No Place for Democratic-Socialists in the Undemocratic Neoliberal Government of the Auckland Supercity.

A Thorn In Their Side: As Chair of the Auckland Regional Council, Mike Lee made sure Auckland’s municipal resources remained in Aucklanders’ hands. Not surprisingly the neoliberal powers-that-be (in both their centre-left and centre-right incarnations) hated this last truly effective standard-bearer for democratic-socialist values and policies.

MIKE LEE is the closest Auckland has come to a socialist leader since Mayor “Robbie” (Sir Dove Meyer Robinson) back in the 1970s. As Chair of the Auckland Regional Council Mike made sure Auckland’s municipal resources remained in Aucklanders’ hands. Not surprisingly the neoliberal powers-that-be (in both their centre-left and centre-right incarnations) hated him.

It is most unlikely that their opinion of Mike has changed – not since his recent revelation that, since its formation in 2010, the Auckland “Supercity” has transferred roughly $10 billion from the pockets of residents and ratepayers into the bank accounts of mostly foreign-owned corporations.

As Mike rightly points out, it was to facilitate just such a colossal transfer of wealth that the Supercity was created. Its whole structure was carefully designed to disconnect as far as possible the Council’s democratic components from its day-to-day decision-making machinery – the stuff that really matters. In particular, the pivotal “Council Controlled organisations” (CCO’s) were deliberately and elaborately insulated from “interference” by Auckland’s elected representatives.

This left the City’s twenty councillors with nothing much too do except read policy papers penned by city bureaucrats, attend interminable committee meetings, and bank the $100,000+ per annum they “earn” for representing their fellow citizens. No, that’s not a mistake. Winning a seat on Auckland’s “Governing Body” immediately puts you in the top 5-8 percent of income earners.

Is it any wonder – given the financial reward – that it is not really in the interests of Auckland city councillors to be seen to do either too much, or too little. Indeed, it could be argued that councillors’ re-election chances are enhanced if the voters struggle to recall them doing anything at all. Certainly, a propensity to do nothing is what the Supercity prizes most highly in its political leadership. Councillors are not supposed to do anything. Councillors are there to disguise that fact that the people who do everything haven’t been elected by anybody.

That the Supercity would effectively neuter local democracy was pointed out to Aucklanders at the time of its creation. It was calculated that people living in the Greater Auckland area would go from having roughly one councillor for every 15,000 residents to having one member of the “Governing Body” for every 70,000 residents! This did not, however, appear to bother Auckland voters unduly. Local government just wasn’t sexy. In fact, it was so unsexy that only around half of those eligible to vote in Supercity elections bothered to return their postal ballots. That their indifference might be facilitating a colossal transfer of public wealth into private hands gave them not the slightest pause. So long as their rates didn’t rise too sharply, they simply didn’t care.

Suggestions that the maintenance of infrastructure and the provision of services and amenities (water, waste disposal, public transport, libraries, art galleries and other cultural experiences) would all be improved by a radical democratisation of the Supercity were met with a near universal “meh”. So deeply ingrained is the idea that public ownership is always less effective and efficient than private provision, calls for more politicians, taking much more responsibility for the delivery of Supercity services, were dismissed as batty. When it comes to politicians, the broad public consensus is – the fewer the better.

Very few New Zealanders are aware that large cities overseas are governed by councils made up of 50, 60, sometimes as many as 100 councillors. Bodies of this size allow the people’s representatives to accept responsibilities that, in New Zealand, have long since been farmed out to local government bureaucracies. Overseas, powerful council committees are able to hold bureaucrats accountable for their failures. In cities like Paris and Berlin, complaining to your local councillor actually works. Try complaining to a member of the Governing Body of the Supercity and all you can be assured of is mounting frustration.

Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to know Mike Lee. Some years ago, my daughter had a problem with Auckland Transport. I immediately got in touch with Mike, at that time one of the two Councillor-Directors seated on the CCO’s Board. Within hours I had action – from the CEO, no less. When it came to effective and efficient, Mike was the man. I was bitterly disappointed, but not a bit surprised, that when Phil Goff was elected Mayor of the Supercity, one of his first acts was to remove Mike from the Auckland Transport Board of Directors.

Nor was I surprised when the supposedly “centre-left” City Vision fielded a candidate against Mike in the 2019 Supercity elections. The Labour/Green apparatchiks behind City Vision had grown tired of being shown what a real democratic-socialist looks like. He was defeated.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 15 April 2021.

Reinvent Auckland, Simon? If Only We Could!

A Safe Pair Of Hands: The whole point of the neoliberal Auckland supercity is to ensure that “big visions” and “bold execution” in the pursuit of anything other than neoliberal objectives is rendered impossible. As a tried and tested neoliberal himself, Phil Goff gets this. Producing “incremental improvements with greater efficiency” constitutes the outer limits of his political imagination. It’s what makes him the perfect candidate.

