WAIHEKE NOTES

AIRPORT! A DUBIOUS DISASTER MOVIE

2012-01-25T09:10:00.002+13:00

Please! A Brit with a Dubai mentality buying up for 'development' our airstrip, the so-called Waiheke Airport. We need that elitist greed landing on Waiheke, right next to a beautiful regional park, and a quiet bush-clad village, like we need a dagger in the heart.

A Big Thanks to the careless Overseas Investment Office with its right-wing anti-community mentality for giving its blessing to the purchase.

And an even Bigger Thanks to Denis Musson who dreamed up the whole filthy-lucre scheme in the first place and hocked it off for millions.

'The love of money is the root of all evil.'

MY BOOKS AND STORIES PUBLISHED!

2011-12-30T10:17:00.001+13:00

Over the years, both living on Waiheke Island and before I came here (and wish I had come much earlier in life), I have written a huge amount--millions of words of one sort or another--ranging from professional writing in information technology, business and science, to children's and adult fiction, to legal opinions, to local-body reports, to design descriptions, to blogs, etc., etc. The fiction has covered a very wide range, from fantasy to horror, from romance to humour, from metaphor and environmental activism to classic tales reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Tolkien.

Some of my stories are very short, some are full-length books; they vary in length from a mere 360 words on one page to over 33,000 on 84 pages. But 360 words can be just as compelling as a much longer work. The length should be whatever it comes out to; it should fit the story. The 360-word work is a horror-story, whose brevity heightens the horror (and the black humour).

Creative Waiheke is of course an ideal environment for a writer, so they flourish here, but an unpublished writer is a perpetually frustrated being. And till now none of my stories have been published (on paper, I mean), either because I made no attempt, or as was the case with my first book, a fantasy written long ago called The Wing-Friends, because although the publishers liked it they declined it. They liked it because their reader, the famous Dorothy Butler, recommended it, but they did not think there was a big enough market in my native New Zealand to make it worth their while. The opinions of publishers are the bane of author's lives...

How many times in history have books been declined by publishers, or only published in very limited numbers, because publishers did not think they would be successful, but then were runaway best-sellers, never out of print? The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Lord of the Rings are two of myriads of examples. There must be many books that die in drawers and never see the light of day, but would be very successful if they were published.

To get round all that, the ideal is be your own publisher, but traditionally that has meant a large initial outlay because of the cost of a print-run and marketing. Print-on-demand publishing, in which copies are printed only when ordered, opened large cracks in that obstacle, but although the outlay was not anything like as large it was still not an easy road, especially if you had a number of works to publish.

In the past few days I have discovered, rather belatedly, to my chagrin, that Amazon has swept away all obstacles with free services, both ebook and print-on-demand. The ebooks are published via Kindle Direct Publishing; the print-on-demand are published via a part of the Amazon empire called CreateSpace. The Internet has radically changed the author's world. Yay! No longer do publishers have the whip hand, or any hand at all. Now the author is in charge, and has a direct line to readers. Which is how things should be. Chronic frustration can now be removed with a some uploading and a few clicks of a mouse.

So I have started publishing a number of my stories myself. The shorter ones are or will be in ebook format, for reading on an electronic reader or a computer. The longer ones will be in print-on-demand paperback format.

To find my stories go to Amazon and enter my name in the search box: Nobilangelo Ceramalus, or just Nobilangelo, or click on this link. As the days go more and more will be there. so far I have published seven ebooks. Soon I shall publish my first print-on-demand book, The Wing-Friends. I also plan to publish an environmental book, The Earth-Guard, via print-on-demand, as well as other things in both formats, about a dozen all together perhaps.

The exclamation mark at the end of the title of this posting is therefore an indication of my relief at being able at long last to get my stories out into the world where they belong.

I hope there will be people who will enjoy them.

PLAN TO ADVOCATE IS NOT TO PLAN TO DO

2011-12-23T11:58:00.002+13:00

(A milestone: this is post number 200 in this blog)

The Waiheke Local Board has issued its Local Board Plan 2011 in the form of a beautiful glossy 44-page A4 booklet. The front cover is headed 'Local Board Plan 2011 - Your Voice for Your Community'. The back cover has the fine print: 'Auckland Council disclaims any liability whatsoever in connection with any action taken in reliance of [sic] this document or for any error, deficiency, flaw or omission contained in it. Adopted in October 2011.' The first error is 'reliance of', which should of course be 'reliance on'.

The aims presented in the booklet are laudable, so is the high quality of the presentation, but the fine print gives the game away, as does the constant interation in item after item of what the Board gives as its role: 'advocacy.'

That is of course its role in law--to be an advocate for the community (not, as it claims, to lead; in a democracy it is the people who lead)--but the strong impression one gets is that that the Council is in charge, not the people of Waiheke, that the best the Board can hope for is to shout through the door, and the best we can hope for is that our community will what is best for it. Or, more accurately, that we will not get the worst.

I hope they succeed, I hope we succeed, I hope Waiheke will remain Waiheke, despite the constant efforts of the greedy, the soul-less, the haters of all that is beautiful and true and good. The Board's booklet has its heart in the right place, but it is not being permitted to do much more than speak.

Should we be surprised? Of course not. When he turned our local-government world upside down and created a mammoth bureaucracy topped by a centralised council and a very powerful mayor Rodney Hide had the hide to say that he was 'putting local back into local government.'

As a Waihekean wisely observed, 'We vote for the people we hope will do the least harm.' In Rodney Hide we got the most.

Sorry, Mr Hide, you cannot get better local government from a powerful central body, remote from localities. Especially when the locality is way across the ocean.I an island is a place apart in body and mind. It should not be ruled by those it is separated from. That is against nature, against reason, against humanity.

Advocacy means a lot of shouting across the water. Shouting in hope. We should be doing.

Would that we had our own council again, or at very least one whose heart beats in tune with ours. A behemoth centred in a city has the heart of a city behemoth, not the heart of a small village-rural island. It can never have that. An island is separate physically; it should be governed separately.

The only good thing that came out of Hide's machinations is that we got rid of some evil bureaucrats in Auckland City Council. But we are still at the mercy of a glossy super-council. The best we can hope for is that it will be less merciless than the old lot. We got a fine booklet. Will we get the community to match?

I wish bureaucrats, and politicians (who are just bureaucrats who make speeches), would get it into their skulls that they are messing about with people's lives, not with little black marks on white stuff, even if it is glossy white stuff.

In summary. Much the same, but less evil than before. So far. 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.' We shall be vigilant, we shall always shout when we are being stomped on. We are Waihekeans. To live on an island is to protest against the big mainland, so shouting and being feisty is what we are. Would that we could be left to our own devices!

And that we had full control over our rates, instead of having only little bits of it parcelled out by others.

So 'advocate' is is. Loudly!

But that is not how it should be. The purpose of local government in New Zealand is defined and laid down in law, in section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002 :

10 Purpose of local government
The purpose of local government is--
(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and
(b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.

Decision-making, not advocacy-making. Action, not talk. Democratic and local, not remote. First and foremost by--and by the local community. Not first and foremost on behalf of. And even when it is on behalf of it is to be democratic and local. That is the law. Good, democratic law.

MULTIPLE MPs

2011-12-01T18:29:00.001+13:00

Waiheke could hardly have done better in the election. For us MMP means multiple MPs. Three! Nikki got the seat and Jacinda and Denise got in on their party lists. So we get the whole political gamut: centre-right, centre-left and left. All we missed out was a man, or two, or three...

If competition really is all that its accolytes believe it to be, Waiheke can expect a good haul of the baubles of office.

But this article in Gulf News would not inspire anyone to put a bauble-box on lay-by.

EVIL BOATSHEDS

2011-11-24T13:39:00.001+13:00

This 'poetic' infernal memo, a tizz about the fact that the historic boatsheds in Rocky Bay pre-dated the Resource Management Act 1991 and therefore never got resource-consents, must have got its wires crossed in some Supersilly teacup and fallen into my inbox by mistake. At the risk of being reported to the police and sent to Guantanamo Bay I am making it public (verbatim):

I wuz sitting in me dessk,
In me VERY IMPAWTINT Cownsilly jobb,
Werking for thuh Supersilly Megga,
An thinkking reel hard
How to mayk thuh wirld
Purrfict--
Spesshilly Whythuhheckee,
Whitch is fulla loonies
An kats wot woant herd--
Suddinnly I spotted that them
Ole bote shedds in Rockhead Bay
Aint got no Rise-sauce Consints.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh quoth I,
That's it.
I'll mayk them gett Saucy Consints
Then thuh wirld 'll be awlright
An I'll be thuh hero of thuh wirld
And thuh SuperSaver of Whythuhheckhee.

So I isshooed commahnds:
Get SAUCE CONSINts for them
Ole bote Sheddds
Aw thay'll bbee dimolished.
I leened back in me chair.
Fulla pride
At me clvverniss.

Then I hadda wunnerful thawt:
I betcha lotsa places on
Thatt isle of rebels nevver
Got SAUCE CONSINTS
(Coz they wuz bilt befaw 1991
When thuh Sauce COnsints ACT
CAyME IN,
But that don't madder)
SO NOW I'VE GOTTA CUNNING PLAN:
I'll ishoo SAucy commahns
To awl them Badd Ole Bildings
An I'LL DIMMOLISHh AWL thuh badd stuff.
YAY!!!
Dubble YAY!!!
I betcha thadd'll get riddovv
All thuh loonies
An all thuh madd kats
An all thuh feistee iddeeits,
Thenn the only peepills on Whythuhheckee
Will be thuh gwid wunns,
The besst wunns,
The Edyukated Clevver Wunns,
The only wunns wot can get
Evreethink rite,
The only wunns wot can spell--
LIKE MEE!!!

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

2011-11-24T09:59:00.001+13:00

When we are free to choose
We are not free
From the consequences of our choice.

10,000 PAGEVIEWS!

2011-11-18T13:31:00.001+13:00

To my astonishment Waiheke Notes is the most popular of my blogs (although because statistics were not counted by Blogger till May 2009 blogs that have been going far longer, such as EStar, may actually have had more).

But Waiheke Notes has just passed 10,000 pageviews--from the time that Blogger began counting in 2009, which was about two years from when this blog began in August 2007. To be precise, 10,008 as of this morning.

An even bigger surprise is where the readership is. As you can see from the map, America and Norway particularly stand out. So do France, The Netherlands, Lithuania and Russia. Even New Zealand ;-) Along with the Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and the UK.

Thank you, readers.

If you like my odd sense of humour you may also like my other Waiheke-related blog, The Lower Deck.

THE GOOD LEADER

2011-11-12T19:14:00.001+13:00

The great Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, said of leaders:

A leader is best
When people barely know he exists.
Not so good
When people obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they despise him.
Fail to honour people,
They fail to honour you.
But of a good leader,
Who talks little,
When his work is done,
His aim fulfilled,
The people will all say,
'We did it ourselves.'

FERRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF QUEEN STREET

2011-10-27T19:42:00.001+13:00

All Waihekeans believe in ferries. We have to, we cannot do without them. They wand us from the Supersilly to our island paradise.

Which raises the subject of suitable names. Given what That Man said about dealing with us--that it was like trying to herd cats--it was very appropriate to call the first one Quickcat. There are no quicker cats than us, particularly when Orcland is trying to herd us somewhere we don't want to go. (And MEOW does mean the Moral Equivalent Of War.)

That underclaws the fact that we have a reputation for being feisty, which we are extremely proud of, so Feistycat would be a fitting addition to Fullers' Waiheke fleet.

But Fullers have yet to acknowledge our airy belief in ferries. They came close when they acquired a boat called Wand-erer. But for their next vessel they should admit the whole truth, and call it Tinkerbell.

Then as some unfortunate too-later sprints despairingly for a rapidly retreating gangplank, we could all call out in gleeful unison, 'Ask not for whom the Tinkerbell tolls. It tolls for thee!' (apologies to John Donne)

Or, if they want to be a tad more serious, and very Shakespearean, they could call it Titania.

THE SITTING MYSTERY

2011-10-20T16:30:00.000+13:00

When a bird sits on a nest (a process they call nest-sitting) it produces chicks, which grow into birds.

There is also the simple modern system that has replaced all that old-fashioned nonsense called building, the process called house-sitting, which produces cabins, which grow into dwellings.

There is also of course truck-sitting, the system which results in the pitter-patter of little Fiats, which grow into all sorts of things, from Roll-Royces to Hummers, Toyotas and tanks.

However, no one has ever been able to discover what you have to sit on to produce politicians...

ACT ON A HIGH

2011-09-29T10:52:00.001+13:00

Don Brash, the coup-leader of the ACT Party (he had replaced Rodney Hide in a party coup earlier in the year), and the former head of New Zealand's Reserve Bank, created a punster's paradise by coming out and brashly saying that he supports the decriminalisation of marijuana. John Banks, who is standing for the Epsom seat for ACT, later came out strongly against what the Beloved Leader had opined. All that at the same time as the international banking system was trying to prevent life as we know it melting down, and the ACT Party was close to zilch in the polls.

Brash ACT = bad act.
Brash leader of the ACT Potty.
Potty head.
Pot head of Potty Party.
Brash ACT = comedy skit.
Brash = comedy skite.
Brash gives comedy skit by putting pot on head.
Don Pot tilts at windmills.
Donning a pot.
Brash reveals bad potty training.
Brash fires loose pot.
'Weed dump anti-pot law,' says potty head.
Nothing but a big ACT.
Don puffs ACT into dreamland.
Marijuana oblivion for Don.
All smoke and no fire.
Brash cannabilises ACT.
A bud too far.
ACT's little buddy.
ACT--from a Hide to a high.
Banks struggle to stave off D fault.
Glib foulup crisis envelops Banks.
Don's pot protrudes in comedy ACT.
Epsom salts drain the Brash pot.

