and the use of ATA to transfer the debt to ratepayers. Joel Cayford discusses it. http://joelcayford.blogspot.com/
And I understood the job of ATA was to stop this sort of thing!
Hey Jeremy – One option is to shout, throw insults and make extreme statements. Another is to try and engage constructively with the process in such a way that decision makers are more likely to listen to you. The former approach is probably more effective in engaging the public. I’m more interested in working towards the best achievable outcome given the reality of who is making the decisions. Whatever legislation is passed, those of us in the local government sector will need to try and make it work.
I guess I’m just not willing to compromise on throwing out democracy, I guess the fact that so many are willing is reason that we are getting such an obviously flawed, undemocratic model forced apon us which will lead to a (by then) much needed reform by Labour in 5 – 10 years but Hide and Joyce won’t care, they would have forced their sprawling, congested, soulless model of Auckland on us…
How is the proposed structure any different from that used nationally with SOEs?
Take NZ Post for instance. Their Board isn’t made up of MPs, thank goodness. I don’t have the right to attend Board meetings, let alone meetings of the senior management. But I’d hardly say that NZ Post were operating secretly or unaccountably. Who do I complain to if my letter isn’t delivered? I’d complain to NZ Post obviously. If an MP suggested that disgruntled postal customers would naturally want to complain to MPs and that this was a reason to allow MPs to manage the day to day business of the postal system, then that would be a recipe for disaster.
Clear separation between policy development and operations is a good thing, IMHO. The alternative is meddling and operating to maximise non-transparent political objectives, rather than targets that can be clearly codified and given to an operating agency to pursue and where their performance can be measured.
Err they are deciding upon how to spend 54% of our rates. Don’t you want some sort of public record about how they go about it?
Obi, the difference is that NZ Post is effectively a self-contained business, rather than a service provider that sucks up $650 million a year in rates. A better example would be if the Ministry of Health or Education were a SOE.
TopCat… That’s less money than I spend on electricity each year. Three quarters of the electricity sector are owned by the government. The government appoints the boards and lets them get on with it. No one gets upset that they’re unable to sit in on senior management meetings at electricity companies. And (surely) no one wants to decorporatise the electricity companies and turn them back in to a government department as they used to be.
“In terms of secrecy – this is no change from ARTA now. Some people are presenting things as changes when they are not.”
That is a totally wrong statement, as Jarbury has explained. Auckland Transport is hugely more powerful, and takes away into that secrecy many functions which are currently open and accountable to local councils. Plus, there are all the other CCO’s.
What this is doing is taking pretty much everything away from politicians – what it will achieve is that those politicians will (quite rightly) campaign day and night to battle these CCO’s where they go astray. Fine setup for efficiency.
“And (surely) no one wants to decorporatise the electricity companies and turn them back in to a government department as they used to be.”
A typically corporate-thinking statement. Government-owned electricity corporations did very well electrifying this country and supplying it with power for decades, almost centuries. You may follow the business-community opinion if you say so – but despite decades of such talk, not everyone agrees that a common utility like electricity SHOULD be in a coporate, for-profit model.
To state it in short – yes, I would prefer to have electricity generation be a government responsibility. The vaunted advantages of privatisation in the areas of utilities service have, time and time again, shown themselves to be mirages except for the shareholders of the privatised companies.
Obi,
Fair enough SOEs have managed to give us a service of sort.
What you are talking about here, however is who controls the decisions that affect everything that happens in the public realm. Everything from how we design our access to our shops, public spaces, cycling and pedestrian access, whther my kids are safe getting to school. Whether I can live at home with minimal traffic noise, whether I have access to employment, government services, parking and pedestrian access to my local shops. Whether the business I work in is able to provide parking for its clients.
A lot of these things will have a big bearing over your quality of life.
The estimate is that the Transport Authority will control 80% of what Local Boards will be looking after.
As good and well qualified our traffic engineers are, I’m not quite ready to put 100% control of these things in their hands.
CCO’s are very different from SOE’s. SOE’s generally operate in a market, competing against private companies.
So board meetings etc are full of commercially sensitive information, and releasing that would give competitors an advantage.
However Auckland Transport CCO should be about providing a service for the people of Auckland. It is not competing against private companies. So therefore there is no need for board meetings to be totally secret.
Obi – I think the continual power ‘crisis’ that we keep having each winter (read Meridian releasing ‘excess’ water in May then crying wolf in July) says it all. Service quality has dramatically declined yet it costs far more for electricity.
I don’t care who owns something so long as I get decent service at a decent price – something which we did actually get before Max Bradford got his dirty little fingers into the electricity pie and screwed it up royally.
Also, as everyone else said, a CCO is vastly different to an SOE.