 

SIMON WILSON is an odd fellow – with some odd opinions. Here, for example, is the Metro Editor-at-Large's opinion on the general public response to the National Government’s forced amalgamation of Auckland, North Shore, Waitakere and Manukau cities. “Aucklanders were cynical about everything before he [Len Brown] and the supercity came along in 2010. But we lost that cynicism and we set about reinventing the city.”

 

I would be most annoyed if I thought Simon was including me in that “we”. Long before the legislation setting up the supercity came into force the level of my cynicism was already off the scale.

 

Everything about the supercity’s establishment: from the man chosen to oversee the process (the Act Party leader, Rodney Hide) to the deliberate exclusion of the people of the Auckland region from any meaningful say in whether or not the merger of their four cities should finally proceed; highlighted the profoundly anti-democratic spirit in which the entire process was conceived.

 

The reason for this hostility to democracy wasn’t difficult to discern. Far from being a bottom-up exercise: driven by angry residents’ from across the Auckland region; the supercity was a top-down exercise: the joint creation of local and national elites. Their common purpose? To create a model for local government in the neoliberal era. And the central feature of that model? The almost total disempowerment of the citizens of Auckland and their elected representatives.

 

The full measure of the supercity’s creators’ contempt for democracy was revealed in the proposed size of the supercity’s “Governing Body”. In the equivalent decision-making structures of Auckland, North Shore, Waitakere and Manukau cities, the ratio of elected representatives to citizens was roughly 1:15,000. In the new supercity it would be 1:70,000! Supercity councillors were being asked to represent more citizens than a directly elected Member of Parliament.

 

My own level of cynicism (and, I suspect, the cynicism of thousands of other Aucklanders) was in no way lessened by the Ports of Auckland dispute. It was during this brutal test of strength between the supposedly municipally-owned Port and its employees that Aucklanders learned just how misnamed their “Council Controlled Organisations” (CCOs) truly were.

 

Aucklanders elected representatives turned out to be equally mischaracterised. Far from being the people’s democratic tribunes, Auckland’s elected councillors proved to be little more than powerless pawns. The real game was controlled by legally cocooned CCO boards of directors – over whom the so-called “Governing Body” (including the Mayor) exercised no effective control whatsoever.

 

Indeed, so politically impotent was the Mayor made to feel in relation to the day-to-day management of National’s neoliberal supercity, that the poor fellow felt obliged to demonstrate his potency “by other means”. A better symbol of Auckland’s vast democratic deficit than Len’s and Bevan’s affair is difficult to imagine. Turned out the Mayor’s Office was good for very little else!

 

Even Brown’s signal achievement: the National Government’s final approval of his beloved City Rail Link; owes as much to the projected massive inflation of property values along its inner-city route, as it does to any rational realignment of Auckland’s public transport system.

 

In his latest Metro article, Simon Wilson opines that the job facing the next Mayor of Auckland is “not simply to produce incremental improvements with greater efficiency and better relations with the government in Wellington. Auckland has fallen into crisis. Growth has far outstripped expectations. Housing policies have had a catastrophic outcome. A big vision is required, all over again, and bold execution has to follow.”

 

Except, of course, the whole point of the neoliberal supercity is to ensure that “big visions” and “bold execution” in the pursuit of anything other than neoliberal objectives is rendered impossible. (That the Unitary Plan was so heavily promoted by the National Government and the Auckland City bureaucracy, both of whom threatened dire consequences should the councillors fail to approve it, tells us all we need to know about the document’s ideological complexion!) As a tried and tested neoliberal himself, Phil Goff gets this. Producing “incremental improvements with greater efficiency” constitutes the outer limits of his political imagination. It’s what makes him the perfect candidate.

 

Poor Simon. He seems to have been both surprised and distressed to learn that in a Citizen Insights Monitor survey released by the Auckland Council in June 2016, “just 15 per cent of us said we were satisfied with the council’s performance. Only 17 per cent of us said we trust it. This is disgraceful.”

 

Really, Simon? Disgraceful? Frankly, I’m astounded as many as 17 percent of Aucklanders place any trust at all in National’s neoliberal supercity. I do, however, understand completely why 83 percent of us find little, if anything, to like about the “governance” of the unresponsive bureaucratic monstrosity into whose tender care we were delivered without so much as a confirming referendum.

 

Nor am I surprised that only 35 percent of eligible voters bothered to return their ballots in 2013. Not when the people elected by those ballots are so bereft of power that – even if they wanted to – it wouldn’t be “within the purview of their lawful governance function” to make the trains run on time.

 

In terms of empowering the people who live within its boundaries, there’s nothing I’d rather do, Simon, than “reinvent” the Auckland supercity. It’s why I’m voting for Chloe Swarbrick. Not because she stands the slightest chance of winning, but because, alone of all the Mayoral candidates, she demonstrates some understanding of just how much we have lost.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 13 September 2016.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste.