('Buds' according to a news report is a slang term for cannabis.)

Brian Rudman's take on it in the New Zealand Herald makes rich reading. The Herald's editorial also questioned Dr Brash's strange behaviour. So did another Herald columnist, Garth George.

SAY YES TO THE TINSEL GOOSE!

2011-09-22T11:53:00.000+12:00

O goody! A marina! At Matiatia! Only a blockhead would oppose such a spiffing advance. It's jus wot we all need.

So stop griping on and on and saying it'll benefit only a few yachties. And mess up Matiatia.

Stop all that. Look at the big picture. Think! Doesn't your tender liddle heart bleed for all them poor Orcland yachties having to sail and sail and sail and sail for hours and hours and hours and hours before they can be where they want to be--out here in the Gulf.

But when all you gripers shut up, and stop stopping progress, they'll be able to have a hideously expensive berth at the glorious, brilliant, over-the-top, ever-so-wunnerful marina at Matiatia-- and then they'll be able to hop on Superflyte and be out here in only 35 minutes. Ever so much better than having to start from Westhaven or Half Moon Bay or some other dumb place made for inferior beings and do that long long slog every single time.

And we Waihekeans will have something to be proud of. Proud! We'll have created a special breed, a breed apart, the Matiatia breed. Super-Yachties!!! Won't that be wunnerful? Won't your liddle hearts swell to bursting every time you think of all the good we'll have done to the world?

And consider those poor bods, down to their last million farthings, who are going to build this wunnerful thing for us. Even their GG's are down to their last electronic platinum horseshoes. So they need lots more of them farthings. So let 'em get 'em. Wots good for them is good for everyone. Right? Of course!

OK, OK, OK, we'll have to poo permanently on our doorstep and mess up our nice little bay for ever. And the traffic and the parking down there will be even more horrendous. And stupid stuff like catching ferries will have to give way a tad. So it'll be a bit of a hobble on the ole transport hub. But you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Or have a windbreak to coddle yer yachts without breaking wind. So stop yer griping, all youse dummies.

It's totally obvious that Waiheke totally lacks taste. And with a marina it'll have it--at last! Because it'll be how it should be: MARINATED in a very rich source. Burp!!!

PITIFUL CENTRAL IN WALLY-VILLE

2011-09-15T13:47:00.000+12:00

Brilliant! In a city of a million people, to which they had invited the whole world, they built a 'Party Central' that could hold only 12,000.

Why didn't any of those political geniuses ask themselves how a bath-full was going to cram itself into a thimble?

And why couldn't they see that their bright-'n-shiny Super Silly, newly built out of a Nat-picking mashup of ideological Lego, would not fail to drop the party ball, collapse the party scrums and miss every goal on the fan-zone paddock?

If they were the All Blacks they wouldn't even be able to beat the team from Libya. Which doesn't have a team...

Party Central in a World-Class City? No: Pits Central in a Wally-Class Silly.

But they got the shape of that building right. A legless white elephant.

KERBING THE ACCIDENTS

2011-09-08T09:41:00.001+12:00

O goody! Martin Reynolds, the manager for Downer Roading (of course he has no vested interest worth bothering your head about) has solved for all us dummies the problem of accidents on the island's roads. All we need is kerbing and channelling. For he says that if Te Toki Road had had it that errant bus would have stayed on the straight and narrow instead of trying to make a career change and become a bridge.

Please ignore the fact that Te Toki Road has more outrageous bumps per square millimetre than Gaddafi's face, that it does violent assault and battery to every vehicle that can overtake a snail, and that it has been like that since Cook came here in his Sealegs in 1769. Just pay a fortune (to Downers) to make it a clone of Auckland Silly.

Which of course never has a single accident.

Because it is stuffed full of kerbing and channelling.

If we paid enough rates to Mr Reynold's empire to get all our roads on over-the-top Downers we would all be on our uppers.

And the island instead of being its nice old charming rural self would look like Orc Land.

THE TRUTH ABOUT HAPPY FEET

2011-07-28T11:25:00.000+12:00

The Happy Feet saga is really one of two things:

('Happy Feet' can be seen via this Google Search)

1) All the Emperor Penguins got together and had a hui about climate-change. They decided that because we'd messed up their environment they had to make a new penguin world. So their smartest bird volunteered to be the advance guard for a brilliant plan.

Step One was for him to swim a few thousand kilometres 'off course' and turn up on a beach in New Zealand (his grandfather did it in 1967 so he actually knew the way like the back of his flipper).

Step Two was to be make sure he was seen eating a lot of sand. The humans
fell for that one, called him Happy Feet (his real name is Superbrain) and
took him in VIP transport to get lots of TLC. When they'd pumped out the
sand they set him up in his own luxury quarters and chipped in to feed him
lashings of grade-one salmon.

Step Three was for Superbrain to become such a global heart-throb that the
stupid humans would be sucked into giving him a First Class ticket back to
his clan, so that he won't have so far to swim.

Step Four will be a penguin Twittering all over the Southern Ocean, then
every bird will click in to Superbrain's Google+ Circle to find out exactly what to do.

Step Five will be millions of Emperor Penguins on every New Zealand beach
eating sand then getting stuffed with salmon in the lap of luxury.

Step Six will be New Zealand having to sign a Treaty of Emperors in which
the foreshore and seabed are ceded to them birds. Otherwise they'll eat it
all and refuse to barf it back.

2) It's a metaphor for the capital-gains tax. If we eat sand now and put up with a bit of stomach-pumping we'll all live on salmon for ever.

BUSING ON AN EDUCATION PROMISE

2011-07-21T10:30:00.000+12:00

The bureaucratic bullies who insist that Waiheke kids must pay for the
school bus and/or trek over hill and dale to catch one, have overlooked a
small matter of international law. New Zealand signed up long ago to the
International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. Its Article
13 begins:

1 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate
effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and
friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further activities of the United Nations for the mainenance of peace.

2 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise that, with a view to achieving the full realisation of this right:

(a) Primary education shall be compulsory and free to all;
(b) Secondary education in its different forms, including technical and
vocational secondary education, shall be made generally available and
accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular by the
progressive introduction of free education;

Obviously to the bureaucrats 'free to all' and 'accessible to all' mean
something not found in any dictionary. Perhaps they couldn't pay for their
school buses, and never learnt to read.

BUSING BACKWARDS TO THE FUTURE II

2011-07-14T10:12:00.002+12:00

Aha! I have worked out the true meaning of those flash new world-class
bus-shelters. They obviously have nothing to do with real human beings, so
it is tempting to think they were beamed down on a shonky circuit from some
intergalactic thunk-tank, thus proving that extra-terrestrials do exist, but have no intelligence.

But, no, their real purpose is to show us that Auckland is designing its
flash new world-class city for extra-terrestrial non-intelligence; a place
no one human would want to be--especially when it rains. Today the non-human bus-shelters, tomorrow the city. Thanks for the warning.

STOP THE BUS--IT'S HOLEY PROGRESS

2011-06-23T13:44:00.003+12:00

'Design is thinking made visible.' Whoever designed the new 'bus-shelter' at the stop opposite the Red Cross had thinking that was so brilliant that it had nothing to do with the real world. But if you are brilliant you do not need to let reality get in the way of spending ratepayers' money...

First the seat in it is so brilliant that it does not use the full width. It goes only two-thirds of the way across, so it cannot accommodate more than a couple of people--or three very friendly ones. So all that brilliance does very few people any sheltering good.

But it is far more brilliant than that. Because it is so brilliant that it
faces into the teeth of the prevailing wind, and unlike the old shelter it
is so brilliant that it has no half-wall in front to block out as much wind and rain as possible.

Its brilliance goes even further. Because the three walls that the brilliant minds have put there are metal, brilliantly perforated with zillions of holes. Obviously to allow the wind and rain to come through from all four sides.

After all, where is it written that a bus-shelter should actually shelter
people while they wait for a bus?

Then it has a brilliant, expensive sign 'All buses stop here.' That is what a bus-stop is, surely?

It is also very brilliant at spending the maximum amount of money. OK, they could have used platinum, so they missed out on being super-brilliant, but they did pretty well despite that handicap. First they laid some expensive concrete--pink concrete, as nature intended. Footpaths cost $422 a metre, so there must be well over $1000 in concrete under the brilliant new bus-stop. Then there is all that expensive powder-coated steel--except for all the places where there are expensive holes in it to let the wind and rain in. And steel strong enough to stop the Titanic from sinking.

Why all that brilliance? The only 'reason' that can spring to mind is a
bladder. No, not the one that needs emptying several times a day into a
china receptacle in a small room (or into the back garden down in the Garden City in Rockjelly Island). No, this is the one that thirty blokes hoof round special paddocks. For a thingy called the Holed Cap. That might be a spelling mistake. But it's something like that. Wold Cup? Whirled Cop? Whatever it is it needs brilliant bus-shelters that shelter no one.
Otherwise bods from other places might larf at us.

Which means that that 'bus-shelter' is actually a brilliant monument to my
one-word joke: Progress!

The shiny new Auckland Council thinks it can design a wunnerful world-class city. It cannot even design a bus-shelter.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS! YAY!

2011-02-10T15:10:00.003+13:00

So it has been suggested by an Island Leader that we install traffic-lights because of the extra traffic that will be generated by the Wunnerful Merger Of The Library & The Service Centre at the top of Oneroa. The very first traffic lights on village-rural Waiheke Island!

What a brilliant idea! This fuddy-duddy piece of rock has resisted up-to-date change for too long. We should be in the twenty-first century, with all the civic goodies, and all its mod-cons. With the emphasis on cons.

But one set of traffic-lights is not enough. We need them on every corner. It doesn't matter if your street only gets one car a day, or a week, or a year, it needs lights on the corner. Think of all the accidents that would be prevented. If you are so mean-spirited that you think it would be a colossal waste of money, and time, and fuel and patience a gadzillion times a day, think again. Isn't human life worth anything to you? Even if it only saved one life in a thousand years that would be enough. It might be yours.

But people might be killed crossing the street at other places. So we need lights in the middle too. Every corner, and every middle. And twenty middles for long streets. Aaah! Think of what a wunnerful island we would have them!

So, please, Island Leader, give us modernity, warp us willy-nilly into the civic mould, give us all them 21st-century mod-cons. Lotsa cons, that's what we need. Bring on them lights. Please!

And on top of the advantage of being made gloriously full up with civic cons, and thus no longer looking like a Rock of Backward Hicks, a zillion traffic-lights will look so totally pretty! Red, amber, green, and wasp-striped poles. Aaaaah! It makes you go weak at the knees just thinking about it! A visual treat! Better than all those boring trees (ditto those yucky iconic baches that can't stay on their hillsides after some flash new neighbour messes with the drainage).

So get with it, Waihekeans! Start a riot in the streets. March up and down and yell and scream and shout: 'We want traffic-lights everywhere!'

;-)

CAMERA THE BARRICADES

2011-01-28T14:23:00.003+13:00

I am told that a newly-elected member of the Waiheke Local Board has come up with an absolutely brilliant idea. Perhaps he got it from his dog. He suggests having security cameras at Matiatia and Kennedy Point watching out for Undesirables.

Of course, like all new ideas, it needs a bit of fine-tuning to work off the rough edges. Or should that be ruff-ruff edges? I dunno. But whatever the edges, there also needs to be a link from them cameras to some of that high-tech face-recognition software, with a bit of artificial intelligence thrown in--i.e., the sort of intelligence made in the Beehive. Usually in Bellamy's on the late-night shift.

Then it would really be able to recognise Undesirables. It would spot them in nanoseconds. They would look like bods who'd been marinating in Bellamy's.

But spotting them would obviously not be enough. Which is where we take a leaf out of Dr Who's book. Sort of. Because we get some of those Dalek bods--those giant pepper-pots that glide about at a malevolent rate of knots, and have inside them beings that look like a cross between the brain of a sheep and a tin of Watties spaghetti, and keep saying 'Exterminate! Exterminate!' in cracked voices and firing off their ray-guns at Undesirables.

We would of course recycle all the zapped Undesirables through the compost. Waste not, want not!

But the idea could be extended. We could do all that extermination stuff over in the city and at Half Moon Bay. Bump them off before they get on the boats. That would save a lot of diesel (we have to think of Fullers now that they're on the Board). And it would keep the island tidy. Undesirable corpses are so messy.

But we could extend the idea even further (and save even more diesel!) by getting Junk to Funk to modify some Daleks to attend to the Desirables--i.e., the bods who come across here and spend lotsa lovely money. Our Waiheke-Modded Daleks would reach into those Very Desirable Pockets and steal all their money *before* they got on the boats.

Then they wouldn't be able to afford to come, and would have go home sadder and wiser bods, but we would still get their money, which is all we want, without having to suffer their litter all over the place, their cars mashing our roads and their wastewater clogging our loos.

It just shows what can be done with a really brilliant idea.

Roll them cameras! Exterminate! Exterminate!

BIG BUSINESS NOT THE COMMUNITY

2010-11-19T16:34:00.002+13:00

Jim Hannan said that the majority on the Waiheke Local Board installed Jo Holmes as Deputy Chair because she is a businesswoman.

And when she was sworn in, she swore, as everyone elected to a local-government position must, to act in the best interests of the Waiheke Community. But the heavy-duty item in her business record belies her promise.

