Jason (Queensland MP) visits Auckland to understand Super City ideas

A week ago I received an email at random. As you do. Out of the internet blue beyond. From Jason who's a second term MP in the Queensland State Government. It's a Labour led Government. Last term they voted in forced amalgamation of many of Queensland's Borough Councils. Didn't affect Brisbane - where Parliament sits - it was amalgamated in 1926.

He came to Auckland to have a chat with a few people who had opinions about what is happening in Auckland. Wanted to see if there were any ideas he could take home. Because the Government there has problems with what they've done. A major backlash in fact.

I told me much of the forced amalgamation happened around Noosa, Cairns and Port Douglas. Was a bit hard to understand the nuances of what he was saying. He said the Property Council of Australia was the main organising force for these amalgamations. It seems as if some parts of Queensland had been resisting high growth. Places like Noosa for example. And so a strategy got put together to amalgamate the "good" with the "bad" - the "pro-growth" with the "anti-growth". You might say, to eliminate inconvenient councils standing in the way of development.

The Trade Union movement also got involved and required employment protection contracts to be agreed to as a pre-condition of its support for the amalgamations.

So no-one got sacked, but there was quite a community back-lash. He wasn't that clear about what the backlash was over. Apparently the Labour Government generally reckoned there would be some grumpiness from some communities, but that it would die down quickly, after a few months.

They didn't bank on it getting bigger and bigger. Then along came the regular parliamentary election cycle. Jason's majority of 12% got cut to just 2%, and he swears the single reason for that was public anger over forced amalgamation. Then along came the local body elections for the newly amalgamated regional councils. he told me that the mayors who got elected were all candidates who had strongly opposed amalgamation.

Labour's understandeable concern is that the backlash will continue, and Jason, and many other Labour MPs will be history, as the LNP or main opposition party takes power.

This is very interesting. And particularly relevant to Auckland. Does the Government not anticipate a similar backlash here in Auckland? Does it really believe that it will get away without blemish from the fallout that will surely descend from such huge scale abolition, and merger?

Anyway. being a curious sort of chap, I've been doing a little research to get some independent insight into what was happening in Queensland. I guess the involvement of the Aussie Property Council was interesting. How was that influencing Labour? And why?

This from a March 29th 2008 posting to a website called: "Can Do Better" (byline: A website for reform in democracy, environment, population, land use planning and energy policy) :

"...Naturally, in 2007, with local governments such as the Douglas Shire Council and the Noosa Shire Council receptive to the wishes of their constituents to stand up to developers, the News Limited editorial writers gave their full support to the Queensland government's forced local government amalgamations inspired by the Property Council of Australia.

However, the hopes The Australian held out for in these amalgamations came unstuck when, on Saturday 15 March, anti-development candidates standing in the amalgamated shires were able to overcome the additional difficulties posed by their having to campaign in larger shires and were able to defeat candidates backed by developers. These included the Cairns City Council into which the Douglas Shire had been forcibly amalgamated and the Greater Sunshine Coast Council into which the Noosa shire had been forcibly amalgamated. In at least two other large local government regions, the Gold Coast City Council and Redland City Council, anti-development tickets won control in spite of extravagant developer-funded advertising campaigns against them...."

Very interesting, don't you think. Part of the reason for the website is to critique stances taken by the Australian newspaper (owned by Murdoch). Take this quote for example:

"...In response, on 18 March an editorial in the Australian entitled "Queensland faces a tougher job on regional development" was published. It commenced:

Queensland's local government elections demonstrate the difficulty that beset public administrators trying to manage the competing demands of population growth.

The 'difficulty' being that electors in those council areas were not prepared to put up with the further degradations to their quality of life necessitated by continuous population growth. As has become the established practice with the Murdoch Press, the question as to whether population growth is an issue over which affected communities should have any say, is not even posed, rather population growth is treated implicitly as a given over which no power in Heaven or on Earth can have any control:

... the Queensland (state government) must grapple with an influx of thousands of new residents each week and deliver, health, education and other public services.

In fact, the choice is being made, but instead of it being made by the affected communities, it is being made by politicians, like Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who serve the same vested interests as does the Murdoch media. They include principally the aforementioned Property Council of Australia, whose members gain from population growth, through land speculation and property development, at the expense of the rest of the community, the environment and future generations...."

What is really interesting here, is that whole communities in Queensland are reacting against the effects of high levels of growth and development. Effects which are damaging the lifestyles of existing residents. That's a familar story here in Auckland. But not one which has much strong currency right now. But that could change quickly. If - for example - stronger regional government (a change which is very strongly supported by our very own Property Council of New Zealand), came to be associated with a destructive growth machine....