Greenfields: Minister of Building and Housing, Dr Nick Smith, has argued consistently that Auckland needs to grow out as well as up. He has just acquired a powerful ally in Prime Minister Key, who has hinted that if Auckland Council doesn't delete the Urban Growth Boundary from its forthcoming Unitary Plan, then it may suffer the same fate as "Ecan" - the Canterbury Regional Council - whose elected councillors were sacked by Dr Smith and replaced with his hand-picked commissioners.

 

OUR PRIME MINISTER has not ruled out denying local democratic representation to nearly a third of New Zealand’s population. If the Auckland Council’s forthcoming Unitary Plan retains the city’s much-maligned Urban Growth Boundary, John Key is threatening to replace them with Commissioners.

 

Once again, councillors’ strongly held opinions about highly complex planning issues are being used to justify a significant curtailment of democracy. Aucklanders have been put on notice that if a majority of their elected representatives refuse to vote for a resumption of urban sprawl, then the Council’s “Governing Body” will be sacked and replaced by a group of unelected “experts” appointed by Cabinet.

 

Cantabrians know better than to doubt the Prime Minister’s resolve in this matter. Since 2010 their right to a say in how their regional taxes are spent has been suspended. After six years of no regional democracy, they are now being invited to participate in a hybrid system featuring both elected and unelected councillors. The full restoration of democratic regional government in Canterbury will not take place until 2019.

 

The present government justified its suspension of democracy in Canterbury on the grounds that, in its deadlocked state, “Ecan” was incapable of making a number of extremely important – and long delayed – decisions about regional water allocation. At the time, National was under enormous pressure from Federated Farmers to break the deadlock and green-light the irrigation schemes farmers needed to make dairying feasible on the dry Canterbury Plains.

 

Government ministers argued that, economically, New Zealand could not afford the interminable wrangling between urban and rural interests. If the only people standing between Canterbury’s farmers and an irrigation-assisted boost to New Zealand’s dairy exports were a bunch of intransigent regional councillors, then the temporary suspension of democratic norms was a small price to pay for their removal.

 

That the deadlock between the representatives of farmers, and the representatives of those who valued water for cultural, environmental and recreational reasons, might signal the presence of a genuine policy dilemma, does not seem to have occurred to the National Government. Clearly, the deterioration in the flow and water quality of Canterbury’s rivers and streams was also a small price to pay for economic growth.

 

Equally clear, however (at least from the National Government’s perspective) is that most Cantabrians and, quite possibly, most New Zealanders, did not – and do not – consider a nine-year suspension of regional democracy to be all that big a deal. Regional government, unlike local government, has never really engaged the emotions of its electors. (Unless, as happened in Canterbury, a vocal minority of voters came to the view that it was thwarting their commercial ambitions.)

 

The question raised by Mr Key’s threats to the Auckland Council, therefore, is whether or not the suspension of local (as opposed to regional) democracy will be met with Cantabrian levels of voter indifference. In the years since the constitution and ancillary economic institutions of the “Super-City” were imposed on the citizens of Auckland, has it inspired sufficient loyalty and affection to render it invulnerable to such naked central government aggression?

 

Not without a crisis big enough to justify such heavy-handed interference.

 

Fortuitously, in the absurd escalation in Auckland house prices; and in the related, socially catastrophic, shortage of affordable housing for first-home-buyers and the poor; a crisis is exactly what the Prime Minister has got.

 

Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s cynical chief-of-staff, infamously affirmed that: “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”

 

So, what is it that John Key believes the current Auckland housing crisis will let him do – that he could not do before?

 

The Prime Minister’s defenders will say that it offers him a virtually politically costless opportunity to rid Auckland of the irksome Urban Growth Boundary which so many politicians believe is responsible for its eye-wateringly high land prices. The only problem with this response is that Key and his government, as legislators, can abolish the Urban Growth Boundary any time they like.

 

So, what else will Auckland’s very real housing crisis let National do?

 

Helen Kelly put her finger on it during Saturday’s broadcast of TV3’s The Nation. Key’s threats, she insisted, mark the beginning of his party’s campaign to seize control of the Auckland Council.

 

Against all of the Right’s expectations, the first and second elections for the Auckland Council did not deliver it into the hands of the hard-line neoliberals for whom it was intended. Nor have the recent efforts of the Auckland National Party to assemble a winning team borne much in the way of palatable political fruit.

 

Enter the professionals.

 

Auckland’s housing crisis is entirely the Council’s fault. Therefore, vote out the guilty councillors. Then, give the Government a council it can work with.

 

Or else.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 31 May 2016.

As Auckland Goes - So Goes the Country

The Reichstag Fire 1933

In the light of today’s decision by the National-led Government to dismiss the democratically-elected Canterbury Regional Council and replace it with a panel of commissioners, I thought Bowalley Road visitors might be interested in reading the speech I delivered yesterday (29 March) to the Auckland Rotary Club.
　
ON THE 27 JANUARY 1932, some 650 members of the Dusseldorf Industry Club gathered together in the grand ballroom of Dusseldorf’s Park Hotel to hear an address by the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party – Herr Adolf Hitler.