Several years ago she founded a newspaper on the island, Waiheke Marketplace, which did well, deservedly, and went from being just a wrapper round a lot of real-estate advertising to being a community newspaper worthy of the name.

But then, for private gain, she sold it to big business, to a multinational, to the Fairfax empire, an outfit alien to a village-rural community and alien to Waiheke. The paper is now just another of Fairfax's vast empire of suburban newspapers.

That was certainly not a deal that was in the best interests of the Waiheke Community.

It is just as well that we also have a real community newspaper: Gulf News. It is owned and run by an islander for islanders, its roots are deep in the island's bedrock, and it is deep in the hearts of all Waihekeans worthy of the name.

'Marketplace' turns out to have been the right name, and harbinger of its ultimate fate; for its fundamental concern was the eye-for-the-main-chance market not the caring community.

SWEARING-IN MOVIE

2010-11-19T16:33:00.001+13:00

The movie version of the swearing-in meeting on the 6th of November is now in pre-production.

It is to be called Saturday Afternoon in Dodgy City.

;-)

SUPERSILLY BOARD NUMERO UNO

2010-11-11T15:45:00.001+13:00

So now we have our first Supersilly Board.

And what a fun show it was! The in-crowd was sworn in to much swearing from the memorable crowd that crowded in to the Memorial Hall. And crowded round the much-applauded. And crowded out the doors to the much-less-applauded.

So now, as that old cartoon show used to say at the end of each programme: 'Listen next week for the next exciting episode of Felix the Cat.' On the island famous for being full of cats who refuse to be herded. Because they want to be heard.

POWER-HUNGRY SPIN IS NOT DEMOCRACY

2010-11-04T14:20:00.004+13:00

In letters to Waiheke Marketplace (whose editor has unfortunately decided to be strongly partisan towards her former boss) Faye Storer, Jo Holmes, Don McKenzie and Jim Hannan attempted to justify appointing Faye as chair of the Waiheke Local Board rather than Denise Roche, whose 2239 votes were far ahead of Faye's 1849. Their spin ignores the facts and the law, and therefore abdicates their duty to the community.

In Faye's letter she claimed that the 4:1 vote to install her as chair was 'democracy.' Bunkum! 'Democracy' comes from 'demos', which means 'people'. A 4:1 vote is not the voice of the people, it is just a majority amongst five individuals.

The democratic point is heavily underlined in law by section 14 of the Local
Government Act 2002 (LGA2002), which lays down the principles by which local government must be conducted. Section 14 opens with: '(1) In performing its
role, a local authority must act in accordance with the following principles: (a) a local authority should--(i) conduct its business in an open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner;' and '(b) a local authority should make itself aware of, and should have regard to, the views
of all of its communities.'

'Open, transparent and democratically accountable' means accountable to the
community--and nothing else. It does not mean 'accountable' to the mutual back-slapping of a cabal. It means true democracy, the democracy of the electorate--not just getting the numbers amongst those elected then sticking on a 'democracy' label to make it look kosher.

Board members are not there to express their opinions, especially partisan ones. They are there to represent the community, to re-present its will within the context of democratic statute. If they fail to uphold 'democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, the community'--underline 'the community' in red--they can be haled into court under the LGA2002 and fined up to $5000.

Decisions on the Board should be made according to the community and democratic statute, not dogmatic, self-serving opinion driven by a lust for power. 'Robust' party dogma does not establish democratic facts. The will of the people does.

Jim's claim to have the support of the centre-right for the 4:1 vote by The Four, and his obvious notion that the island wants a centre-right board, is so much self-serving assertive garbage. If he researched and analysed the election result instead of thinking that he can create facts with 'robust' assertions he would see that the centre-left vote comfortably exceeds the centre-right total. By about 8%.

On top of that if you add Denise's vote to Faye's, then reckon Denise's margin of that total, it comes out at just under 10%. That is about 25% more than the margin of left over right across the whole community, which shows that the extra strength of Denise's support is personal not political.

The vote at the election was split and dispersed by a large field of candidates, which was overwhelmingly dominated by the centre-left. The centre-right cannily concentrated on a few candidates, mostly under one banner. Clever, but they cannot claim a mandate. Waiheke is a predominantly a people-place not a power-place.

The specious arguments by The Four are also contradictory. They said they voted for Faye because of her experience as a councillor and Board member, although Denise also has both. Then they voted for Jo as Deputy, who has no experience at all. Convenient arguments to try to justify the unjustifiable.

But even if Jim were right about a shift to centre-right on Waiheke it is a great pity that the left-right tribal argument has sullied the island's local government. The only party that counts is the community. Candidates, successful and unsuccessful, should be not be right-wing, left-wing, tail-feathers or beak. Just Waihekeans. Anything else is dishonest and grossly anti-community. If you love wings stay off the Board. Go to MacDonalds.

Being impartial is not only good morally, and best for the community. It is also the law, because it is the oath of office in all local-government elected positions.

The 4:1-elect do not get it. You are not elected to positions of power. You are elected to positions of representation, bounded by statute. You are there to re-present the will of the local community in accordance with the will of the national community expressed in the heart of democratic statute. That is your job. Get it! And do it.

Two candidates put themselves forward for the position of chair. One has the
confidence of 2239 people in the Waiheke community, the other has the confidence of 1845. It is glaringly obvious, under the democratic principle, who should be the chair and the deputy.

To the Gang of Four: ignore the community at your peril!

COMMUNITY DEMOCRACY OR PARTY-POLITICS?

2010-10-31T19:57:00.001+13:00

On the 6th of November the newly-elected members of the Waiheke Local Board will be sworn in. Before the whole of the Waiheke Community they will make a promise, a morally- and legally-binding promise. Each will promise 'faithfully and impartially, and according to the best of my skill and judgement, to execute and perform, in the best interests of Waiheke, the powers, authorities, and duties vested in, or imposed upon, me member of the Waiheke Local Board by virtue of the Local Government Act 2002, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, or any other Act.'

First up is 'faithfully and impartially'--two words bound together by 'and', which means they operate together, so the faithfulness of Members must be impartial and their impartiality must be faithful. 'Impartial' means, amongst other things, that they must never operate in any way that has any allegiance and owes any obedience' to any party. In that job there is only one party: the Waiheke Community. One party, the community; one friend, the community. And count no one as an enemy. Impartial.

The Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002) is a huge Act, with hundreds of sections, but it is perfectly summed up in the forty words of section 10: 'The purpose of local government is--(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

*Community* democracy and the four well-beings. That is every Board Member's
job-description, that is what they must, above all, be faithful and impartial to.

If they are faithful to their oath of office, faithful to section 10 of the LGA2002, and faithful to the truth, they cannot fail to be faithful to the Waiheke Community. If they fail in any of those they will fail it.

They should start being faithful and impartial by voting in Denise Roche as Chair of the Board. The strong whisper is that because most the Board are National supporters they will be voting along party lines, and therefore that she will not get the nod. She should. She has been a hard-working, vigilant Councillor. She has proved herself. She has the experience. And she won far more votes from the community that anyone else--her 2239 is well ahead of the others on their 1845, 1646, 1378 and 1361. For the rest of the Board to vote anyone else into that position will be an abject failure of impartiality and an abject failure of democracy. They will have listened to the will of a political party over the will of the people in the Waiheke
Community.

Thus, only minutes after promising to be faithful and impartial, and to operate according to the LGA2002, which means section 10, they will have failed to keep their promise.

Like everyone in local government they should always remember that failure to comply with the LGA2002 is defined by it as an offence, and that if they commit that offence anyone can hale them into the District Court. If found guilty they will be fined up to $5000.

--

Nobilangelo Ceramalus,
Member of the Waiheke Community Board.

..................................................................

Postscripts (not part of the letter).

I am told, although I have not checked it, that the new super-shiny WLB will not have a budget. Unlike the departing WCB, which had, over the three years, about half the million within its decision-making powers, the new thingy will have nothing, not even a SLIPs budget. Worth doing some meaty investigative journalism on... I'd like to see Len Brown's and Doug McKay's comments on that. If the WLB has no money under its decision-making powers, what power will it have?

They should have had that joint WCB-WLB meeting open to the community. It was a very good meeting, which the community would have benefitted by seeing. Too much of what we do is invisible. Then when it comes to an election people vote without having much idea of what we do, and vote in people who are not suitable. Even handicapped to the point where they cannot do the job.

WAIHEKE'S CRIPPLED LOCAL BOARD

2010-10-14T10:13:00.004+13:00

Please! A Board of only three!

One of the two men elected to the Waiheke Community's Local Board, Jim Hannan, Fullers' man, is dogmatically adamant that he can work fulltime for Fullers and also be a Member of the Board. Rubbish! Being a Board Member is a fulltime job. If he actually tries to do both jobs, conscientiously, he will kill himself. Otherwise he will be cheating the community.'No man can serve two masters.' His poor judgement is evidenced by his being so adamant that he can--regardless of fact and reason.

Just wading through the email from council officers can take all day. His poor judgement is also evidenced by his electioneering promise of jobs. He will be a Member of the Local Board, an enitity that in law is not allowed to employ people, and does not have the power to create employment. His promise is all sizzle and no steak.

The other man elected, Don McKenzie, is a very nice man, and very able to the extent that his blindness allows, but it is impossible to do that job without eyes, whatever he and his friends might claim.

Site-visits, for example, are impossible without sight. Just in the recent weeks I have done on three on behalf of the community. One was to see whether the community had got value for money in the restoration of the Pioneer Cemetery. Was it a job well done, or not? That was the last of three visits to it to oversee and discuss the project. A blind man could have done none of them. Nor could he judged and voted from the photos shown to other Board Members.

Another site-visit meant going to evaluate 8 hectares of forest and bush that the Council was considering buying. Getting there meant going along tracks, some too narrow for a man and a guide-dog, and crossing a small swamp on narrow, loose boards. Seeing it and judging it, seeing the magnificent 270-degree view, and arriving at a decision would all be impossible without eyes. The effect on me would have been no different to walking down my front path.

The job needs eyes in many necessary aspects of the job--studying charts, graphs, diagrams, drawings, slides and videos, reading and comparing many thousands of pages of written material on paper and on the Net, including hand-written material, and closely following what is on screen during Board meetings. Anyone who cannot see any of that has to rely on the skill and judgement of others, which means it is impossible for him to be true to the oath of office he must make on the 6th of November--his statutory promise to do the job to the best of his own skill and judgement. For him, in all the places where eyes are needed, he will have rely completely on the skill and judgement of the others, which makes them de facto Board
Members, unelected.

A guide-dog is useless in the labyrinth of local-government decision-making. A dog cannot read.

And software that can turn computer text into speech is useless in the face of handwritten material and any words that are not in text format. If the format is a scan or a photo that software is helpless.

Congratulations to the three. But you will have to work even harder than you should have to, to compensate for two handicapped men, one handicapped by a chronic lack of time and demonstrably poor judgement, the other by a very restrictive disability.

The 1300-odd people who voted for the two men obviously do not know, or do not care, what that job is.

Party-voting for local-government positions is very stupid. It is also way out of kilter with the law, because successful candidates must at their swearing-in promise to be impartial. Party-politics do not belong in local government. 'Vision Waiheke', the ticket the two men stood on, was just a National Party front; their claim to be independent was flim-flam. The Waiheke Community must now live for the three years with the consequences.

----

Footnote: Waiheke Marketplace claimed in a front-page story by the editor, George Gardner, that the new Board is centre-right, a swing from the far left of the existing Board. Where did George get that nonsense? Three members are right-wing: Tony Sears, Herb Romaniuk and Ray Ericson. Denise Roche is on the left. Eileen Evans would be centre-left. I, as I said in my election leaflet in 2007 am not left-wing, right-wing, tail-feathers or beak. I make decisions on the facts, not on some party-ideology. Only fools do that. So on balance, if you want to put a stupid wing-label on the present Board, it would be centre-right. Certainly not far left. Not left at all. And a much better Board than the new one.

HIDE THE EXPERT ORGANISER!

2010-09-29T14:32:00.001+13:00

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise his own party but thinks he can organise Auckland.

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise five people, including himself, but thinks he can organise 1.5 million people.

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise a tin-pot party of right-wing extremists but thinks he can get right the biggest local-government re-organisation ever attempted in Australasia, a re-organisation of a type that AUT says has never been
attempted anywhere, ever.

Rodney Hide, the man who admits that he did not think through to the human consequences of soliciting into his party a man who had as a 'prank' stolen the identity of a dead baby, but who thinks he can organise the lives of a third of New
Zealanders.

Rodney Hide, the man who ALWAYS tells the truth to the nation...

Rodney Hide, the Mincer of Local Government.

The word hyprocrite comes from an Ancient Greek word, which means actor. Traditional image to represent theatre is a pair of masks, behind which the actor hides himself as he assumed an acted persona. The ACT Party is led by a man called Hide. I do like God's sense of humour.

-------------

Did Waiheke jump joyously into the Super Silly or were we pushed by the thick Mr Hide?

Rodney Hide, the man whose accolytes seriously think that Waiheke, a small village-rural community, belongs with the huge maelstrom of the CBD of New Zealand's biggest city, and manage by plastering over the rule of law with egregious lies to make that outrageous shotgun marriage look as if it fits the rule of democratic law.

It was nothing but the age-old lust for territory, dressed up. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

Section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002 says, 'The purpose of local government is (a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

'When men cannot change things, they change words.' -- Roman proverb.

