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You'd have thought it would be like selling ice blocks in the
tropics or water in the Sahara. Easy. But the Auckland super city
reforms are threatening to clog goodwill towards this government
like traffic on Victoria Park flyover at 5.30pm. It's the first bit
of really clumsy politics we've seen from this lot.
The love has flown freely for more than five months since the Key
administration took office, but disquiet is steadily growing in the
country's largest city as people start to get their heads around
the detail of the government's plan. It's not that Aucklanders
don't want reform; they crave it. Desperately. They want better
public transport and a gorgeous waterfront and a buzzing CBD and
some striking architecture to be proud of and nifty little
neighbourhoods and a sense of civic identity, crikey, before the
Royal Commissions reported just 4% of Aucklanders thought the
existing councils were working well together, according to what
Internal Affairs calls a "benchmark survey". More than two-thirds
want a single Auckland council.
So it should be an easy sell. But the details, from the
Maori seats through at large councillors to local
boards with no guaranteed funding, seem to be confounding efforts
by National and ACT to ram these reforms through quickly. The Prime
Minister and his Auckland-reforming sidekick, ACT leader Rodney
Hide, are learning that change is hard even when people want
it.
The latest devilish detail is water. We raised it with
Hide on Q+A on Sunday , asking if Watercare
Services, which the government wants to be responsible for water
and wastewater across the region, would remain in public hands.
Hide said it would. Until 2011, anyway. After that, "it won't be
for me to decide, it'll actually be up to the council and the
people of Auckland". He'd love to see Auckland's assets flogged
off, he added, but that wasn't this government's way. Not in its
first term, at least.
But water was again on the agenda today, when the The New Zealand
Herald latched onto comments Hide made to Cabinet back on April
6.
The Royal Commission recommended that Watercare Services Ltd should
use a mix of "volumetric" charges and "uniform charges" when it
comes to getting people to pay for their water. In other words,
you'd partly pay for what your household used (user pays) and
partly just chip into the wider pot (much as you do with your
taxes, contributing towards education or health as a whole).
When Local Government Minister Hide presented his thoughts on the
reforms to Cabinet back on April 6 he didn't mention uniform
charges, however. He simply pointed to a switch from rates-based
funding to volumetric charges, acknowledging there would be
"winners and losers" in that switch, but that it was "important in
ensuring effective and efficient demand management".
The newspaper quoted Hide rather ruefully conceding that "this may
create some challenges to the public acceptability of the
reforms".
You think, Mr Hide? A user-pays system is always controversial in
this country. But when it involves a "product" like water,
something you can't choose to go without, and a monopoly, such as
Watercare Services, it's poison. User-pays water is just another
reason to Aucklanders to feel aggrieved by these reforms. Talk
about shooting yourself in the foot (with a water pistol?).
What makes it even odder is that ultimately it's a political issue,
nothing to do with governance. The Royal Commission and Hide both
have no place telling Aucklanders how they should pay for their
water. The Minister should have stuck to his line from Q+A: That's
for Aucklanders and the future council to decide.
Instead, the government has sent out its secret weapon, westie
Paula Bennett. The battler-made-minister is under orders from the
Beehive to dissent just a little from the government to reassure
Aucklanders that someone's looking out for them. It's a clever
tactic, but Aucklanders won't be fooled. Hide's still got some
serious selling to do.
Q+A - TV ONE, Sunday at 9am and live streaming on
tvnz.co.nz
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