Most of the industrialists seated in that glittering ballroom viewed Hitler and his National Socialists with considerable scepticism, and not a small number regarded the man as a dangerous radical.

They were, after all, meeting in the very depths of a worldwide economic crisis. Six million Germans were unemployed. The Communists "Red Front" and the Nazi’s "Stormtroopers" were daily battling one another for control of the nation’s streets. And to many of the businessmen in that room, the anti-capitalist rhetoric of the one was virtually indistinguishable from the other.

Adolf Hitler, dressed conservatively in a dark blue pin-stripe suit, knew that the speech he was about to give was crucial to his own and his party’s future. The Nazi’s were running out of money, and the men in the ballroom of the Park Hotel were the only people left in Germany with the funds to finance him and his Nazi Party to victory.

As he so often did, Hitler rose to the challenge. His speech to the Dusseldorf Industry Club marked a turning point in Nazi Party fortunes. From that day forward, Germany’s leading industrialists were satisfied that the Nazi Leader was a politician they could (as Margaret Thatcher would later say of Mikhail Gorbachev) "do business with".

My job today is the opposite of Adolf Hitler’s. Where he sought to allay the fears of the nation’s business leaders, I am seeking to inflame them.

Where he was at pains to stress what we would today call the "synergy" of his own extreme right-wing politics with the gathered industrialist’s commitment to private property and private enterprise, I have come to warn you that the Auckland business community’s historical propensity for using extreme right-wing ideologies and politicians to advance their own commercial interests has been bad for the city; bad for the country; and, ultimately, bad for themselves.

Let’s begin with the city.

Auckland has always been the odd one out among the four metropolitan centres of New Zealand. Both Wellington and Christchurch were planned, Wakefield settlements, while Dunedin was the creation of an heroic band of Scots Presbyterian dissidents.

Nothing about Auckland has ever been planned – at least not in the 19th Century positivist sense that New Zealand’s other major cities were planned. It is truer, perhaps, to say that Auckland was "schemed"; that it was "plotted" – even "conspired". But, planned? Never.

Let’s begin with Thomas Russell, the man whose ruthless merging of business and politics transformed Auckland from a hemmed-in colonial port to one of the great cities of the British Empire. Lawyer, banker, land speculator, industrialist and Cabinet Minister, Russell was the man who drove the young colony of New Zealand into a full-scale war with its indigenous inhabitants – a war from which he and his crony-capitalist associates reaped a bountiful commercial harvest.

It is not in the least bit surprising that, having seen what Auckland businessmen were capable of when they donned the politician’s frock-coat and top-hat, the parliamentarians representing the rest of New Zealand moved with almost indecent haste to re-locate the nation’s capital several hundred miles to the South.

Auckland, however, has never forgotten the lessons Russell taught her. Ever since the early 1860s, when a well-connected Auckland burgher could move freely and easily within the potent political triangle connecting Queen Street, the Legislature and the Governor’s Residence, casually swapping hats as he passed from one to the other, Auckland businessmen have dreamed of the day when that seamless web of influence and advantage would be restored.

In the meantime, if the capital could not be restored to Auckland, then, at the very least, Auckland could be sent to the capital.

Bill Massey, from Mangere, was the first of Auckland’s truly significant Prime Ministers, but he was by no means the last. In him, the pattern of radical conservative extremism which the Auckland business community has, over and over again, inflicted upon the rest of the country, was first fixed.

This was the man, after all, who, in the service of Mr Russell and his highly profitable gold-mine, organised the political-cleansing of the little mining town of Waihi. That the price of crushing the Waihi Miners Union turned out to be Fred Evan’s life, gave Massey and his brutal Police Commissioner, John Cullen, not the slightest pause.

And in less than a year, that same brutality was visible in the very heart of Auckland city. "Massey’s Cossacks" they called them – and rightly so. Because these Northland and Waikato farm-boys were the farmers and the Auckland employers very own private army: stormtroopers before the fact; New Zealand’s very own fascist squadristi – a whole eight years before Benito Mussolini pulled on his first pair of jackboots.

Ah yes, the Auckland business community had much to thank Bill Massey for – not least its instinct for the baton and the boot when challenged.

But Massey, like all of us, was mortal, and thought had to be given to who his successor should be – especially in the baleful light of the Labour Party’s growing political strength. In the ten years since the desperately close General Election of 1914, the Left’s electoral strength had grown from a manageable 5 to a threatening 17 Members of Parliament.

Enter one of the most fascinating – and little known – figures in New Zealand political history. Bert Davy was the Auckland business community’s "Mr Fix-it"; their "back-room boy"; their "political wizard".

Long before Nicky Hager started collecting National Party e-mails, Bert Davy had mastered the art of emptying the political process of all integrity. Trained in the United States, Davy knew how easy it was to scoop out the substance of democracy, leaving only a glittering shell. He was the original "hollow man".