TELECOM REX ON WAIHEKE

2010-07-30T14:17:00.002+12:00

So King Telecom is telling Waiheke that it is too much of a skinflint to upgrade our 372 exchange so that the entire community can have from it all the modern telecommunication goodies that other communities have.

It is saying that if you want all the wunnerful stuff you have to be moved to a 371 exchange. Thus with the stroke of an arrogant executive pen Telecom Scrooge has removed two of the things that identify us, things we have in common--the iconic fact that for all our telecommunications we all have the unique prefix that means Waiheke, and our friendly habit of quoting to each other only the four digits personal to us.

There was no need for another prefix. The 372 prefix provides 10,000 numbers, and there are oodles left.

Telecom has thus made 372 Waihekeans second-class telecommunications citizens. For first class service you have to be something else. All because it is too bean-counting mean to make 372 a first-class exchange.

Good ole Telecom Rex!

BEWARE OF TEENAGE RIPPLES

2010-07-30T13:25:00.002+12:00

Many years ago in Amsterdam a little boy poked out his tongue one winter's day and touched the iron railing of a bridge. It froze to it and stuck. The fireman had to come and carefully thaw out the joint to get him loose. The newspapers reported the incident, and next day there were dozens of little boys all over Amsterdam with their tongues stuck to bridges.

My case has shown two teenagers on Waiheke Island that they can lie to the police and the court and get away with it, and by that means get an adult into very serious hot water. They can make a false allegation and make it stick, and that the police prosecutor has skilfully shown them how to present themselves in court to achieve that. They have received a malignant education.

Therefore adults on Waiheke are now vulnerable to any teenager with grudge. All he or she needs to do is arrange things so that the target adult is alone with two or more of them, then agree on a story of a criminal act, and the adult is on his or her way to a guilty verdict and possibly a jail sentence.

The teenage grapevine never sleeps, so that How To is bound to get round those who have little interest in telling the truth, care nothing for the harm they do to the lives of others, and have a score to settle.

The recent case where a New Zealand teenager was found guilty of burning the mother of her former boyfriend to death by setting fire to her house because she wanted to get back at him is an extreme example of the same thing.

For adults, particularly on Waiheke, the moral of my story is before you allow yourself to be alone with a couple of teenagers study their shoulders. If there is a chip on them aimed at you, beware! And if you find yourself alone with them, avoid creating even the smallest chip. The court has given them the whip hand.

The Law of Unintended Consequences can be a harsh and terrifying law.

LIES HAVE TRIUMPHED OVER THE TRUTH

2010-07-27T08:54:00.003+12:00

My entire life is concerned with only one thing, perfectly expressed in the words used courts of law: the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. That is the mainspring of my life, it is my paramount, fundamental and over-riding passion.

So it is a terrible shock to have had declared in a New Zealand court of law what I know to be false: that I am a criminal. It is almost unendurable to have watched and listened as two teenagers sat in the witness box and lied their faces off, calmly denied the truth, and were believed by the judge. He believed the liars, he rejected the truth and he convicted an innocent man. Now he will punish me for a crime that I did not commit.

I was accused of hitting on the head a teenager, who with his teenage friend had trespassed on my property on the 25th of May 2010, of hitting him on the head with a branch three feet long and two inches in diameter. Before God's throne I did not. There was no branch, there was no blow upon his head; I did not touch a single hair of his head, directly or indirectly, with anything. That is the truth before the Court of Heaven. But the Court of New Zealand says the opposite.

I did not plead not guilty because I wanted to try to get off the charge by some clever means. I pleaded not guilty because I was not guilty. If I had been guilty I would have pleaded guilty.

My trial has exposed three fundamental flaws in the justice system, which not even the cleverest lawyer on the planet can overcome.

1) The justice system assumes that when people place their right hand on the Bible and asked 'Do you swear before Almighty God that the evidence you are about to give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God,' that they when they say 'Yes' that they will then utter nothing but truth. There will be not a word that is false.

But the days are long gone when most people believed in God, believed the Bible, and
believed that to make that promise before God and break it would bring down on their heads his terrible wrath. Few people nowadays are God-fearing, so that oath is only meaningless words and the book on which they place their hands is an irrelevant object. Many have concern at all about lying. They lie as easily as they breathe.

2) New Zealand law says that in the witness box no one can say 'I am not going to answer that.' Anyone eligible to give evidence can be compelled to give it. But that rests on the oath to tell the truth. Witnesses can be compelled to answer, but they cannot be compelled to tell the truth. So they can say 'I don't know' or 'I can't remember' even though they do know, and therefore they have fulfilled compellability, and cannot be forced to say anything more. They can also lie more directly and say something false, and not be compelled to correct themselves.

3) The court assumes that people will obey a court order. So when in my trial the judge, very rightly, took precautions to ensure that witnesses' statements would not be 'tainted' by what others said, and ordered that while each gave evidence the others would be excluded from the court, he assumed that he had made that order safe by also ordering them not talk to each other during the tea- and lunch-breaks about what had been said in court. He said 'You can talk about anything else. You can talk about the rugby, but must not talk about what has been said in court.' He assumed that they would obey him. But the two teenagers and the mother of the one who said he was hit and the prosecuting policeman went off together at the lunchbreak, and it was obvious when the second teenager gave his evidence afterwards that they had not restricted their conversation to the rugby.

Thus the openings for lies are wide, easily accessible, and cannot be blocked off by the smartest of lawyers. In a case like mine, when it is the word of two teenagers against one man, if the judge believes the liars there is nothing at all with which to counter it. There are many situations in life, for everyone, in which it would be impossible to prove the truth in a court of law. And no one can live preparing every moment for a possible court case. That would make life unendurable. So we are all vulnerable, especially if we have a public position, to being attacked by liars and having so little defence that we are vulnerable to a false conviction.

It was established in the trial that neither teenager saw the alleged blow, because they said they both had their backs to me. And one said he had his back to me when the alleged branch was allegedly picked up. Neither could describe the branch, except to say that it was two or three feet long and two inches in diameter (in spite of the fact that they are taught only in metrics, because New Zealand changed to metrics nearly twenty years before they were born, they both gave the measurements in imperial units, which showed that they had been coached by adults). They claimed not to know what the alleged branch looked like, whether it was rough or smooth, had cut or jagged ends, bark or no bark, projections or twigs or smaller branches. They claimed to know nothing at all about it, except its length and
thickness--in imperial units. Of that they were quite sure. They claimed that they were on my property because they had been taking a shortcut through an adjoining forest reserve, heading to a track southwest of their property, although my property is northeast from it--in exactly the opposite direction.

They claimed that they went my way because one of their dogs heard a noise and rushed off to investigate, and they had followed it,and did not catch up with until they got to my place--which is at least 100 metres away through what they admitted was thick, difficult forest. One of them described the noise as loud and startling. The other said he heard nothing; that only the dog heard it. The alleged victim also said that he had fallen against a tree, but denied that he had hit his head, only his shoulder. First he said he had fallen straight backwards, then when it was pointed out that he had also said that I was behind him he altered the direction he had fallen. So it went, point after point after point.

The complainants went to the police station two days after the alleged assault and to a chiropractor four days later. The only medical evidence presented was by the chiropractor who said that he could not be sure how the injuries that he was shown had occurred--a sore neck and some bruising on his head. He alleged that I had put it there with the non-existent branch. He lied.

The position of the bruise was pointed out by the alleged victim, the policeman and the chiropractor. The three positions did not coincide. The policeman pointed to the crown of the head, but admitted that he had not actually seen the bruise, the alleged victim pointed to a place forward of that, the chiropractor indicated tenderness from the crown across to where a baby has the fontanelle, and the judge did not think it was significant that it would be impossible to deliver a blow from behind and below that would get to the front of the head, which slopes away from anyone behind, especially below. The chiropractor said he could not sure when the injuries had occurred--that they could have occurred at any time during the previous week--i.e., at any time between the 23rd of May and the 29th inclusive. He was seen on the 29th, the police were seen on the 27th and the alleged assault was said to have occurred on the 25th. The chiropractor also said that the injuries could have sustained in many ways, such as by slipping and falling in the bush and hitting against something, and that he had no way of telling, from his examination, how they had been sustained--except for what the teenager had told him, and the chiropractor said that the mother was doing a lot of prompting. She would say something and the boy would agree.

The police admitted that they had not searched for a branch with my DNA on one end and the teenager's DNA on the other. They admitted that they had not called a doctor to examine the bruise on the 27th to establish whether it had been sustained on the 25th. They presented no physical or medical evidence of any kind to the provenance of what they 'saw' on the 27th, and they admitted that their entire case rested on the word of only one teenage trespasser.

The other one saw nothing even of the alleged assault, and even the alleged victim said he had had his back to me.

But the judge said he thought the teenagers were telling the truth. He ignored all the places where their testimonies differed, saying that those only proved that they had not been coached. He did not see the places where, to quote Hamlet, 'There is a kind of confession in your looks, which your modesties have not craft enough to cover.'

He has convicted an innocent man. He will sentence an innocent man. The lies have prevailed over the truth in what is meant to be a temple of truth before God.

And two teenagers have found that it is possible to lie to the police, and lie under oath in a court of law, and get away with it. That cannot do them any good, and it puts them on a slippery downward slope to ever-worse falsifications.

THE EMPIRE ACHIEVES WARP-SPEED!

2010-07-02T17:23:00.003+12:00

Sound the trumpet! Tirrah! Tirrah! Scream 'Major event!' from Trig Hill. Break out the bubbly! ;-) Dance about wildly! Because you will no doubt be ecstatic to know that after more than two and a half years the two computers in the Community Board office are now fully functional. Which includes the one in the room that is also the Civil Defence office. So the Community Board and Civil Defence at last have a fully-functional office.

The first problem was that the computers had been programmed by The Empire to refuse us access to useless stuff. Like Google. And www.legislation.govt.nz. We were told that we might use it to look at porn. Please! But we were allowed to look at Auckland City Council's website. What was that about porn again?

They finally did remove that obstacle, after pretending for a while that it was too hard, but then the printer on our main computer, which had been manufactured shortly before Adam saw Eve, was found to have died even earlier.

So a new printer was installed in the room (actually a printer/copier/scanner). Unfortunately the cable connecting it to the computer was not installed. Even more unfortunately that was found to be a problem. It seems that the software needed for
telepathic connection had a bug. Probably made by the same people who made Auckland's consultation process, and who wrote in its Governance Statement that the principle of 'subsidiarity' applies--that 'decisions should be made at the lowest possible level.'

Then there was the enormous problem of finding $1000 to pay the bloke/blokess to install the cable. A cost that looks trivial beside the fact that that machine is also meant to be the front-line printer for the island's Civil Defence. A properly-equipped Civil Defence, surely, can justify $1000.

But I bet you were thinking that a non-functional printer on the island for the Waiheke Community Board was no real problem. That all Board bods could just go over to the city and use the office provided for all Auckland's Community Board Members high in the Tower of the Empire. Unfortunately the printer attached to that computer had also been manufactured shortly before Adam saw Eve, and had died ditto...

But now--tirrah! tirrah! tirrah!--everything is up and running on Waiheke. Because The Empire abandoned the notion of putting a cable from the computer to the new
printer/copier/scanner, and instead installed a second printer beside the computer.

Which means that the Waiheke Community Board at last has a fully-functioning office, ditto Civil Defence (sort of, because the second printer is only a printer, not a printer/scanner).

Two and a half years! Wow! Thanks for hurrying, guys.

A ONE-WORD JOKE

2010-05-13T16:01:00.001+12:00

Progress.

LOCO GOVERNMENT DEMOCRACY IN NZ

2010-05-13T11:47:00.000+12:00

We think of New Zealand as a democratic country, a country with a democratic system of government--representative democracy. But at local level, in many parts of the country, including ours, we do not. We have been robbed of it by three people who have been given high authority, but have failed to act responsibly and obey the law.

Before I became a member of the Waiheke Community Board I had never thought much about what happened after I put a tick next to a name on a ballot-paper, regardless of whether it was for a general election or a local-body election.

If anyone had asked me, I would probably have said that I expected those who won seats to be working full-time for their communities. I assumed that elected jobs in both levels of government were full-time occupations. And when I read the present version of the Local Government Act, which we have operated under since 2002, my assumption was confirmed. Even for elected Members of Community Boards (MCBs). Because the list set down for their role, particularly if put beside the rightful expectations and desires of their communities, makes it crystal clear that theirs is a full-time occupation and commitment.

Anyone who disputes that is not reading what it is written or listening to what is expected. MCBs clock on in October one year and clock off in October three years later.

But the assumption, the statutory expectations, and communities' expectations cannot possibly be fulfilled. Because human beings have some pesky addictions--to breathing, to eating, and to having the protection of cloth and the shield of a roof against dying of exposure (and getting the computer wet).

Unfortunately the Remuneration Authority, whose responsibility it is to set remuneration for various groups of people in public service, including MPs and those elected to local-body positions, has shown that it does not care much about local-body people, or local government or local democracy. Because it blatantly disobeys the statutory rules for setting local-government remuneration, instead using a weird rule of its own invention--the 'Pool Formula', invented in 2001 by a man called Hutton Peacock. With that it has set the remuneration so low for all MCBs, and for many Councillors round the country, that they cannot stay alive on the money. Some are paid as little as $206 a year; the average for MCBs is $4907.

They are therefore compelled to have some other form of income, so with the best will in the world they cannot work full-time at what they were elected to do. They are forced to be part-timers at local government. Otherwise they will quickly look like advanced cases of anorexia, after which they will graduate to being local bodies of the cemetery kind.