Going back to the "We Can Do Better" website we read:

On 22 April 2007 Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, then Deputy Premier, rejected calls for ending Queensland's population growth, claiming that it "would have a very serious impact on the construction industry that a lot people rely on for jobs."
A year later, on 25 April 2008 as reported in the Sunshine coast daily, town planning lawyer, Andrew Davis, similarly objected to the plans of newly elected Sunshine Coast Mayor, Bob Abbot, to cap the coast's population growth at 400,000 from the current population of 300,000. Davis claimed that Abbot's initial plan to reduce annual population growth from 3.5% to 2% would result in the loss of 8,500 of the region's 20,000 construction jobs. He also claimed that there would be further job losses in the transport, property and business service sector, with flow-ons to other sectors of the economy like retail, tourism, manufacturing.

Indeed, in a manner uncharacteristic for property developers' advocates, even Andrew Davis implicitly acknowledged that such a transition would be necessary when he said, “Turning off the tap of growth, without first achieving success in creating sustainable business, will cause enormous pain for everyone, whether you work in growth industries or not.”

Given that the region does not have adequate water resources, transport infrastructure, electricity generation, or health and education services to meet the needs of the existing population, many argue that it is urgently necessary to end growth now rather than to increase the number of people who will become dependent, for their employment, upon further growth. At the very least, a plan to end the region's dependence upon growth must be adopted without further delay.

The key thing to note about the characters named here, is that Bob Abbot won the Mayoral race, against a candidate supported by Property Council and Developers.

Could something like that be about to happen in Auckland?

NB: Website: http://candobetter.org/node/435

The Story of Toronto's Amalgamation

Here are a couple of great pieces of writing. I found them on the net - as you do - and am sharing them here, plus links to the rest of the articles....

"Toronto's Struggle Against Amalgamation
It is an unwritten code of conduct for big-city life: avoid speaking to strangers on the public transit system - and if talking to a friend, keep it down, please. So ingrained is that protocol that when a group of Toronto teenagers started talking loudly on the Gerrard streetcar one late-February afternoon, the discomfort among other passengers was almost palpable. It was only heightened when one of the kids, a long-haired girl in a green bomber jacket, actually addressed an older stranger. "How are you going to vote on megacity? You gotta vote No, man," she remarked, unbidden. Before he could respond, another teen piped in: "I dunno. It's gonna happen anyway - Scarborough's going to get sucked up by Toronto. Scarborough's so small." The
stranger, getting a word in edgewise, pointed out that Scarborough and Toronto
are, in fact, about the same size. "Really?" said the second teen, her nose-ring
twitching with curiosity. "I dunno, around my subway station, Kennedy - " "That
station sucks," interjected Teen No. 1. "Yeah," continued Teen No. 2. "Anyway,
around there, it's pretty small."

For once, strangers are talking to one another in Toronto. And what's got them talking - even the teenagers - is municipal politics, something Torontonians usually find so unenthralling that only about a third of them vote in civic elections. But in Toronto - that somewhat arrogant metropolis the rest of the country loves to hate - these are unusual times. The city is in the grip of Mega-Madness, and a rivetting drama is being played out on the civic stage. To the provincial Conservatives and their supporters, it is a tale of solid municipal policy and sound fiscal management. But to many Torontonians, who fear that the province's reforms will destroy their city, it has taken on the proportions of a horror movie - Megacity: The Tory Monster that Ate Toronto....

You can read the rest at: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0011182 Here's another good read:

"Discredited Ideas/Utopian Ideals drive municipal amalgamations
Toronto, March 20, 2001 — Amalgamations forced on municipalities by provincial
governments are the product of flawed nineteenth-century thinking and a bureaucratic urge for centralized control, says a C.D. Howe Institute Commentary published today. What’s more, says the study, smaller and more flexible jurisdictions can often deliver services to residents at lower cost, throwing in doubt the financial assumptions typically used to defend amalgamations.

The new study, “Local Government Amalgamations: Discredited Nineteenth-Century Ideals Alive in the Twenty-First,” argues that some provincial governments have been guided by an intellectual fashion of the nineteenth century: an apparently unshakable faith in monolithic organizations and central control. The study’s author, Robert L. Bish, Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, explains that this flawed thinking is unlikely to suit the rapid change and the need for institutional adaptability that will characterize the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, large and centralized governments will be further removed from their voters, and less able to respond effectively to local needs and choices.