Yes, but he was good – very good – at what he did.

Massey’s chosen successor was the Northland farmer and First World War hero, Gordon Coates. As Diana Beaglehole puts it in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography:

Employing the latest advertising techniques for the first time at a New Zealand election, he focused attention not on the party or its candidates, but on the leader, Prime Minister Gordon Coates. New Zealanders were urged to take ‘Coats off with Coates’, ‘the man who gets things done’, to vote for ‘Coates and Confidence’, ‘Coates and Certainties’. Appeals were made to patriotism, women voters were targeted, and the business community was promised ‘more business in Government, less Government in business’. Nothing was left to chance, ‘Coates’ candidates’ and their committees were issued with booklets, briefing them on how to best run their campaigns. The electorate responded by giving Reform its greatest victory and Davy gained a reputation as a superb political organiser.

"More business in government, less government in business" – ahh, how those words have echoed down the years. So much more congenial to the ears of your average businessman that Abraham Lincoln’s "government of the people, by the people, for the people". Davy’s great gift, of course, was his knack for putting the "right people" in government.

Except that Coates (the first New Zealand Prime Minister to be born in New Zealand) turned out to be nothing like "right" enough. In fact, he thoroughly alarmed Davy and his backers by proving to be something of a closet socialist. This was not at all what Auckland’s business leaders were expecting – and it certainly wasn’t what they had paid for.

Since Bert Davy had made this mess – Bert Davy would have to clean it up.

Enter one J.W.S. McArthur – a wealthy Auckland timber merchant. McArthur gave Davy £1,300 (about $200,000 in today’s money) to "organise nationally against the government". This Davy did, bringing off one of the most extraordinary political reversals in New Zealand electoral history. Reform went down to Davy’s purpose-built United Party and the inconvenient Mr Coates was dispatched to the Opposition benches.

Davy’s influence was again brought to bear in 1931, when he was instrumental in bringing the two right-wing parties – Reform and United – into a defensive electoral coalition against a resurgent Labour Party.

Unfortunately, this brought the dangerous Mr Coates back into play and, once again, Auckland’s right-wing business leaders decided to intervene.

The man with the money this time was William Goodfellow, the founder and former managing director of the New Zealand Co-operative Dairy Company, and the moving force behind Empire Dairies – the huge, privately-owned sales operation responsible for off-loading the lion’s share of New Zealand’s dairy exports on the London docks.

Goodfellow had taken fright at Coates’ willingness to embrace a much greater level of state involvement in the marketing of primary exports, and was willing to pay Davy £1,250 for three years to construct a new anti-socialist party with which he planned to take just enough seats to hold the balance of power between the Right and the Left. Davy accepted, and by October he was ready to announce the formation of the Democrat Party.

In 1935, however, Davy’s magic deserted him. Driven by his hatred of Coates, the "political wizard" exceeded Goodfellow’s careful brief and organised a serious bid for power. Predictably, his efforts resulted not in another victory for the Right, but a triumph for Mickey Savage’s Labour Party. Davy had split the conservative vote – and the Left was in.

I’ve devoted some time to the exploits of Davy because his little-known career speaks volumes about the aims and methods of Auckland’s ruling elite.

New Zealand’s whole history since the First World War was, in a very real sense, distorted by the secret machinations of Auckland’s politicised businessmen. And that distortion didn’t stop with the downfall of A.E. Davy in 1935 – it continues to this very day.

Just substitute Heatley and Gibbs for McArthur and Goodfellow and, well, I’m sure you get the picture.

Oh, and a small reminder of how small the world of New Zealand politics truly is, William Goodfellow’s grandson, Peter Goodfellow, was last year elected President of the National Party.

Let us now move forward to 1945, to the end of the Second World War.

Tens of thousands of demobbed Kiwi servicemen were pouring off the troopships on to the Auckland wharves. More than a few of them, having seen the great cities of Britain, Europe and North America, were none to keen on returning to Levin or Geraldine.

The sparkling waters of the Waitemata and the bright lights of Queen Street spoke to them of a future much more in tune with their post-war expectations. Auckland was poised on the threshold of a sixty-year period of expansion that would see her transformed from being merely the first among equals of New Zealand’s larger cities, to this country’s indisputably dominant urban conurbation.

The planners at the Ministry of Works in Wellington were well aware that Auckland’s population was set to explode – and they were ready. An appendix to the 1946 edition of Hansard contains a remarkable draft plan for what might be called "The Auckland That Never Was".

The city’s anticipated population explosion was to be accommodated by a correspondingly dramatic expansion in state housing – planned communities built around a comprehensive system of public transportation modelled on the electrified railway network of the Hutt Valley.

Had the Labour Government’s vision for Auckland been realised, we would now be living in a city not unlike the elegant cities of north-west Europe. The architectural drafts for the public housing estates prepared by the distinguished Austrian architect Ernst Plischke make it clear that Auckland would have been no dreary replica of East Berlin, but an internationally celebrated model of sophisticated urban design.

