Posts by Sacha
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For the keen, you can download the reports presented to today's extraordinary RWC review meeting of Auckland Council's Accountability and Performance committee, including by Auckland Transport and ATEED.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
This should raise questions about the CCO structure, I think.
Finlay McDonald ruminated about broader democratic implications before the final supercity enabling Bill and first election, linking it with lessons from recent finance company collapses.
Speaking of [John] Banks, if he does become Auckland's first super mayor, he'll inherit several pre-packaged Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) that look, on the face of it, about as accountable to ratepayers as the board of your average failed finance company was to its investors.
Stacked with government-appointed directors, these companies will control vast amounts of money and decide how it's spent on transport, the waterfront and various vital services. Local Government Minister Rodney Hide has been busy reassuring us that these CCO boards will serve at the pleasure of the duly elected super council, implying that they are only one remove from democratic accountability. Yet, as Labour's Phil Twyford has pointed out, councils can't simply sack what are effectively employees without justification and due process. Provisions within the third supercity bill, he argues, will make the appointing and paying of directors even less transparent if central government reserves power over the process.
What we're witnessing, I think, is the colonisation of democratic institutions by the ideology and rhetoric of so-called economic rationalism. Accountability and transparency – noble concepts in theory – are being applied in a very narrow business sense, meaning the books should be open, the accounts audited and the results reported quarterly, while everything else is "commercially sensitive".
Which is fine, except we already know how woefully we regulate and police accountability and transparency just at the financial level. To allow that culture to take root within the body politic itself would be unaccountably stupid.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
From an ODT article.
Mr McCully told Radio New Zealand today that government officials spoke to Auckland City officials on Monday about the proposal.
"I've got a whole range of officials who work on our side, and a whole range who work on the Auckland City side and I thought getting chief executive to chief executive was a very good way of getting our whole systems plugged into each other.''
I guess he may mean the ceo of MED? Or MFAT?
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
this was all in train
if you'll excuse the expression :)
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
Stuff was getting moved around all over the place during the run-up
I'd encourage you to write more about that. Most media seem to have missed the implications about who was calling the shots.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
Which doesn't alter the fact that McCully claimed Doug McKay knew what was going on
for sure
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
McCully's bogus claim that he'd told the CEO
I think he said his people had done the talking rather than himself, to be fair.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Russell Brown,
The application for the closure of Quay Street is the subject of a separate approval process that is being dealt with by Auckland Transport
Wasn't that the aspect McCully claimed needed his special intervention?
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Any idea what was going on there ?
Private VIP function for Ports of Auckland and associated hangers-on, I read somewhere.
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Labour's Jacinda Ardern expresses concerns over the govt's role (while National's cheery Nikki Kaye says there's nothing to see here).
Since 2009, the Minister responsible for the Rugby World Cup and the Prime Minister have placed a huge amount of emphasis on Party Central. They stood on Queens Wharf, that one way strip with limited capacity for 12,000 that sits right on top of the city's public transport hub, and declared it the place to be for anyone who couldn't make it to the stadium. It was the equivalent of inviting 1.4 million people plus guests to a party and being surprised when we ran out of chairs.
Perhaps that's why, in the aftermath of the chaos, Murray McCully's response as Minster has struck me as so bizarre. His declaration yesterday that he would be taking control from the council under the emergency powers of the Rugby World Cup legislation somehow implies he didn't have a substantive role or any say over what was going on in the first place. He did, but instead of working alongside the council in partnership to address issues like closing off parts of Quay Street (which the council had already been planning) opening up further capacity along the waterfront, and ensuring substantial extra capacity on the public transport network, McCully has shown that the government does not view itself as a partner with the Mayor, council, and Super City, but rather a master of it.