Aside from the intellectual dubiousness of amalgamation projects, says Bish, an
extensive review of scholarly research since the 1960s demonstrates that the background assumption that smaller and more numerous jurisdictions provide services at high cost is typically wrong. Small municipalities contract for services with their neighbors, private suppliers, or other providers when it is cost effective to do so, and provide services themselves when that is less costly. In each case, the decision is based on what is technically efficient in specific lines of activity and depends on close familiarity with local conditions. Because distant mega-councils have less information on which to base decisions than do councils closer to their voters, the cost savings that provinces hope to deliver through amalgamation often prove illusory, and services are thus less likely to match voters’ wants and willingness to pay.

The key, argues Bish, is local flexibility. Metropolitan areas with numerous local
governments and a variety of production arrangements can respond to local needs at less cost than monolithic amalgamations. The superior performance of such “polycentric” structures stems from competition among governments — and from their service arrangements with outside organizations of various scales, including cooperation in specific tasks with neighboring governments. Decentralization among local governments is no hindrance to economic growth, says Bish: some of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas are also among the most governmentally fragmented. Amalgamation, on the other hand, tends to eliminate the very characteristics of local government that are critical to successful low cost operations....

Check out the full Bish report (starts pg 7): http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/bish.pdf

Wendell Cox on government amalgamation & merger

Didn't think I'd be quoting from old Wendell Cox - especially with his love of motorways and dislike of public transport. But here's what he has to say about local government amalgamation in the US and Canada....

..."Executive Summary
· Provincial governments in Canada have actively promoted municipal amalgamations with the
claim that overall costs per capita for taxpayers are lower with larger urban government units.
· An analysis of US Census data indicates the reverse, that higher expenditures per capita are
generally associated with larger municipal units and that consolidated governments are more
costly than governments typified by multiple government units.
· Many of the world’s largest and most successful urban areas have numerous local government
units. For example, the Paris area has more than 1,300 municipal governments and the Tokyo
area has more than 225.

Larger Cities are not More Efficient Cities
While people may generally like smaller municipal jurisdictions, they pay no higher price
for them. The cost efficiency justification for amalgamation rests on a foundation less
stable than a transitional Nunavut permafrost. Larger units of government do not cost
less, they cost more. Of course, the studies commissioned by ministries and politicians
bent on consolidation always produce the required “bigger is better” results. The agendaarmed
consultants proceed from their offices and count the people that they would make
redundant if they were in charge and plan on sending back the excess personal
computers. But, of course, they are never put in charge, the elimination of redundancies
never comes, and more equipment is purchased. The real purpose of their reports is
simply to produce a smoke screen thick enough that it does not dissipate before the final
bill receives assent.

Regrettably, what none of the advocates of consolidation do is to look at the actual data.
Research in the United States illustrates the point. There are 10 city-county consolidated
governments in the United States that have, at one point or another, had more than
500,000 residents. The most famous is the city of New York, composed of five boroughs
and, as in Toronto, where their consolidation was forced upon local residents by the
legislature. Local government expenditures per capita in the consolidated city of New
York are 34 percent higher than elsewhere in the state. It might be expected that New
York, as the largest consolidated government in the United States, would have government expenditures per capita that are among the lowest. But not so, they are among the highest.

Successful Metropolitan Areas have Many Local Governments
Some of the world’s most successful metropolitan areas have highly fragmented
government. Paris has seven regional governments and more than 1,300 municipal
governments. Yet Paris has developed a governance structure that effectively delivers
quality public services throughout and regional services that would be the pride of any area. Tokyo, the world’s largest metropolitan area, has more than 225 municipalities that
stretch through the parts of four provinces. The Milan area has more than 150 cities.
The best guarantee of effective local government is a populace with a strong stake in its
performance. In a smaller jurisdiction, the stake of the individual citizen or neighborhood
group can provide an important counterbalance to interests that would prefer to siphon off
the resources of local government to their own advantage. Larger governments are
harder for the citizenry to control.

It is clear that the most efficient city size is not large, but is rather no larger than middle-sized.
Ontario’s Harris government got it wrong – all wrong. If it had been studying the
evidence, it might have made 20 cities out of six. But it would not have thrown everything
together in a Megacity that can only, in the long run, make things worse for the average
citizen. Manitoba and Nova Scotia municipal amalgamations also got it wrong. Québec
has a chance to get it right....

You can see this, plus more at: http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/FB%2022%20Reassessing%20Local%20Government%20Amalgamation%20FEB%2004.pdf