But, of course, Labour’s vision was never realised. Auckland became not the Stockholm – but the Los Angeles – of the South Seas. Instead of public housing and public transport, Aucklanders got sprawling private suburbs, accessed by private automobiles travelling along a meandering network of hugely expensive motorways.

The Auckland That Never Was, with its collective lifestyle centred around sturdy, rent-controlled public apartments, and its efficient, publicly-owned rapid-rail networks, would have had a very different political and cultural complexion. Essentially, it would have been a social-democratic city.

The Auckland we’ve ended up with is a city of individuals who travel by car. It’s a city based on the tried and true formula: "real-estate equals roads – roads equal real-estate". This is what I call the "Auckland Racket", and it underpins the city’s speculative economy, its nouveau-riche property-developers’ culture and, most importantly, its far-right neoliberal politics.

If you’re looking for a neat summary of this thesis, just remember: trains and buses vote Labour; cars vote National.

Those responsible for designing the new Auckland "Super-city’s" constitutional architecture know this only too well. What we have been given is a developer’s and a roading contractor’s charter. A democracy-proof array of "Council Controlled Organisations", staffed by the "right" people, and dedicated to keeping the "Auckland Racket" alive and well for at least another generation.

What we are witnessing is the ultimate fulfilment of Bert Davy’s 1925 promise to ensure "more business in government, less government in business". That this means abandoning the subsidiarity principle of local government: the organising principle which holds that matters ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest or least centralized competent authority, and that all such authorities should be democratically elected and controlled; does not appear to concern Auckland’s elites.

Democracy, it seems, is over-rated.

And, as Auckland goes – so goes the country.

But the cost of abandoning democracy will be very high. And here I am not talking about the effects of its abandonment on Auckland’s ordinary citizens – those about to be stripped of effective representation, even as their local taxes (in whatever guise) are set to rise.

No, what I am talking about here is the moral cost of turning politics into a business.

To shut ordinary people out of the decision-making process, first requires a belief on the part of those responsible that they are in some way extraordinary – and in some important sense superior to their fellow citizens. Because, surely, a "super-city", led by a "super-mayor", requires not just men – but "supermen".

The man who addressed the Dusseldorf Industry Club on 27 January 1932 put it this way:

I am bound to say that private property can be morally and ethically justified only if I admit that men's achievements are different.

Only on that basis can I assert: since men's achievements are different, the results of those achievements are also different.

But if the results of those achievements are different, then it is reasonable to leave to men the administration of those results to a corresponding degree. It would not be logical to entrust the administration of the result of an achievement which was bound up with a personality either to the next best but less capable person or to a community which, through the mere fact that it had not performed the achievement, has proved that it is not capable of administering the result of that achievement.

Thus it must be admitted that in the economic sphere, from the start, in all branches men are not of equal value or of equal importance. And once this is admitted it is madness to say: in the economic sphere there are undoubtedly differences in value, but that is not true in the political sphere.

It is absurd to build up economic life on the conceptions of achievement, of the value of personality, and therefore in practice on the authority of personality, but in the political sphere to deny the authority of personality and to thrust into its place the law of the greater number - Democracy.

This is the political logic underpinning the constitution of the Auckland "supercity".

A government of supermen, by supermen, for supermen.

As Auckland goes, so goes the country.

God help us.

I #*! Super City: Why Metro has got it wrong. Really

Metro's Simon Wilson: Cheerleading Rodney Hide's Auckland "super city" power grab.

FOR sheer Pollyanna puffery, Simon Wilson’s "Why We Love Super City", in the latest issue of Metro, takes some beating. The image of a perky cheerleader dominates Wilson’s text, and that is wholly appropriate. When your sub-heading is "Why Rodney Hide has got it right. Really." – cheerleading is pretty obviously the name of the game.

It’s a pity really, because Wilson is usually a thoughtful writer, and not given to lending his support to the sort of PR glad-games currently being rolled out to justify one of the most audacious power-grabs in New Zealand’s political history.

The article begins with the picture of a region suffering from "economic underperformance, blighted urban planning and social dysfunction" – all of it, Wilson implies, the dystopic residue of incompetent "local fiefdoms". He has to do this, of course, because if it could be proved that Auckland’s multiple afflictions (if they exist at all) are in no way the fault of its local authorities, then the whole rationale for Hide’s "Super-City" disappears.

But, this is precisely what Auckland’s history does; it completely explodes both Hide’s and the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance’s arguments for collapsing local democracy into regional "governance". The city’s woes, going back to, and beyond, 1865, have almost always arisen out of Auckland businessmen’s determination to turn politics into profit.

Whether it be Thomas Russell, fomenting war with the Maori king to expedite his company’s land-grabbing; or the powerful "development" business nexus, which spawned the sprawling, car-dependent culture of post-war Auckland; or the mirror-glass speculators, who tore down what remained of the city’s graceful Victorian architecture in the deregulated 80s; it has always been that fateful combination of greed and ambition (both local and national) which made Greater Auckland so much less than it could have – should have – been.

