Rogernomes make their grab for Auckland’s planning tiller…

I don’t say this lightly, and I don’t have concrete evidence, but you have to admire the clinical purity of the Government’s deconstruction of Auckland planning institutions. First there was RMA stream-lining, now it’s Local Government stream-lining, state imposed infrastructure (SH20 at Waterview), and who knows what’s next….

The context couldn’t be more perfect, just as it couldn’t have been more perfect in the 1980’s where New Zealand’s financial crisis helped push aside opposition to a draconian cluster of reforms.

The context today includes: General Election, Royal Commission, Global Recession. That’s quite a triumvirate. Hard enough for Aucklanders to deal with one at a time, let alone all together. The uncertainty caused by these factors creates the perfect climate for an organised Government to make transforming changes.

And Auckland is like a possum in the headlights. Most Aucklanders get on with their business and lives vaguely disquieted or excited by talk of a super-city. Be great to live in a Super City – but what is it – really? Many citizens are sharply aware of what’s coming to them, what’s going to be changed or abolished, and are revolting in their own individual ways. Meanwhile Auckland’s Councillors sit at their meetings across Auckland trying to get on with their busy agendas, but there’s an enormous distraction, an enormous elephant in the room.

Some rather like it, and are cuddling up to it, hoping perhaps to influence its manners, tendencies and toilet habits. They don’t want to be shat on from a great height. Others are highly sceptical and worried, and would like to kick it out, but haven’t the collective strength and are not sure which end has the tusks. These councillors and mayors are easily criticised of course: “just protecting their jobs, out for themselves, don’t trust what they say…”

And then there’s the by-election. Top list MPs fight it out at Mt Albert where Government is testing its mettle by dabbling with the SH20 Waterview Connection. Stephen Joyce made a good impression on TV last night, debating with a local Community Board Chair and the redoubtable Michael Tritt. Good on you Michael, for being there, we liked your work making that DVD: “Auckland - City of Cars”. How did you manage to get in there on TVNZ as a local homeowner and citizen? Well done, boy. Well said.

But it was Stephen’s show. He sat there on the screen in the background smiling benignly, telling Auckland why that road has to happen and how it has to happen. I find politicians are at their most certain and convincing when they are actually at their most ignorant. Mr Joyce has been an MP and Minister of Transport for about 6 months now. He’ll have learned a few things in that time, but I know how little I knew about transport when I got elected as Chair of Infrastructure at North Shore City Council in 2001. And I’d been deputy chair 3 years before that.

Transport and Land Use and Community Development and Land Economics are all entwined. It’s hard to get your head around. It takes time and experience. When you’re a newby to Auckland transport and land use, you don’t know what you don’t know. And that makes it easy to appear convincing on TV. As he was.

Completing the SH network has always been a reasonable policy objective. Most cities have incomplete state highway networks. Like Auckland’s most were planned in the 1960’s. Just because something is incomplete doesn’t mean the world falls apart. When I chaired Auckland’s Land Trsnsport Strategy in 2005 I was advised the waterciew connection of SH20 didn’t even have a Benefit Cost ratio of 1. But it needed to hit “3” to cross the funding threshold. It has never been a high priority.

Of course it will deliver benefits and reduce congestion. Every road does. But that logic alone would suggest roads everywhere. So now Auckland faces a Government determined to build this bit of motorway. A Government that has stream-lined RMA processes, and yesterday passed an Act establishing a Transition Agency for Auckland with statutory powers to by-pass Council decision-making.

Guess what it’s first job will be. To get Waterview motorway planning decisions done. To cut throught the red tape. Get that project underway.

I wonder whether every Cabinet Minister is in the know. Probably not. But there’s a strategy of steel behind what is happening. In a calculated and clinical way, Government is rolling back the soft, delicate and inclusive fabric of Auckland civil society, environmental care and public participation. It’s rolling back the thin layers of civilisation that have tentatively developed across Auckland since 1989.

Reacting then against the social destruction of 1980’s Rogernomics, Auckland knew it could do better for itself, its people and its communities.

Reforms since then included the RMA in 1991, which provides for environmental damage fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment for seriously bad behaviour against the environment. But it also provided for much greater involvement by people and community groups in shaping their towns, places and cities. Through District Plans, through public plan change hearings and resource consent hearings. And all of these at local level.

