Government SuperCity Model Undermines NZ Law

For 20 years Auckland has developed and re-shaped itself following the 1989 Amalgamation. Legislative planks that have underpinned Auckland planning over that time are the Resource Management Act 1991 and the more recent Local Government Act.

Both of these Acts profoundly influence and enable the way that the public and communities are involved in Auckland planning.

It has taken Auckland's councils time and effort to properly engage with and adapt their institutional arrangements to fit these new laws. Among other things that delay, or organisational intertia has led to delays in implementing the Growth Strategy - which calls for more efficient and intensive development of parts of Auckland around mass transport corridors (like rail and bus and ferry), and less wasteful greenfield sprawl at the edges.

The LGAAA 2004, amended the Local Government Act and put more direction into what Councils needed to do, to give effect to the Growth Strategy.

And it has been happening: New Lynn and Newmarket are standout examples. And planning is underway for change in other parts of the region now: St Lukes and Milford shopping centres are examples that come to mind readily.

But Government's proposed changes risk halting that progress. Government's proposals will lead to centralised planning, and to just 20 councillors.

The public are only slightly aware of the important and significant role that District Plan changes and Designations under the RMA are to urban change. Nobody - not even Councils or Government agencies - can build something, or permit something to be built, unless the District Plan provides for it. Unless it is permitted by the District Plan.

Waitakere City's New Lynn project required a suite of District Plan changes. These will enable medium density and high density development around the railway station. These Plan Changes did not happen overnight. They are not like a resource consent permit to build a house. They are at the heart of planning. The RMA imposes a range of consultation requirements and obligations when changes are made to the District Plan. The public - even under proposed streamlining changes to the RMA - still have very significant opportunities for input to Plan Changes. Council has very significant duties to ensure the changes to the plan - and their implications - are well understood by the community.

The affected community includes local land owners. Some residential. Some business. And there are the infrastructure operators as well: public transport, roading, water, electricity....

Waitakere City Council carried out much of this consultation using Charrette processes. These are a form of consultation which is intensive, involving, creative, and which takes time. Experts were brought in to explain options for change. Meetings took place over an extended time period. Wall charts went up. People indicated their support for some things and not others. This process took a couple of years for New Lynn. And it's still going on as detail gets worked through.
Ultimately, the council proposed various District Plan changes. These are policy decisions for the council to take. Elected councillors make the final decisions. Most Plan Changes are heard by Councillors. They should be. While there is pressure to professionalise this process, and ensure that no politician is seeking to pork barrel over any aspect, there is no taking away from the reality that Plan Change processes are highly contested.

Public issues and public realm are at stake. Land development profit opportunities are evident. Development levies need to be calculated so infrastructure is paid for appropriately. Those decisions are taken under the Local Government Act, which is entwined with RMA decisions.

Plan Changes to District Plans take time.

They are the fundamental basis for Auckland planning. As are designations. These are needed for new motorways for example. Or other new public works like schools.

There has been much debate in the media about resource consent planning processes, and who will do those under the SuperCity. But resource consents are heard in terms of the District Plan. I am talking here about the District Plan itself. How it changes over time. How it needs to change to enable Auckland to develop in a more energy efficient and land efficient way. A more compact way. A way that is the agreed alternative to sprawl.

Auckland's future development is dependent on the District Plan. These are 7 of these now. One for each territorial authority area. They are changing all the time.

I am sitting on a plan change hearing now. There is a private plan change being heard for farm land at Takanini - Papakura. This Plan Change is problematic because it involves a shift in the MUL. However there are many other Plan Changes being considered across Auckland Region.

ARC's Transport and Urban Development Ctte was advised of a major Plan Change being prepared for St Lukes shopping area. This is another private Plan Change. Auckland City Council is the consent authority, as it affects its District Plan. Consultation obligations must be met and public participation is substantial.

Political decisions are required to ensure that the level of public consultation and involvement is appropriate. And that the Plan Change itself is good and fair to all parties affected. This work goes largely un-noticed by the public, yet it is fundamental to Auckland's direction, and to the implementation of the principles that underpin the Local Government and Resource Management Acts.

Abolishing the councils that do this work, and that manage the contest between public realm development and private benefit, puts much of what has begun to work well across Auckland at risk. Cutting councillors from their present level to just 20 will seriously undermine their ability to carry out the essentially political work that this process demands.

It will mean greater delegation to officers of this work. It will mean that councillors are removed from the reality and the impact of their decisions. This will not improve representation. Whether government likes it or not, elected council representatives are the people whose job it is to manage the awkward decisions that no-one else likes to make.

These need to be as public as possible. Because planning and Plan Changes are not a private matter. Less planning will not mean better outcomes.

Government changes will damage the implementation of New Zealand law. If we had a constitution in NZ, Government could not change these governance arrangements in so draconian a way. Government should take a long hard look in the mirror, and a deep breath before going further with these destructive plans.

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.