The effect on the democratic government of the country is equally severe. It is impossible for us to get a true democracy at local level, because the range of people who can stand for election is savagely restricted. Therefore our local democracy cannot be properly representative. And the standard of local government cannot be what it should be, and could be, because if you pay peanuts you get either monkeys or malnourished, crippled lions. You get people who are born incompetent, or competent people who cannot express all their competence because they have to treat local government as a side issue. You get deadwood or stumps of kauri.

A wage-earner cannot legally be paid less than $12.50 an hour, and fulltime employment is legally defined as at least 30 hours a week, so someone at the bottom of the heap will be earning at least $19,500 a year. At an average of $4907, MCBs are obviously far below the lowest of the low. No MCB earns anything like $19,500. Many councillors are in the same boat. In 28 of the 72 District Councils (39%) their remuneration is less than $19,500 (if you call that $20,000 it is 29 District Councils--40%). In one they are paid only $4000-odd. In 61 of our District Councils (85%) councillors are below the median income for New Zealand. In only 10 councils is remuneration above the average. There is obviously no way that local-government ballot-papers can compete on the open market for the best talent the country has to offer.

That is the country we live in, thanks to the Remuneration Authority's abysmal failure to comply with the excellent mandatory criteria that have set down in law--put there to ensure that both the community and those elected to serve it are treated fairly, that local-government remuneration is competitive, and that a representative range of skilled people are attracted to it.

AUCKLAND LOGOS UNREAL AND REAL

2010-04-30T15:49:00.003+12:00

Sssst! We have all been told that the wunnerful new Auckland Empire wants a new logo, a new symbol with which it can sell itself--it's 'world-class' self--to the world. But what we have not all been told (please stick your tongue in your cheek) is that the symbol has already been chosen.

Yes, they hired a team of two hundred Abyssinian consultants (there were none left in Australia or anywhere else who would work for them), allocated half a billion dollars of budget, gave each of them a yellow jacket, and locked them up in a secret hide-away for a whole year.

And after working like over-the-top Trojans every single nanosecond of that time (please stick your tongue even further into your cheek) they at last came up with the perfect symbol. It is brilliant, a masterpiece, an incredible stroke of collective genius. Ain't it amazing what you can get for half a billion nowadays!? It is so brilliant that it must be introduced with a triple blaze of trumpets! Tirrah! Tirrah! Tirrah! Thank you.

Wow! Behold! The new symbol for Auckland: a small spherical object, about the size of yer average marble, coloured orange on the outside and brown on the inside. It is rumoured that it will be popularised by being sold (only to suckers) in dark blue packets garnished with orange here and there.

......................

The piece above was conceived long ago, shared with a number of people privately, and written and published elsewhere before the winning logo in the real(?) world was announced. My reaction when I saw it was a howl of delight:

O goody! Seven jaffas on sticks.

......................

On second and third thoughts, in August 2011, perhaps they are not jaffas. Perhaps they are all-day-suckers, which is what we are in falling for Rodney Hide's blather (not that we had much choice). Or gob-stoppers, to shut us up, on the principle that, to quote Hide, 'putting local back into local government' actually means shutting up the locals and letting the mainland Sir Humphreys rule. Das Mainland Uber Alles...

SIR HUMPHREY RULES THE ROAD--OK?

2010-04-22T17:46:00.000+12:00

The Waiheke Transport Forum is a community body set up to advise the Waiheke Community Board on transport matters. At the April meeting, during yet another vigorous debate on The Esplanade (whether it should be closed to all but emergency traffic and reserved for pedestrians, cyclists and equestrians), a council officer became so angry that he blurted out the blunt truth.

That Yes Minister television series, in which the bureaucrat Sir Humphrey rules, with democracy always a distant second (unlike public servants, who really do serve the people faithfully and well), is a penetrating portrayal of real life. But it is still a shock to be bluntly told the same thing out in the real world. The Sir Humphreys are not normally purveyors of the crystal-clear truth.

The issue of The Esplanade issue is controversial, so the Transport Forum at its previous meeting in March had spent a long time thrashing out the wording of a survey to be sent out to the community so that the Community Board would know what most Waihekeans want. Arriving at the final text took a long time because there are many different views, but in the end we saw the miracle of a unanimous vote of approval. On Waiheke!

At the next meeting of the Community Board that wording was endorsed.

Then Sir Humphrey struck. Council officers wanted changes and additions; they wanted what they consider to be a survey that obeys what they have decided is the Auckland City Council standard for surveys (which of course includes irrelevant stuff with which they can fine-tune the vote--i.e., our votes are weighed on their scales instead of just being counted; then they can interpret the vote to their liking). But they were bluntly told to accept our democratic will.

That is why The Esplanade Survey was back Transport Forum's agenda in April, and why the council officer, the traffic engineer, ultimately blew a fuse when he was told that that was the wording that had been democratically agreed to, so that is to be the wording that goes out to the community.

He bluntly told us that if that was to be the wording the survey would NOT be going out. He also bluntly told us that the decision about The Esplanade would not be made by us. It would be made by 'the officer with the delegation--Andrew Allen' (the senior traffic engineer over in the city, and his boss).

Section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002, which is very the heart of local-government law in New Zealand, says 'The purpose of local government is (a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities in the present and for the future.'

All the Sir Humphreys should read that, learn that, get that nailed into their skulls and predicate every decision on that--on that and nothing else. (Copy it out and put it on the wall by your phone, and quote it every time you are getting the run-around from a Sir Humphrey--tell him plainly that his job exists first and foremost to fulfil that law.)

But what they actually do is to be Sir Humphreys. In that they are supported by a professional trade association called the Society of Local Government Managers (www.solgm.org.nz), a kind of Protect Sir Humphrey Society. Its view of how things should be run in local government is officer-centered, and is spelt out in black and white in the 2010 version of the diary it issued to bods in local government.

The preface, jointly written by SOLGM and the law-firm Simpson Grierson (which happens also to be Auckland City Council's external legal adviser), quotes section 12 of the Local Government Act 2002 virtually word for word--but then it tacks on an extra bit: ''For the purpose of carrying out its role a local authority has full capacity to carry on or undertake any activity or business, do any act, or enter into any transaction, and for these purposes has full rights, power and privileges (referred to as the power of general competence)'.

That bit in brackets is not part of the law, it is only an antiquated lawyers' paraphrase of it, but as you can see it means something very different in everyday speech. And if it is taken in isolation, any officers bent on getting their own way will arrive at a very different conclusion than if they were aiming 'to enable local democratic decision-making and action'.

It should be noted that 'local authority' in section 12 means the elected council, not the employed one, because the employed are legally defined as employed by the local authority--which is a fact usually denied by the CEO, who claims, contrary to law, that he employs them, and that he is the only employee of the council.

The phrase 'general competence' is deep in council officers' mythology; they are led to believe that it is in the Local Government Act 2002. It is not. Nowhere.

Using it as it is understood in everyday speech is a gross misinterpretation of section 12, which is just saying that councils have the legal power to make legal decisions, which is obviously needed, otherwise their decisions would neither be valid nor enforceable. But to paraphrase section 12 in a way which in effect says that council officers have the power to make decisions regardless of what the people want, and that they somehow have a superior level of competence, is somewhere between blatant arrogance and bureaucratic dictatorship.

Thus does Sir Humphrey, as always, run things by the mythical laws in his head instead of the ones printed in the lawbooks. The Esplanade, and everything else on Waiheke, have to take the consequences. OK?

COSTLY PIPERS AND SUGAR-DADDIES

2010-04-16T19:27:00.001+12:00

Those who lust after millions of dollars from Auckland--far above the $16-million-plus that is collected on the island, are overlooking the simple arithmetic of a big, nasty problem.

A couple of years ago the Waiheke Community Board was briefed by a senior bean-counter in Auckland City Council who laid out the plain facts--every dollar spent on capital works here adds 14 cents to the operating expenditure every year, forever afterwards.

That means that for every $7 million pumped in by Auckland there has to be an extra $1 million added to the rates forever (plus inflation).

Obviously the only way that iniquitous situation can be sustained is by being increasingly dependent on Auckland's handouts. Thus we fall into the aid-dependency trap. And the loss-of-local-democracy trap, because he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Greed for someone else's money destroys self-determination. It cripples local decision-making and action. When we accept Auckland's money we also must accept its control of our community.

The problem with a Sugar-daddy is that sooner or later he wants his pound of sweetened flesh. He is like the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel. He is not feeding us for our best nourishment, he is bent on making us tasty for his own dinner-table.

The argument by those who lust for Auckland's dollars--that we deserve Auckland's money because Aucklanders come here on holiday--is specious claptrap. First the ones with baches here are paying rates here--which is a third of ratepayers--so there is a solid contribution, but from insiders not outsiders, people who have a true commitment here. Second, it is nonsense to expect a portion of Auckland's rates to follow Aucklanders wherever they go on holiday. Tell that to Ruapehu, to Whangamata, to Bali, to Fiji, to Surfer's Paradise, to London, to Timbuktu. We no more deserve a portion of Auckland's rates than we do of Shanghai's, on the grounds that many Chinese come here.

A tourist destination that does that not stand on its own two feet, instead choosing to stand on someone else's, cannot complain when the other feet take it where it does not want to go.

On top of all that is what should be obvious, that using the rates collected from one group of ratepayers to better the lot of other ratepayers, above or far above what the others could afford to do for themselves, or in natural justice justify, is also a breach of the Bill of Rights Act, especially when you do not have a mandate from the group that was robbed. But never let good law get in the way of yet another example of brain-damaged ideological 'policy'.

WAIHEKE COUNCIL NOT BOARD

2010-04-08T10:37:00.000+12:00

An island is a place apart in body and mind. Islanders are people who choose to separate themselves from the madding crowd and live apart. And they want to be masters and mistresses of their own fate. Waihekeans do not want to be dictated to by It That Must Be Obeyed--The Empire Over The Water. We could live harmoniously with a community like ours, but Mr Yellowjacket has stomped mercilessly on that. We have been lumped in with the CBD. It has been the 1989 takeover all over again, this time with hobnailed, steel-toed boots, and Kalashnikovs at the ready. The city-siders, the bods who can never get into their heads and hearts what the island is all about, have cemented in their takeover.

But there is a candle at the end of Hide Tunnel. His legislation makes a division between regional and local decisions, and says that the only decisions that are not to be made locally are regional ones. And when John Carter etc., talk about regional it is plain that what they mean is Bombay to Wellsford. So for us there is nothing regional. EVERYTHING is local--the island, and its setting, which is the Hauraki Gulf, not Bombay to Wellsford. So ALL decision-making should be in our hands. Nothing should be decided by the Super-silly.

Therefore the Waiheke Local Board, which under the new regime replaces the Waiheke Community Board in October, should be where the democratic buck rests. Not on some bureaucratic city desk where democracy gets slaughtered and diced.

So we must fight tooth and nail to turn that candle into a bonfire. Which means that to get what we want--Waiheke deciding for Waiheke--we must do everything we can to make the Waiheke Local Board, in effect, the Waiheke Council. Anything less must be resisted to the hilt. Therefore anyone who stands for the Local Board who does not want that, and who will not say so explicitly, will really be saying that we should be under the Super-silly boot--and therefore should be ignored on the ballot-paper.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS BY REMOTE CONTROL

2010-03-18T20:11:00.000+13:00

I had a call from Nielsen Research last Sunday, calling on behalf of Auckland City Council. Why bug me on a Sunday? And why hire a research company at great expense? Is the Council not capable of using a telephone itself?

Nielsen wanted to know how the Council had responded to my complaint. 'Which complaint?' I asked. They did not know. Much later I realised that it was one I had made last year. So why did it take so long, at great expense, to get another organisation to ask that question?

The researcher read a blurb that said something along the lines of, 'The Council wants to make sure it is delivering the best service, so it is important to it to find out what you think of it.' I laughed. 'Everyone laughs when I read that bit,' she said.

If Auckland City was genuinely concerned to know how its staff handled your complaint, it would get them to ask you at the time, and would record your response for playing back to a senior manager. That would be instant feedback where it counts, at virtually no expense. Nielsen records its conversation with you many months later, but at great expense. The delay is so long that you will probably have probably forgotten the details, or even what it was all about, as I had, and the researcher will not know, so cannot jog your memory, because she has not been told. Bad management, at great expense.

So the result of the call was zilch. Zero. Nothing. Except for what went into Nielsen's pocket--out of the pockets of ratepayers.

GOING BUMP ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT

2010-03-12T20:51:00.000+13:00

Potholes are not historic places. There is no requirement to preserve them for future generations. So before roads are resealed all the lumps and bumps and hollows and pits should be removed. Otherwise all we get is more chips stuck over the same shonky surface.

And roads are thoroughfares for all forms of transport, not just motor vehicles. Next to them, pedestrians are the most numerous and Auckland's traffic engineers should never, ever forget that.

Therefore on the many roads on the island that are too narrow for formal footpaths (and at a minimum of $422 a metre should never be provided with them), the natural grass verges and the tracks worn into them by countless feet should be sacrosanct. Obliterating them with seal that gets wider at every resealing is thoughtless and
stupid. It puts every pedestrian in harm's way.

Auckland City Council, like all New Zealand councils, has a legal responsibility to promote the well-being of the community. That means caring about human beings. Putting them in front of motor vehicles could be regarded as less than careful.

Unless you want them flattened into all those potholes. Cheap filling!

