Who’s in charge?
...there is anxiety within Auckland Council that the Beehive might want to wrest some control and influence. There is breath-holding in the council over what powers will be given to the Government’s Urban Development Authority ...
For six years Auckland Council and the National Government armwrestled over the city’s biggest issues.
The council had some success in holding the line against National’s belief that planners and restrictions on urban sprawl were the prime cause of its housing shortage and costs. The inaugural super-city mayor, Len Brown, led a dogged pursuit of the ambitious downtown rail tunnels, eventually getting an initially reluctant Government to back it.
In a contest of ideas it is easier to see which idea prevails, and Auckland Council has so far had a good record. The change of government in September 2017, with Labour taking charge, answered most of the Auckland Council’s prayers.
Overnight there was Government led by a party which Auckland’s mayor Phil Goff had been a key part of until just over a year earlier.
A Government which, like Goff, favoured a regional fuel tax to accelerate transport projects, and which had picked up a vision designed by lobbyists for a public transport network with light rail.
A Government determined to building affordable homes itself, rather than haggle over the policy settings which it hoped would encourage the market to solve the housing crisis. But as the Government gets on with the job, there is anxiety within Auckland Council that the Beehive might want to wrest some control and influence.
There is breath-holding in the council over what powers will be given to the Government’s Urban Development Authority when legislation appears next year.
The authority will deliver largescale housing developments and urban re-generation, largely in tracts of suburban Auckland where the Government already owns most of the property.
The breath-holding is over cabinet papers which moot sweeping powers for the Urban Development Authority, usurping some influence and sovereignty previously held by the council, such as being able to set its own property rates, make bylaws, require the council to build infrastructure even if the council disagrees, and possibly do its own building consenting.
Government and council officials continue to work closely, but ultimately it will be a political call – the Minister of Housing and Urban Development is Phil Twyford – over how much control the Beehive will want over its bold plans.
The council appears to have had a small win, with the Government confirming no work has been done on a past Twyford battle-cry to dismantle the Rural Urban Boundary which had been set by Auckland Council to focus most of the new housing inside the existing urban area.
Goff campaigned wanting the city’s downtown port eventually relocated but finds himself with uncomfortable bed-fellows in the shape of NZ First and particularly its Northland list MP Shane Jones, who is now the Minister for Regional Development and Associate Minister of Transport.
Goff is famously evidence and process-driven; NZ First pre-election just wanted the whole shooting box moved ASAP to Northport near Whangarei. To that end NZ First as part of its deal to form a coalition with Labour secured the establishment of a working party to look widely at freight and cargo in the upper North Island but, ominously, ‘‘with a particular focus on Ports of Auckland and Northport’’.
Chair of the group is former Far North mayor Wayne Brown, whose encounter with Goff recently has been called ‘‘interesting’’.
Goff fears the outcome may be predetermined, and is underlining that Ports of Auckland belongs to Aucklanders, and chips in a dividend of $51 million a year. The working group is only just getting into gear, but watch this space through 2019 – local body election year – to see where both issues go. Newsroom