Were the cities and boroughs of Auckland responsible for the motorway system which demolished so many thriving communities in the 1950s and 60s – or was that the work a handful of Auckland roading contractors and property developers, operating hand-in-glove with their National Party cronies in the Capital?

Was it Auckland’s local politicians who shut down the great manufacturing plants of south and west Auckland in the 1980s – or was the resulting "economic underperformance" and "social dysfunction" the legacy of the MPs for Mangere, Manurewa, Te Atatu and Auckland Central?

Was it the avarice of mayors and city councillors which saw the wealth of middle-class Aucklanders wiped out in the crash of ’87 – or was it the greed of the wide boys who drank at the Rogues Bar and worked for Equiticorp?

Was it the Auckland Regional Council which stalled the electrification of Auckland’s rail services for the past four years – or was that Michael Cullen and his Treasury advisers?

The key premise behind the Super City proposal is that Auckland’s local problems are the fault of Auckland’s local politicians – and it just ain’t true.

Wilson, as an editor of New Zealand history, and one of Metro’s senior writers, should know all this. So why is his article a history-free zone? Perhaps because it’s so much easier to declare, bluntly, and without the slightest supporting evidence, that: "The status-quo is not an option."

But even if we accept that some sort of change is desirable, the more important question: "Why Rodney Hide’s version of change?", is one that Wilson does not even begin to answer.

It’s all very well to play-up the Royal Commission’s emphasis on social, economic, environmental and cultural "well-being", but the brute fact of the matter is that all of its "namby-pamby, feel-good sloganising" has been rejected by both the National and Act Parties. They have a very different set of priorities.

And before citing Singapore, Seattle, Glasgow and Barcelona as examples of "vibrant" urban economies, why didn’t Wilson do a little research into the nature of their governmental structures.

Rightly celebrated throughout the European Union as one of its most progressively governed cities, Glasgow, with a population of 580,690 citizens, is roughly comparable in size to the present City of Auckland. The similarities end there, however, because instead of Auckland’s 19, Glaswegians get to elect 79 city councillors – one councillor for every 7,350 citizens. Compare that "vibrant" and very democratic ratio with Rodney Hide’s one Super City councillor for every 65,000 citizens. Even Barcelona’s 1.6 million citizens, living under a municipal constitution drafted in 1960 by General Franco’s fascist regime, are entitled to 41 councillors (1:39,000).

What Wilson has either failed to understand, or refuses to acknowledge, is that the Auckland Super City has been designed by neo-liberals, for neo-liberals. From its very beginnings, as the brainchild of senior Auckland business leaders, it’s purpose has never been to generate the "social well-being" which the members of the Royal Commission so naively attempted to interpose in their report, but its opposite. What Rodney Hide and his backers want to see in their shining Super City on a hill, is that universal hallmark of neo-liberal success: growing income inequalities.

That’s why Hide is promoting the democratic obscenity of 20 councillors for 1.3 million citizens. (With eight of the 20 elected "at large", an electoral option rejected by New Zealanders more than 20 years ago.) It’s why he’s promoting 20-30 powerless "community councils", rather than the four, more influential, "city councils" recommended by the Royal Commission. It also explains his vehement opposition to special Maori representation, and why the straightforward, democratic, expedient of taking the 75 councillors currently representing the four major cities of the Auckland region, and putting them under the roof of a single chamber, simply wouldn’t occur to him. Why not? Because, fundamentally, neo-liberalism and democracy are incompatible.

In his final paragraph, Wilson quotes the Royal Commission’s vision statement, noting approvingly its preference for "an integrated sustainable approach" and its wish that the city’s business be "actively and effectively managed … in a responsible way". But this is the bloodless language of corporate bureaucracy – not popular democracy. Nowhere in his article, and in spite of all his condescending concern for the "common folk", does Wilson acknowledge that it is their right to self-government – not good governance – that is at stake for Auckland’s 1.3 million citizens.

A Super City Council of Aucklanders, by Aucklanders, for Aucklanders.

All Aucklanders.

"Who doesn’t want that? Who doesn’t think we need it? And who seriously thinks we’ve got it already?"

This commentary was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 4 June 2009.

Outrageous Good Fortune

One City, One Mayor, One Council, One Plan: "One ring to rule them all."

NATIONAL’S revised plans for the governance of Auckland have handed Labour and its allies the next general election. As it has so often done in the past, the political ineptitude and unbounded arrogance of the Auckland business community is bringing ruin to its friends – and rescue to its enemies.

There was only one sensible course of action for John Key’s government to follow and that was to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission’s Report on Auckland Governance to the letter.

The Royal Commission was a Labour initiative. That was the one, crucial fact Key had to bear in mind. Having set the inquiry in motion, the Labour caucus – even in the absence of its former leaders Helen Clark and Michael Cullen – would find it extremely difficult to criticise, let alone reject, the Commission’s findings. The report was the work of Labour’s appointees, undertaken according to Labour’s terms of reference. Whatever emerged from the Royal Commission’s deliberations, Labour was stuck with it.