THE ATA MARKETS LOCAL BOARDS

2010-03-01T09:09:00.000+13:00

The ATA's 54-page discussion paper on the Local Boards for the new-and-shiny 'super'-Auckland regime is a nice marketing exercise, full of smoke and mirrors. But what are we offered? Community Boards, depending on their Council, already have, or can have, the same or greater responsibilities and powers (look at North Shore's Community Boards, who decide on resource-consents, Thames-Coromandel's that decide the local rates, Southlands that are used to the hilt). What it will boil down to, as always, is the will of the Council and the bureacracy.

Much of the wording governing Local Boards is exactly the same as that governing Community Boards, except that Local Boards are part of the Auckland Council structure, not the community structure--which is not a good move from the point of view of democracy: their precious independence has gone. And the agreement between the Council and the Boards has a different label. But Local Boards, just like Community Boards, do not have control over local staff. They cannot hire and fire. All staff are controlled from the centre.

This statement on page 12 in the ATA's puffery is a killer: 'The purpose of the local boards is to enable democratic decision-making by, and on behalf of, communities within the local board area, and to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities within the local board area. Local Board are part of the Auckland Council, so they do not need to have their own powers to acquire, hold, or dispose of property, or appoint, suspend, or remove employees. They are not community boards, a committee of the governing body or incorporated bodies.'

Note the weasel-words 'so they do not need...' A logical connection is pretended, but there is no such connection. For real local control they need those powers. That is obvious. But they are not being given them.

In contrast, Community Boards in Thames-Coromandel can second staff for projects of their own. Auckland's Local Boards will have to wait at the CEO's door, cap in hand. 'Please sir...'

If we get a Council that is not on our side, as Waiheke has now, it will be struggle and battle all the way. And ditto if that huge, powerful, centrally-controlled bureaucracy wants something different to what the Local Board wants.

If we had a re-run of the rubbish contract saga under this new regime the outcome would be exactly the same.

The fact that councillors do not sit on the Local Boards as they do now means that there will be no direct contact between the Boards and the Council at that level.

The only bright spot in the ATA's document is in the discussion on page 25 on the role of Local Boards in such things as libraries, in which it says they should decide what new library buildings should be. So we can take them at their word and enlist their support to get the library we want--i.e., a library, not a libary/service-centre. The budget has been allocated, but the building is not what we want, so we can ask the ATA to approve funds only for what we want.

Words are easy. So are lies. Auckland City Council's governance statement trumpets 'subsidiarity'--i.e., decisions made at the lowest possible level. Do they do that? No. They treat Community Board with contempt. So the trumpeting is arrant lies.

Legislation is like the lock on your door. It only keeps honest people out. You cannot legislate honesty, integrity, adherence to human rights, local determination. The dishonest, the knaves, the liars, the fools, the incompetent will still be what they are. If they are in power all we will get is YMCA--yesterday's muck cooked again.

Does Waiheke need this monstrous edifice? No. And Great Barrier even less (it used to be run by three people; now it will have 6000). Both communities can run themselves far better than any unsympathetic mainland empire ever could.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT DEFINED

2010-02-18T16:55:00.000+13:00

Local Government: An oxymoron practised by local bodies, which is a term made up from 'local' as in anaesthetic and 'body' as in dead.

REMUNERATION AND SUPER-SILLY OLIGARCHY

2010-02-18T16:51:00.000+13:00

The Remuneration Authority is treasonously corrupt. Treasonous because it has betrayed the country, corrupt because it has replaced with an illegal formula the superb mandatory criteria laid down Clause 7 of Schedule 7 in the Local Government Act 2002. It has thereby kneecapped local government for years, depriving New Zealand of local government democracy. Democracy is not democracy unless it is representative. You cannot have representative government if a true cross-section of the community is barred from standing for election because no one can live on a pittance.

The present remuneration for Community Boards is a part-time salary for a full-time job, a national average of $4000 to $5000. No one can live on that, so the only people who can stand are those who have another form of income, which also means they cannot give the local-body job their full attention. So ratepayers are short-changed two ways. They do not get a representative selection to choose from at elections, and afterwards they do not get the service they expected and have the right to.

When they voted they ticked a selection of persons. What they got is only fractions of persons.

Even at regional level. Auckland Regional Councillors are the lowest-paid regional councillors in the country, on $22,000 a year. $22,000 for a high-level management job!

But Rodney Hide refuses to do anything about the Remuneration Authority (that is the same guy who wants the Auckland region to be well-run). Therefore Local Boards will be in the same situation as Community Boards. But to make matters worse there will be a bureaucracy of 6000, and history proves that large bureaucracies are never good, efficient public-servants. To make matters even worse the proposal is that Local Boards will come under that bureaucracy. That is wrong. They are the elected, they should be associated with the mayor's department.

The notion that you get better local government by the massive centralisation of political and bureaucratic power is fundamentally flawed.

It is ironic that the leader of the ACT Party, the party that worships the idol of competition, by setting up this state within a state, the state of Auckland within the state of New Zealand running under different local-body legislation from the rest of the country, has eliminated competition from local government.

Everywhere else in New Zealand areas that pass the population threshold of 10,000 can apply to have their own council, or if they are on the edge of a district and their analysis shows that the council over the border would deliver better local government they can apply to be transferred. But Rodney Hide's triple-whammy legislation deprives 1.4 million people of both options, because it takes precedence over the legislation that makes it possible (the Local Government Act 2002).

The whole shambolic upheaval is nothing but an ego-trip by a yellow-jacketed fool who thinks you have to turn the world upside down to crack a peanut. The man is a power-freak on steroids. Everything necessary (truly necessary, that is) could be achieved under the Local Government Act 2002, with perhaps a tweak here and there.

Some Community Boards, which happen to be blessed with far better councils than Auckland City Council, already have the sort of powers that are wanted by the latent Local Boards--such as doing the budgets for their communities and determining the local rates for them. And they can second staff to work for them on projects to benefit their local communities.

The Local Boards need the fair remuneration laid down in law, they need ready access to staff of their own, and they need control over local money.

Waiheke does not need 6000 people to run an island of 8000. Great Barrier does not need 6000 to run an island of 800.

This is vast upheaval, an expensive upheaval, a new system that is to be dumped on 1.4 million people, untried and untested, under which huge areas will descend from having their own local council to having a single councillor and a kneecapped Local Board. LOCAL government? No.

Good local government is government that is local and government that is good. It has to be both or it is neither. The Super Silly is neither, and cannot be either. For our small community, out here on the fringes of it it things will be worse than they have been since 1989.

In 1989 Waiheke went from 100% of the vote, 100% of the say and 100% of the councillors to 2.3% of the vote, even less of the say and 1 beseiged councillor out of 20. Now we are to go to 0.6% of the vote, even less of the say, and only a share in a councillor with a city mindset. We have been ruled by a city mindset for the last twenty years. We have proved to the hilt that that does not work. We have been at the mercy of Auckland's integrity for twenty years. Sadly, there is not much integrity to be found there. Now that situation is being made even worse.

'Community of interest' includes people who have a real, deep interest in your community, because their hearts and minds are in the same place. They care because they understand. Auckland does not, never has, and never will. Especially its CBD.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. There is a consequence to every act. And, sadly, to every ACT Party.

The much-vaunted, much-heralded Third Bill turned out to be a mess that a dog's breakfast would not be seen dead with, a document beside which the proposed Hauraki Gulf District Plan that was inflicted upon us looks like a splendidly concise exercise in tidy logical thought.

Waiheke will be worse off than it has been in the last twenty years under Auckland City Council. All we can do, as usual, is make a very loud protest, but the hurricane of ego-tripping, power-freakish political change will drown our voices in its cacophony. We can scream into this destructive wind, and scream we must, but we know that little or no notice will be taken. The weasel-words from power-mad unreason will carry the day.

CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS

2009-12-23T18:39:00.000+13:00

Marketplace asked a number of maily island people in Local Government to reflect seriously and/or humorously on Christmas, by answering a list of questions.

The real meaning of Christmas is that it celebrates the birth of Jesus. It is a celebration that began with most important family in history, which was the seed of the most important extended family--the global Christian family. Jesus Christ is the reason for the season.

How will I be spending Christmas? First and foremost, being eternally thankful for the real reason for Christmas, the coming into this world of God's Son, Jesus Christ, and for all that that means.

Then wishing that Rodney Hide would put a sock in it--before he was born. And that 'Santa' will take him back to the North Pole and dump him somewhere. And feeling sorry for Rudolph for having to carry Rodney (and his girlfriend, of course) all that way--being dumbed down to a kind of international wheelie-bin service.

What is the most fun I have had at Christmas or New Year? Knitting a sock for Rodney Hide. A large sock.

My predictions for 2010? All true Waihekeans will be knitting humungous socks for Rodney Hide. And writing sacks (not bins) of retrospective letters to Santa and Rudolph. And that we will wake up and this will only have been a nightmare, and at the foot of the bed will be a pillow-case overflowing with a bright new Waiheke Council. And that Rodney Hide will be nominated in the New Year Honours List for a special award: TGTSW (The
Grinch That Stole Waiheke). And that on Rodney's next overseas jaunt some kind airline will deliver his luggage back to Wellington, but lose him.

What is my New Year's resolution? Learn to knit large socks faster.

THE LITTERBUG COUNCIL OFFICER

2009-12-23T18:35:00.000+13:00

Thank you Michael McQuillan! We used to have an island on which rubbish bags went out on Monday and Tuesday, and were gone within hours.

Now, thanks to him, we get rubbish bags and wheelie bins all over the place for days on end, cluttering the footpaths and berms.

Permanent mess.

McQuillan should read, get into his skull, and obey, section 10 in the Local Government Act 2002, which defines the purpose of local government as: '(a) To enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of communities; and (b) To promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

With people like him replacing democratic decision-making with bureaucratic, the word 'progress' has become a one-word joke.

OPEN LETTER TO ALAN KNIGHT

2009-12-14T14:21:00.001+13:00

As you can see from the blog at this link, a man can be so possessed by unreasoning, implacable hatred that he descends to puerile insult in a vain attempt to justify his hatred.

As has been wisely said, 'Hatred is the poison you drink in the hope that someone else will die.' It has no effect on the hated; it destroys the hater. And he wastes life expressing his hatred.

One day outside the supermarket that expression reached a venomous extreme, when he hurled this at me: 'Murder would be too good for you.'

I do not hate you, Alan. But I do feel very sorry for you. 'Lord of Misrule' is lord of nothing.

God bless you.

ROCK-CLIMBING EVENT A GREAT SUCCESS

2009-12-12T22:59:00.002+13:00

The Rock-climbing Event has been a great success. It far exceeded my best hopes. Nearly four hundred people, mainly children, took the opportunity to scale the nine-metre faces of Rockup Limited's mobile rock-climbing rig, many of them triumphing over a fear of heights in the process. The rig has four faces, so four climbers can be going up at once, each on a triple safety harness attached to a hydraulically-damped wire-rope belay, so when they have reached the top and pressed the siren-button that signals their success they abseil gently down to the foam mat at the bottom. Ditto if they fall off. The detailed attention to safety in the design and operation of the equipment was most noticeable.

The event, which was fully sponsored, was run in two stages. The first stage was an educational programme run at Waiheke Primary School on the 9th of December and Te Hurihi Primary School on the 10th and 11th. Classes were put through a very impressive process that emphasised safety, teamwork, communication and organisation. The climbmaster, Joe, a skilled 21-year-old Englishman and his assistant, Taylor, a 22-year-old American woman, did a superlative job. Each class was divided in small teams, usually of three children, who competed for points, gained by reaching the siren-button at top of the wall and by working together to keep to the simple rules that Joe had taught them. During that stage over two hundred children did the climb, most more than once, many several times. Well done, everyone.

It was very easy to choose the prizewinner for the best team on the island, because of the seventy teams that climbed the wall while the rig was at the primary schools, one stood out. A three-girl team at Waiheke Primary School that called itself Fruit-salad, made up of Savanah, Tahnee and Lochie, reached the top a total of sixteen times, well ahead of any other team. A boy's team at Te Purihi did well, but Fruit-salad's excellent teamwork, good organisation, speed of changeover (swapping the harness from one girl to the next) and massive score put it in a class of its own. Super well done, girls!

The second stage was the five-hour public event staged on Saturday the 12th where the new supermarket is to be built in Belgium Street (many thanks to Tony Pope for making that available). There, one wall was dominated by those who wanted to go for speed-prizes in various age-groups. Two walls were used for the Mum-and-child and Dad-and-child teams who wanted to go for the speed-prizes in those categories. At its peak that stage of the event was putting through about a hundred climbs an hour. Upwards of a hundred and fifty people climbed the wall that day,making a total for the island of about four hundred. Over the four days of the event the wall was climbed about 1600 times (which works out at about $3.50 a climb, less that the usual charge of $5).

In the up-to-eight age-group the speed-prize for boys was won by Kahn Nicholson and one for girls by Alex Hynds.

In the nine-to-twelve age-group the speed-prize for boys was won by Amara Sidibe, whose best time out of seven climbs was an astonishing 15 seconds--the fastest climb timed on the island. Second prize went to Leo Tomczyk, who was only 2 seconds behind Amara at the end of a to-and-fro tussle that went on most of the afternoon, and which saw him go up the speed-wall eleven times, but still be full of beans and wanting more. The prize for girls in that age-group was won by Rachelle Perry, whose best time was a fast 19 seconds.

In the thirteen-to-fifteen age-group the prize for boys was won by Gus Falvey. The prize for girls was won by Forrest Denize, who went up that wall till her hands could take no more, ending nine closely-packed climbs with best time of 19 seconds.

