LETTERS ON THE THAMES-COROMANDEL APPLICATION

Copies of letters to Marketplace and Gulf News, expressing the same thing in different ways (Gulf News always provides more space than Marketplace).

Marketplace:
The Local Government Commission, top-heavy with Aucklanders and dominated by Rodney Hide, has failed to get it. It has failed to see that the islands are not the city. It has also failed to understand that a council is a manager appointed by and for a community and that the best result can only come from appointing the best.

If you owned a company and had to choose between two management candidates, one who scored 8 out of 10 for ability and understood what your company was all about, and one who scored 4 and didn't, you would if you had any sense choose the 8.

The LGC has chosen to dump the 4 on us.

Thanks Mr Hide!

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Gulf News:
What the Local Government Commission has said in effect is that the islands cannot exist without the city as a crutch, that Waihekeans cannot manage without Auckland--that we cannot manage in partnership with a community like ours; we can manage only if we are controlled by an entity completely unlike us.

That is a fusillade of falsehoods.

But it is hardly surprising. For twenty years we have had to put up with falsehoods directing us from Auckland, and the LGC is now dominated by Aucklanders--the latest appointment was put there by Rodney Hide so that he could get his own way. (Rodney's party got only 150 votes from the islands last November and his candidate got only 40).

The question put to the LGC was all about the quality of management. A council is a manager for a community, appointed by it and for it. If you owned a company and were appointing a manager for it, and had two candidates on offer, one who scored 8 out of 10 in all the tests and understood your company, and one who scored 4 and didn't, you would if you had any sense choose the 8.

The LGC has rejected the 8 and foisted the 4 on us. The illegal folly of 1989 has been repeated in 2009. The fundamental purpose of local government has been betrayed: 'To enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities.'

The false premise with which island life has had to contend for two decades has again been set in pseudo-legal concrete.

But it was worth having a shot at escaping to a far better council, one that understands our kind of community, where we would have had 23% of the vote and 3 councillors rather than the Super Silly's 0.6% of the vote. If we hadn't tried the fault would have been ours. Now it is the fault of the foisters.