In addition, after local government amalgamation in 1989, Auckland’s city councils embarked on a program of social and recreational infrastructure building and investment that Auckland had never seen before.

Community activities like: bowling clubs; swimming pools; ethnic support units; youth centres; meals on wheel support; environmental enhancement and protection groups; RSA Anzac Day Service funding; heritage building protection; life saving training; and Enviro-Schools were supported and funded. (You might now understand what the pictures are about. I was invited to Takapuna Normal Intermediate School to present their Silver Award. NSCC's Monique Zwaan and Cllr Ken McKay also attended.) And there are many, many more, such organisations and community partnerships with social infrastructure to match. All supported by ratepayers and regularly consulted over. And relied on by many.

This social and community fabric is thin in Auckland. It’s a thin veneer that links people, and is the safety net for many and also for an increasingly beleagured environment. It’s very much thinner in Auckland than it is in older, mopre civilised and exemplary European cities like Stockholm. It’s thinner than in Sydney and Vancouver. It doesn’t really get measured in those surveys that put Auckland right up there as a place to live. Statistics New Zealand is still figuring out how to measure social capital, even though other cities do it regularly. But whether we measure it or not - it’s an important part of a modern city.

And all of it is put at risk by Government’s planned and clinical approach to the de-construction of Auckland’s institutional arrangements for its environmental, social and infrastructural planning. These institutions – Acts of previous Parliaments and long established councils and community groups - are what underpin Auckland civil society and civilisation.

You can hear behind closed Government doors the calls to: “get rid of that red tape”… and …. “we’ve got to make it easier to get things done in Auckland…”. I sat beside a new Cabinet Minister on a plane to Auckland. He knew who I was. This was before the election. Before he was a Minister. He was convinced it was the right thing to get rid of the ARC and the MUL and “all that red tape…”.

As an aside here, I note in the Herald this morning that Government is looking at changing the way Councils can control the MUL. Something to do with low cost housing, the Minister said. Dr Nick Smith. Now that would be consistent with building more motorways. Let’s have some more sprawl. Get that land development engine going again….

You could never build a Waterview SH20 connection in Stockholm. Or London. Or Vancouver. But it wouldn’t be “red tape” that would be blamed. It would simply be the local community having the power to control its local destiny, and everyone appreciating that was the right way of doing things. Part of living in a civil society where continuity, social fabric, local environment was of greater importance than a motorway.

Public participation and engagement in community planning and local infrastructure planning is a pre-requisite for civil society. Its existence is a key sign of a healthy democracy. Public participation is actually measured in modern cities. But here in Auckland, the fact that public interest groups are partially funded – in some cases – by local councils, the fact their access to process is enshrined in the RMA, is seen as a bad thing. Again, you can hear some say: “..surely they’ve got better things to do with their time… they should be more productive… they’re just holding up progress… just a bunch of nimbys… time we cut off their water…”.

I don’t think all Government Ministers are bad people. But I do think there is a blissful ignorance about what this Government plans doing to Auckland. And it’s extremely destructive and risky. And it will roll back Auckland’s potential for a decade or more. And that is why it must be resisted strenuously.

Those of us who can do something – write, speak, oppose, support - will have failed Auckland if we don’t act now. This is not the 1980’s. It is 2009. Yes there’s a recession and it’s all a bit hard, but it is essential that we open our eyes and our minds to what can happen to Auckland and its communities through a combination of draconian changes to the RMA, Auckland Governance, and infrastructure planning.

Enviroschools have been growing in significance and importance across Auckland for the past 10 years. They would not happen without the support of City Councils and absolutely dedicated City Council staff. Students learn about the simple things: recycling, worm-bins, picking up rubbish. They do things: plant herb gardens and vegetable gardens and native bush areas for native birds. They extend their thinking into the community: travel plans to school safe safe-cycling routes and wys to improve local roads and footpaths. They bring their ideas home to the family: electricity conservation and recycling and composting. Some of this education is linked to National curriculum requirements.

Enviroschools are likely to fall through the cracks as Government changes Auckland.

In some countries Enviroschool stuff is called civics. It’s a big part of the curriculum. It’s valued. Students are taught skills to help them work together, and develop a sense of community spirit. Other countries have a constitution. We could do with something like that here in New Zealand. A consitution that would enshrine certain public participation rights and certain pieces of legislation. Like the principles of local government. Like the bottom line for public participation.

Until then. Revolt and resist.