The special-achiever awards for the children who stood out amongst the many who triumphed over their fears were Tess MacIntyre, Thomas Coddlington and Calla Andrews. Tess froze, high up, on her first two attempts, but pulled herself together and got to the top. Thomas could not face the wall all, but overcame his fears and went up it, higher and higher each time. Calla was too afraid to go on the wall when it went to her school, but at the public event on Saturday she went up it like a squirrel, several times, and turned in such fast times that her best climb was only two seconds behind the winner in her age-group, Rachelle Perry. Well done, children!

The speed-prize in the girls 16-19 age-group was won by Liz Worthy, who hardly drew breath after completing her first climb then went up the speed-climb in only 23 seconds (no boys in that age-group had a go, so the speed-prize that had been designated for them went to Amara Sidibe).

The speed-prize for the best Dad-and-child team was won by Gary Gray and his son Zion, and for the best Mum-and-child team by Jane Burn and her son Tom (in 37 and 31 seconds respectively).

The speed-prizes for adults were won by Darian Brown, who in spite of the rain pelting down at the end went up in 19 seconds, and by Lucy Bennett who breezed up in 22 seconds.

Special thanks to all the sponsors, without whom the event would not have been possible. The major part of the cost was met by the Waiheke Community Board from its events budget, followed by TPI and Tony Pope. The balance came (listing them in no particular order) from First National Real Estate Oneroa, TheArtistGoldsmith Oneroa, Ostend Medical Centre, Oneroa Medical Centre, and The Barn. The prizes were generously donated by Fullers, Gulf Sound & Vision, Oneroa Four Square (which donated the four-dozen muesli bars that rewarded each member of the winning teams at the schools), OutThere, Oneroa/Ostend Unichem Pharmacies and Waiheke Vets.

As I said to Joe and Taylor, 'The benefit you have brought to this community is incalculable.' When people face a challenge, overcome their fears and stretch their boundaries the benefit is felt by many others, not just them.

I hope this will become an annual event.

SHRINKAGE!

2009-11-26T12:44:00.000+13:00

Have you noticed that purveyors of groceries are increasingly pulling a very neat trick? Instead of raising their prices they reduce the size of the packet/jar/tube/bottle/etc and keep the price the same (approximately).

The problem is that that is not sustainable. Sooner or later the packet/jar/tube/bottle/etc gets so small that it vanishes.

Which means that in a few years' time they will be selling us nothing for $2000 a year.

Sounds like the rates.

ROCKUP TO THE ROCK-CLIMBING EVENT

2009-11-26T12:38:00.000+13:00

Thanks to a list of sponsors, the four-day rock-climbing event that was planned for early December by the Waiheke Community Board will be going ahead. Rockup's mobile all-weather rock-climbing unit will be here from the 9th to the 12th of December (all weathers except high winds).

On Day One it will be at Waiheke Primary School for its students, and some parents. On Days Two & Three it will be at Te Huruhi for its students, and some parents, and while there it will also be open to Waiheke High School students.

On Day Four, Saturday the 12th, it will be available to everyone. It will be in Belgium Street, where the new supermarket is to be built, behind the bus stop over the road from The Barn.

It it is 8 metres high, and has four faces, so four people can be using it at once. Climbers are attached with a triple-lock harness to a hydraulically-damped belaying wire, so if they fall off, and when they have reached the top, they float gently down. Two Rockup staff will be in attendance.

Admission, thanks to the sponsors, will be free. But a gold-coin donation will be welcome; proceeds will be allocated by the Waiheke Community Board to community groups.

Major sponsors are TPI, Tony Pope (who also made available the site of the new supermarketfor Saturday the 12th), and the Waiheke Community Board. Other sponsors are Ostend Medical Centre, First National Real Estate Waiheke, TheArtistGoldsmith Oneroa, The Barn, Oneroa Accident & Medical Centre, Offshore Rentals, and the last few dollars were chipped in by Martin Green.

Prizes will given to people in various age-groups who make it to the top in the shortest time. There will also be a prize for the fastest mother-and-daughter and father-and-son teams (the son and daughter must be under twelve), and there will be prizes for those who overcome some handicap and make it to the top.

Prizes have so far been donated by Fullers, Gulf Sound & Vision, Oneroa Four Square, Out There, and Waiheke/Ostend Village Pharmacies. Anyone else who wants to donate a prizes or prizes please contact Nobilangelo, the Member of the Community Board who is organising the event, on 2242.

To see what the rock-climbing unit looks like, click here.

YJ plus ATA plus AC equals YMCA

2009-11-12T11:44:00.002+13:00

The news is getting worse for those who are pinning their hopes for Waiheke on the Local Board system that is to take over from the present Community Boards.

To be effective Boards of whatever name need time, money and people. They need to have control over the local budgets on behalf of their community, and their members need a full-time income because it is a full-time job. They need staff, which means staff they choose, not ones chosen by the corporate-culture cookie-cutter wielded
by the Chief Bureaucrat (CEO). They need meaningful input into the decision-making for their community, so they must not be under the thumb of the bureaucracy. But the structure proposed by Mr Yellow-Jacket's Auckland Transition Agency (ATA), puts them under two managers in the third level of bureaucratic managers, i.e., two levels below the CEO--they are local bodies neatly filed under bureaucracy like corpses in a morgue (see ATA10 Discussion Docu04 pages 13&14).

That is dead wrong. They should be associated with the mayor's department and linked directly to it. The elected should be with the elected. They are representatives of the people so they should be over the employed, not under them. We have had far too much of Sir Humphreys running things. They are the public servants, not the masters. The proposed structure is just YMCA (Yesterday's Muck Cooked Again).

Fair remuneration is of course needed for elected representatives to stay alive, but it is also absolutely vital for the existence of a democracy. If people cannot stand for the Community/Local Boards because they cannot afford to be members, it is impossible to get a truly representative local government. Government that is not
representative is not democracy.

In refusing to attend to the issue of remuneration, and allowing his ATA to muscle for under-the-thumb Local Boards, Mr Yellow-Jacket is saying loud and clear that what he really means by 'putting the local back into local government' is to jab it with a massive local anaesthetic.

THE BLOTCH IN THE BAY

2009-11-05T20:42:00.001+13:00

The Blotch in the Bay--the proposed $10-million-dollar 150-berth marina at Matiatia--is a bad idea. It is only in the interests of a tiny number; it is not in the best interests of the Waiheke community. I don't care whether those who get the berths are fat-cats or thin-cats. That is no place for a cat-basket and kitty-litter. The development would forever spoil the bay and skew how it is used and developed. It is the far-from-thin end of a very long wedge, which would open the doors to a string of even worse developments.

Matiatia Bay is our *public* transport hub, the bus-stop for the island's floating bus. To build 150 private 'boat-garages' there is cross-purposes high on the steroids of greed.

Its proponent first represented it as for the public good, saying there are not enough moorings for island boaties. But when questioned by the Community Board he admitted he would not be able to control who got the berths. That exposed his real motive: his wallet.

Auckland boaties would love it. It takes 2-5 hours to sail out this far, but with a marina at Matiatia they could keep their boats here, catch a 35-minute ferry, and save hours. They would get far more sailing-time in the heart of the Gulf; we would get a defaced bay.

A berth would therefore be a cute investment for non-boaties. Buy a $20,000, $40,000 or $200,000 one and sell it to a rich Aucklander for a handsome profit.

The proponent also pointed to the benefits of his pump-out facilities. But all those
pumped-out pees and poos have to go somewhere, and be treated somewhere, and the leftovers have to go somewhere. Into the bay...

That bay is too small, too precious, and its dominant use too important to the island. Spoiling it and messing up its purpose must not happen.

I wish my colleagues on the Community Board who voted for the marina had not forgotten their promise to act in the best interests of the community. Especially the one who voted for it because he said he likes to wander round marinas and admire the boats. Please! Go to Auckland and wander round Westhaven. Don't mess up Matiatia.

2009-11-05T20:38:00.001+13:00

GETTING THE BEST FROM A BAD HIDING

Rodney Hide's notion that better local government will come from massive centralisation is a bad idea, a nasty oxymoron on steroids. Even worse is his notion that the SuperSilly can be dumped on 1.4 million people after the October 2010 local-body election--which means it will not really get going till early 2011--and that everything will immediately be wunnerful because all the idealogue theorists setting it up will have got it right.

He has already made that unlikely by refusing to make the Remuneration Authority obey the law and pay Community/Local Board Members a living wage. He therefore wants to keep them in fulltime jobs kneecapped by trifling part-time incomes, thus denied the time to do what the law says they should do, what they want to do, and what their communities rightly expect them to do. He therefore wants the SuperShiny Local Boards to be as chronically hamstrung as the present Community Boards.

But 1.4 million people have to live in his head whether they like it or not, so the best we can do is to try to make the best of it--ASAP. Waiheke is the ideal place to do what needs to be done in 2010--i.e., run a pilot on a small scale before dumping the thing untested on 1.4 million. Get hands-on experience first.

A new type of passenger jet is not rolled out of the factory and immediately loaded up with hundreds of people. It is tested and fine-tuned first. But Yellow-Jacket Hide wants to roll out the Super-shiny and immediately load up 1.4 million people. It would be far better to run a pilot in a small, self-contained community with a fair-sized population and a strong interest in local government. Waiheke is such a community, and the fact that its SuperShiny area is already defined in law makes it uniquely positioned to be the pilot--i.e., for our Community Board to run from early 2010, in effect, as a Local Board.

That is why I proposed to the Waiheke Community Board at our October meeting that we ask the Auckland Transition Agency to make us the pilot.

There is more than enough legislation in place to make that possible, so all that is
needed is for the ATA to say yes and to direct Auckland City Council accordingly. It is worth a shot, and our Community Board should put the question. If a question can be asked, and there is potential benefit, it should be asked. If it is not asked the answer will certainly be no--and the blame will be on those who did not have the guts to open their mouths. If it is asked and the answer is no, the blame is on others. The Community Board is sworn to act in the best interests of the community; it should ask.

If we were to succeed we would have more say in our own affairs (assuming that Hide's scheme really will 'put the local back into local government')--and we would have it in early 2010, not early 2011.

We would therefore squeeze some early silk out of the SuperShiny sow's ear; we would be a year ahead of the game; the period of local-government uncertainty would be dramatically reduced; our community would be better off. We should give it a shot.

MINUTES OF PUBLIC MEETING 11TH OCTOBER 2009

2009-10-12T13:24:00.002+13:00

Minutes of a public meeting in the Memorial Hall
on Sunday the 11th of October 2009
to consider the next stage of the super-council process

Called and chaired by Councillor Denise Roche.

55 people present, sitting round an assembly of tables in the centre of the hall.

Denise opened by setting out the purposes of the meeting:

1) To give an update on the 'train-ride‘ to the super-council;
2) To get feedback for the Local Government Commission on what we wanted our ward for councillor to be, and what system we would have;
3) What we should be doing to get what we want. A campaign? If so, what?

What ward should be going into? Auckland Regional Council and City Vision think it should be the Central Business District plus Western Bays.

Pita: Expressed great anger that the Waiheke Community Board has been reported as saying that we should be with the CBD, that that was what the community wanted. He did not want to hear any more Board members saying that they knew what the community wanted.

Brian: The first thing we should do is revisit what we want. Then we can see where we fit.

Bernard: We want our own ward.

Inge: If we were in the CBD we would have no say. Would we have to pay for CBD things?

Denise: No, because the Local Board will be deciding on that.

Nobilangelo: This comes down to representation. We need to ensure that whoever represents us understands us, empathises with us. So if we cannot get a Hauraki Gulf Islands councillor as we have now, we must have one from a community as much like ours as possible. That means a village-rural community, not the CBD or any urban area. We often say of Auckland, 'They don‘t get it.‘ We need someone who understands us.

Christopher: The boundaries of the CBD have not yet been determined. We do not have to go along with Auckland City Council‘s thinking. We can dismiss it. We can ignore them completely. We need to get rid of the Citizens-&-Ratepayers-minded. We need to be free to align ourselves with people of like values.

Eileen: What I actually presented to the LGc on behalf of the Community Board was that we want our own councillor, and that Devonport was only a possibility. The UNESCO heritage status was being considered by the powers that be.

Carol: What about Great Barrier? The idea of the super-council was to get a regional focus. For us the regional focus should be the Hauraki Gulf Islands. We should be together.

Mike: All this is against the law. They have ignored the law. They will do it again. It is corruption. What is super about this 'super-city‘? This will just be a super concentration of power. If you think it is bad now, see how bad it will be.

George: It depends on our negotiating a proper contract for our Local Board. We need to be able to say what we want. If we can do that it will matter little what the councillor/ward is. If, as has been proposed, there is a truly independent arbitrator for the negotiation process we should get a good result. We must fight to get as much power as possible for the Waiheke Local Board.

Denise: Our councillor will be our key negotiator, so who it is not irrelevant.

Basil: We have to be realistic, then we will not be disillusioned when the results come out. On National Radio recently there was a discussion by 'experts‘ about the super-council, some from overseas. They never once used the word democracy. They were all agents of big international corporations. They want us. Which is why they have taken over the waste contract. Those people have no interest in the opinions of the people. They operate on the same principle as Hitler--you can manipulate public opinion. They don‘t want us to be talking like this. They want to dumb us down. Don‘t put too much emphasis on who the councillor will be. He won‘t have much power. All the people in charge want to do is paint over the rotten weatherboards. They have set up a new priesthood, with a new language: 'workstreams.‘ They are working on the Auckland Transition Agency to destroy Auckland. They are not on our side.

Mike: Why don‘t we ask the Auditor-General why they are ignoring the law?

