Adrian Tyler
Elected Member, Kaipatiki Local Board, Auckland Council
We are 12 years into life as Auckland Super City and whilst many have wondered if the cost and consistency benefits of amalgamation have been realized there are other problems that are harder to see. My experience on the Kaipatiki Local Board has shown me that the Auckland Council we have now wasn’t necessarily the only way the cookie had to crumble…
When in 2009 the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance gave the nod for amalgamation, they recommended a regional body of 21 members and 6 district authorities — local councils[1]. What the then National Government decided on however was a 21-member regional body and 21 local boards. Although the legislation forming Auckland Super City allowed different iterations of authority (powers can be delegated between governance and operational arms of council) this decision led to the current arrangement of council: a regional body, 21 relatively toothless local boards and a huge, centralised bureaucracy in the middle that has adopted a very corporate culture and in which most responsive decision-making authority lies. The regional body appears swamped in policy churn and future ‘visioning’, a role defined for them by the bureaucracy, and whilst the local boards can have some downstream impact on decision making frameworks, the day-to-day authority that affects Aucklanders sits removed from them behind the closed doors of Auckland Council’s bureaucracy.
Without taking a critical view, many elected members of both local boards and the governing body get swept along in processes defined for them by that bureaucracy. It is certainly easy to be overwhelmed by the complexity of council, so just getting to grips with it is a significant challenge but this can then eclipse the ability to stand back and say — ‘Does it have to be this way and does this serve Aucklanders best?’ So, what are the problems created by the current glossy, centralised, corporate-style bureaucracy of Auckland Council?
To begin with, elected members are defined by council as representatives of council. They are not. They are representatives of their communities and have a fundamentally adversarial and scrutineering role with council. This however cannot be given effect because local boards in particular are serviced and legally advised by the same staff who serve the bureaucracy and the GB. Local boards need their own staff and legal advice that does not answer up the chain to Auckland Council executives. Furthermore, council staff frequently feel they are being challenged or undermined by their own organisation when elected members ask tough questions or challenge their decisions. This is inappropriate and unhelpful and the resent that develops can lead to an unwillingness amongst staff to engage with local boards. Staff need to be supported to understand that this is exactly what elected members are there to do.
It is a well-known fact that Aucklanders are not highly motivated about local politics and elections; most do not know the name of their own local boards. This could be helped if local boards had their own distinct brands so people really understood their role in the community. Currently, as part of the ethos of co-opting local boards as AC (Auckland Council) representatives, local boards just get lumped in as a small footnote on AC branding.
This homogenization extends to Auckland districts and communities too of course. Auckland’s town centres in particular get the same ‘off-the-shelf’ treatment from Auckland Transport in particular which generally disregards the history and character of Auckland localities when it comes to maintaining or renewing distinctive fixtures and urban architecture. This is partly in the name of cost efficiency although that is laughably undermined by AC’s ‘faux’ corporate business practices.
The cost effectiveness of this approach bears serious scrutiny; local board discretionary and renewals budgets strain under such eyewatering costings that boards are faced with choosing between which amenities and assets to renew or close or even lose. However, there are frequent instances where the community, faced with the loss of a treasured asset, brings external quotes from suppliers outside of council’s approved suppliers list that are often in the order of 10% to 20% of what council itself has assessed the cost of renewal to be. So, something is badly wrong with council’s procurement and preferred supplier framework. The problem is it is too difficult for local boards to have any scrutiny of this and it appears our GB members are too swamped to have the time. The majority have shown little inclination so far.
This homogeneity of outcomes is only a part of the disaster of AC’s centralized, bulk contract approach. These contracts mean that whilst some, let’s face it, probably Australian, firms are clipping a very nice ticket, the reality on the ground is that maintenance services are delivered by sub-contractors and staff who are not local, have no relationship with the communities they are operating in and are entirely outside any chain of communication between local people and local boards. On an all too frequent basis this can result in months of volunteer restoration work in a given reserve, (resourced by the Natural Environment Targeted Rate paid by you, the rate payer) being destroyed by a contractor (also partly paid by your rates) with no local knowledge, spraying, mowing or weed-eating that area. In 2021 I lodged a notice-of-motion calling council to account on failing to ensure its own contractual obligations for contractor auditing and community liaison were being met. The fact this NoM has so far gone unanswered speaks to the problem of the weak position of Local boards and the conflict of staff serving both LBs, the GB and AC’s bureaucracy. How ironic it is that most elected members stand for council to make a difference on council’s local, service-related issues and that almost the entirety of self-initiated advocacy from the community is in relation to service delivery when this is the very thing that LBs and the community have little or no ability to make any difference on!
The corporate approach also enforces a standardised model on all public amenities. This fails to acknowledge that many of Auckland’s local amenities, paths, reserves, halls etc were originally formed by the public, often by groups like churches, Rotary clubs, Residents groups etc, sometimes in partnership with council, and that over time these then become institutionalised assets. The standardised model shuts people and communities out of creating, and intervening in, their own local environs. This could also be understood as a dichotomy between low cost, organically forming, grass roots, urban placemaking and a paternalistic, high cost/high complexity standardised system that deems it too dangerous to allow people to ‘author’, intercede in or maintain their own environment — an activity that is fundamental to humans and human wellbeing. A possible alternative could be for AC to actually provide operational funding to communities to form Residents Groups, with some governance support thrown in. Part of the conditions of funding would be that these groups monitor local assets themselves (which they already do) as partners with their local board, but also able to participate in developing responses to local matters, by say leveraging links with local businesses and other groups. This would single handedly put those concerned about issues in the driver’s seat on those matters, create a more accessible, social and responsive means for locals to address matters and deploy more responsive and cost-effective local solutions. The network formed by these sorts of ‘bolstered’ Residents Groups and LBs would also likely engage people more in local body politics.
A standard practice, perhaps the standard practice, of the corporatized model is the generation of volumes of ‘Reportage’: decisions it appears, cannot be made rationally without a document so long that collectively no one has the time to read them all. Our current Mayor’s resignation citing the burden of the choice between council duties and having a quality relationship with his family should have been received as an indictment on council culture. We need leaders who can be present in their communities, our Mayor most of all. The ‘Report culture’ has been growing for many years of course but it should be understood as just that — a culture. Not an indispensable tool for modern political life. More than once I have watched great cycles of time consuming and expensive reportage return to conclusions the community had in the first place. I often wonder too, if council ran on Te Ao Maori principals, could we draw on that culture’s value of ‘kanohi ki kanohi’ or face-to-face and oral means of decision making? — And I don’t think it is simple to write that idea off as inadequate for a complex modern society: the current arrangement is terribly inadequate in terms of both cost and responsiveness.
After six years on the local board I have concluded that the corporate style culture of Auckland Council is fundamentally unsuited to a democratic entity, and I see no reason for council to be something quite different. The ‘watchdog’ role of both GB and LB elected members needs to be affirmed throughout the organisation, local boards need to be empowered to respond to issues quickly on behalf of their communities and have a real say in managing their public space, including their roads! Despite being a huge organisation there is no reason that the kaupapa of serving, responding to and empowering local people, communities and local economies could not inform Auckland Council from the top down.
It will take those with that vision to make it happen.
[1] Blakeley, Roger. The Planning Framework for Auckland ‘Super City’: an insider’s view Policy Quarterly — Volume 11, Issue 4 — November 2015