Goff’s initial silence on the political efficacy of the Commission’s work spoke volumes. That he declined to shower the report with praise should have indicated to Key that Labour’s leadership foresaw huge political problems arising from its implementation.

By stripping North, West and South Auckland of their political power, and designing a representational regime practically certain to deliver control over Auckland’s future to the electors of Remuera and Epsom, the commissioners had set up a massive political struggle that could only further alienate key elements of Labour’s electoral base in the Auckland region.

That is why Goff curled himself up into a tight little ball and said nothing. His best – indeed, his only – hope was that Key, egged on by Rodney Hide, would make a mistake.

Having got 80 percent of what they wanted, National and ACT should have been content. But Goff was betting that the triumphalist mindset currently clouding the judgement of the entire New Zealand Right would lead it to try for 100 percent – and disaster.

It was a good bet.

By effectively junking Labour’s Royal Commission Report and replacing it with its own scheme, National has freed Labour to oppose the proposed changes with all the energy it can muster.

Alongside its allies in the South and West – Len Brown and Bob Harvey – both of whom have come out in open rebellion against National’s revised plan, Labour is now free to lead the fight for the democratic rights of the Pasifika and immigrant communities of Manukau and Waitakere. The ties that have traditionally bound these communities to Labour were stretched to breaking point in the 2008 General Election, when a large number of Pasifika and immigrant voters stayed at home rather than vote for a party many believed had betrayed them. Now those links can be reforged. It is difficult to imagine a better rallying cry for the brown faces of South and West Auckland than the one which casts the white, rich faces of Remuera and Epsom in the role of racist appropriators of the brown working-class’s hard-won resources.

The kids of the wealthy don’t need free swimming pools and neighbourhood recreation centres, but the children of the poor most certainly do. And, while the smug burghers of Remuera, with a swag of "super-councillors" living in the neighbourhood, may have nothing to fear from the developers’ chainsaws and bulldozers, the feisty residents of Avondale and Titirangi have plenty to be frightened about.

Westies, or Boyz from da ‘Hood? Labour’s political cadres will be spoiled for choice as they muster their legions for the assault.

But, when it comes to giving Labour a mighty taiaha to wield against their Tory opponents, nothing comes close to National’s decision to scrap the Royal Commission’s recommendation to provide for two elected and one appointed Maori super-councillors.

Here, if any more was needed, was the final proof that, for all its fine talk, National remains the deeply racist party it has always been.

"Not if I found it on the highway would I take it", said Faramir, Captain of Gondor, to Frodo and Sam, hobbits of the Shire, in Tolkien’s great tale.

Would National’s Captain Key prove so steadfast?

For truly, if chance has not placed Tolkien’s "One Ring to rule them all" within his grasp, it has certainly delivered into Key’s hands the One Mayor, One Council, and One Plan to rule all Auckland.

And all he had to do to secure these "precious" things was betray his noble Maori Party allies for the orcs of ACT.

Did he pass the test? Did Captain Key, like Captain Faramir, "show his quality" by refusing to abandon the tangata whenua of the Queen City to the Black Riders of Queen Street?

Like hell he did.

With a suitable candidate, Labour now has a better-than-even chance of toppling the Maori Party co-leader, Pita Sharples, from his Tamaki-Makaurau seat. Though hopelessly compromised by National’s decision, Sharples and his caucus have, unaccountably, opted to remain loyal to the man who has just stabbed them, and their party’s political future, in the back.

Labour, quite naturally, can hardly believe its outrageous good fortune. Since the mid-1930s the political ground it has fought on most successfully has been the ground of race and class. Nine years in office had eroded huge chunks of that fruitful territory – most of it towards National.

Occupation of the Treasury Benches for a second term – the most crucial element of National’s long-term strategy – depended absolutely on preventing Labour from re-engaging with the politics of class and race.

In the pivotal political market of Greater Auckland that meant keeping the voracious appetites of the roading contractors, property developers, builders’ suppliers, retailers, real estate agents, and their ACT mouthpieces, under control. Consolidating National’s 2008 gains among Maori, Pasifika and immigrant voters would take time – and constant demonstrations of the Right’s good faith.

All National had to do, vis-à-vis Auckland, was shelter behind the recommendations of Labour’s Royal Commission. Key would then have been able to cast the disempowering of the North, South and West of Auckland as an exercise in bi-partisan political riguer – harsh perhaps, but necessary to secure the region’s long-term future.

By trashing the Royal Commission’s plan, National has released its discredited Labour foes from a cage of their own making, and allowed Goff to re-cast Labour as Greater Auckland’s democratic champion.

If it is true that: "As Auckland goes – so goes the country", then National has just set the New Zealand Left on the road to victory in 2011.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 16 April 2009.