Bernard: The mayor will have enormous power. We have to support the mayor most in our favour. That is our only hope. If we get John Banks it would be a disaster.

Denise: We may end up with first-past-the-post, party-dominated council.

Roger: I‘ve been listening for a change [laughter]. I asked the ATA to take into account the Human Rights Commission and human rights. One of the ATA‘s 'workstreams‘ is run by the person from Auckland City Council who wrote its report on Auckland governance. The person was seconded to the ATA. Others have been seconded there from ACC. They are in with the ATA. This ward system is driving us to where we do not want to be. This was an opportunity to change our local governance, but we are being pushed down a path. The community policy here is shocking: everything has been done to take us to corporatisation. Even our Recreation Centre is being run by a private company. Our community has been destroyed. We cannot comply with what ACC wants. We cannot fit in with it. All this is wool across the eyes. What we have now does not work, and this [new system] will not work.

Colin: This is a question of vision. The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance was presented as being about economy of scale. We know what that means! This [new system] was presented presented as peri-urban. That means the urbanisation of the islands. The Royal Commission and the Select Committee never analysed what Waiheke is. We want a separate councillor.

Nobilangelo: A very important point, which will make or break the Local Boards, is remuneration. The Remuneration Authority is corrupt, it wilfully breaks the law, it is more powerful than Parliament because Parliament is afraid to take it on. And it has been kneecapping local government for years. The result is that Community Boards in particular, and many councillors, cannot do the job they are meant to do, and want to do; they cannot afford the time, because they are paid so little. Some are on only $206 a year. The average for Community Boards is $4000-odd. But it is a full-time job. It should be a minimum of $30,000. Then the job can be done as it could and should be. Auckland Regional Councillors, on $22,000, are the lowest-paid councillors in the country. We need to pressure those spineless MPs to sack the Remuneration Authority, and change the law so that if the Authority does not keep to the law it sacks itself.

Pita: We have to come together. We have to use all the resources we have. I do not want to hear anyone say he knows all the community‘s views. The Waiheke Community Board reports to the LGC: we have to get a much better way of getting the community‘s views to it. A campaign and a working party.

Pita then put forward a resolution, which was seconded by Roger:

'The meeting advise the Waiheke Island (sic) Community Board that the Board must form a Community Working Party as soon as possible, in the Board's name and with the Board's facilitation and arrange meetings of the working party as necessary:

'Firstly: To finalise the Community views on Ward boundaries and membership in relation to the Auckland Council legislation and in particular the community's preferences in terms of representation for this community.

'Secondly: To assist the Board in presenting those views to the Local Government Commission and to represent and advocate for those views where ever and when ever possible.

'Thirdly: To assist the Board in lobbying for support of those views.'

Tony: I am concerned at the negative comments about the Waiheke Community Board. We said to the LGC that we did not want to be with Thames-Coromandel. We want to be with Auckland. We prefer to have our own councillor. Our first choice is a Hauraki Gulf Islands councillor. Second to go with Devonport. Third is to be with the CBD. That was our presentation. {{As a member of the Waiheke Community Board, I note here that that was never debated in the Community Board, either in open meeting or in a workshop; not even in an email discussion. There was no discussion, no vote.}} In the Thames-Coromandel application Nobilangelo pointed to a synergy of the two communities, because of their similarities. But there would be a lot more travel. It took me an hour and half to get to a meeting in Waitakere. We are blessed, because the Waiheke Local Board‘s area has already been defined. I think that the Local Boards will have more power than the Community Boards. The wards will be 65,000-70,000, so I think we will be lumped with someone else. Our biggest hope is to have an HGI ward. I hope ACC never gets its wish to have six councillors elected at large. We want all the councillors to be elected from wards. If the community wants Devonport, I will be happy with that; if wants the CBD, I will be happy with that; if it wants something else, I will be happy with that. My personal preference is (1) A Waiheke councillor; (2) A Hauraki Gulf Islands councillor; (3) Somewhere sensible.

Pita: Membership of the working-party should be open to anyone who wants to join it.

A woman: Why more talk?

Pita: To get a more comprehensive idea of what the community wants.

Andrew: What if we say what we want and the answer is no? Do we just accept it? How does the Waiheke Community Board know if it has a mandate? Would they resign, and thus cause an election with what we want as the election issue? (Nobilangelo pointed out that resigning would have no effect, because the timing is now such that there would be no election.)

Tony Sears then got up and walked out.

There is more work to do than can be done in a monthly community board meeting. Transport links are irrelevant. My personal view is that we should have a stand-alone councillor. If we don‘t get that we should make a fuss.

A woman: Everyone wants our own councillor. So people don‘t want options. We want our own councillor. The working party would get the same view.

George: Nikki Kaye emailed me to say, 'Make a representation.‘ So make a representation to her that you want to make a submission.

Christopher: [Reading] The record shows that the Waiheke Community Board said it wanted us to be with the CBD. This is all about vision. Devonport in the past has said it wanted to go with us. It is not practical to say we want our own councillor.

Inge: If Great Barrier wants to be with the CBD, we should let them go with that, and if we want Devonport we should get that. We don‘t have to have the same thing.

Pita: We have a powerful argument to put to the government that the Hauraki Gulf Islands should have its own ward and councillor.

His motion was then put to the meeting:

Ayes: all but two hands went up.
Noes: no hands.
Abstentions: two.

UTU AND THE PLATINUM STEPS

2009-10-10T18:42:00.000+13:00

The obscenity that is Auckland City Council has produced some shockingly excessive examples of crass stupidity and bureaucratic waste in its time, from the huge to the small. A still-current example of the smaller end of the Fathead Scale is the saga of the supermarket steps. Many people who walk to the supermarket from further up Ostend take a shortcut by going down the steep berm and over the gently-sloping grass at the top corner of the property instead of going right round the footpath. Very sensible: it is the quickest way to the front door.

But because the berm is steep it is not an easy route, and is hazardous when wet, or when going back up carrying shopping-bags, so soon after the 2007 election I put forward as a SLIPs proposal that we build a flight of steps at that corner (SLIPs is Council-speak for Small Local Improvement Projects). Eight wooden steps and a handrail going down the public berm. A very easy task.

But the council officers, for some reason that had nothing to do with reason, did not want the steps. So they invented lies to serve as obstructions.

Lie Number One said that putting steps there was illegal because it would create trespassers. It is impossible to fathom how they managed to think that anyone could take seriously the notion that giving people easier and safer passage into a public shopping-area, down a route that they had been using frequently for yonks, would create trespassers. But why let reason and the truth get in the way of malign bureaucratic intransigence?

That lie, of course, was finally compelled to crumble in the face of the truth.

The SLIPs empire comes under Michael McQuillan, king of the wheelie-bins and unflagging pusher of a hidesouly expensive sewerage system for the island. His empire, nothing daunted, recently switched to Lie Number Two. After beavering away from nearly two years, off and on, mainly very off (with the help of its 117-page manual), it arrived at a quotation for these eight steps and a handrail: $29,880!!! With a footnote that it might cost more. That makes pale into petty cash the outrageous $3970 they spent last year on six steps and a handrail in O'Brien Road.

One of the reasons for the huge cost is that McQuillan's empire added a completely unnecessary 50-metre path across the very land that they said the steps would create trespassers on. They proposed paying for a gravel path across Tony Pope's grass. A breakdown of all their costings shows $1000 for someone to stand there for a total of 24 hours counting pedestrians (who use the shortcut so much they they have worn a rut that shows in Council aerial photos); $16,203 for the steps and the path; $2821 to secure the easement for the path that no one asked for; $4656 for project-management (read consultants fee?); $200 to maintain the steps, then $600 a year to maintain them thereafter.

You have to hand it to them. They have raised incompetence, profligate waste and separation from reality to a stunningly high level. As the acid old joke says: 'You can't criticise the organisation because there isn't any.'

A true costing for the supermarket steps, with the helpful assistance of Placemakers, comes to no more than $1100, and that includes the building consent, and, to underline the point, quoting on H6 treatment (timber treated for immersion in the sea) even though only H4 is needed (the Council insists on H5).

Anyone with a working brain-cell and two functioning hands could get the whole thing done in a few days. When I did the twenty-nine wooden steps across the berm at my place it took only a few days, ant that was in the heat of February, and working with hand-tools because my power was not then connected.

Fortunately we have a Community Board, which at its monthly meeting in September voted to cut through all that nonsense, and ordered that nothing be done except to build the steps as specified.

As Councillor Roche accurately summarised during the Community Board's discussion, the $29,880 gambit was nothing but utu (a Maori word that means revenge)--aimed at me personally, and at Waiheke in general, by council officers driven by malice rather than responsibility and the rule of law.

We shall see if we get the steps, and how much longer it takes, and what the final cost turns out to tbe.

WHY AUCKLAND RATES RISE AND RISE

2009-10-01T13:34:00.000+13:00

The reason was discovered by a nineteenth century genius, an Englishman called Charles Babbage, who amongst other things invented a mechanical computer.

He found that the more mysterious the means by which a product or service came to market the higher the price would be. Auckland City Council keeps getting more and more mysterious. The law says it should be open and transparent and democratically accountable, but why let good law get in the way of a swelling empire?

REPLY TO JOHN COLLINGS' LETTER TO MARKETPLACE

2009-10-01T13:18:00.000+13:00

In a letter to Waiheke Marketplace published on the 30th of September John Collings asked why anyone should vote for me in the local body elections at the end of 2010 for a seat on the Waiheke Community Board, because I had led the application to the Local Government Commission to shift the Hauraki Gulf Island from under the council in Auckland city to being with Thames-Coromandel District Council, and in his view that exercise was huge waste of time and money. He added up some imaginary figures and arrived at a total of $100,000.

In his lettere he made a string of errors and baseless assumptions. First, there will not be a Waiheke Community Board after 1 November 2010. Under the new legislation there will be a Waiheke Local Board. Second, he made assumptions about costs, then treated them as facts. Third, he obviously does not like democracy and the democratic process, which equally obviously means any opinion that he does not agree with. Fourth, democracy costs money; that is a fact of life. Fifth, Auckland City Council wastes more money before breakfast than his outside guesstimate. Sixth, if he had done some homework, he would know that Thames-Coromandel is provably a much better council than a city empire to the west, especially for a village-rural community like ours. Seventh, I made a solemn, statutory promise to do my best for this community. Trying, with the support of the statutory number of Waihekeans required to validate the application, is one of the actions that has kept that promise. Eighth, I hope that someone as incapable of logical thought as that letter demonstrates will not be standing. Ninth, he is assuming that I will be standing again.

If you ever studied logic, John, you show no evidence of it. For in logic there is a fundamental dictum: 'If, if and only if the premise is true and the reasoning is true will the conclusion be true.' To be true, a view must be founded on true premises and arrived at by true reasoning. Otherwise it will certainly be false.

Your letter, like the opposing petition to the Thames-Coromandel initiative that you cooked up with Mervyn Bennett, was devoid of any research worthy of the name, and equally devoid of true reasoning. Therefore the consequence was false premises and a shonky path from them, so the conclusions could not possibly be true. Your letter, like your Thames-Coromandel opposition, was misleading, manipulative, lacking in facts, logical reasoning and true conclusions.

You should also realise that some of the costs you complained about were due to the cardboard opposition created by you and Mervyn, which makes your complaints rather hypocritical.

It is instructive, and should be instructive to the pair of you, that it was necessary to write your letter to Marketplace due to the fact that the paper run by Mervyn, which was founded on his world-view, could not survive on Waiheke, lost money, and folded--and lost a good deal more money, if the island grapevine is correct, than the amount that you rail about in your letter. People in glass houses should not chuck rocks.

But if you and Mervyn are so against me I must be doing something right. Thank you both for your effusive inverted praise...

HIDE'S SECOND BILL FOR AUCKLAND

2009-09-15T17:05:00.000+12:00

Like all legislation, Rodney Hide's second Auckland bill is like a child's colouring book. Nothing but a lot of black lines on white paper. Whether it can be turned into a masterpiece depends on how good the lines are. Whether it will be depends on how skilfully it is finished.

Some of the lines provided in this Bill are good, some are indifferent, some are inadequate, some have some nasty traps; some are clear, some are fuzzy, some are safe, some are perilous, and some will not exist until 2012.

How good the final picture will be depends on the 'artists'--the 21 elected and the 6000 employed. If they are not much bothered about keeping within the lines, if they are not skilled at choosing the best pencils and paints, if they are careless about using the most fitting colours, if they do not know how to be creative and sensitive about adding rich and appropriate detail to the expanses of white, we will get a mess. A crayon scribble.

Whatever happens we face years of uncertainty while Local-Board/Council negotiations are made, bugs are worked out, and the elected and employed find their way round the new structure (and the dishonest figure out how to manipulate it).

One of the biggest flaws, especially considering that Rodney Hide bangs on so much about 'putting the local back in government', is that the CEO of the new empire is responsible for hiring all the staff, and local boards cannot hire or fire. That will tend to create a homogeneous bureacracy. If local boards really are going to be responsible for keeping the local character they will find themselves up against the perpetual obstacle of the cookie-cutter mentality of that huge centrally controlled bureacracy. Local boards should fight for control of local staffing.

The requirement for local boards to sign up to a code of conduct, although it sounds nice in principle to make sure people watch their P's and Q's, can be a very nasty way of suppressing them. The present community boards are exempt from a code, which does not mean they behave like Dunedin university students, but it does mean they are not under the prohibition in Auckland City Council's code of being forbidden from talking to any member of the staff except through the CEO. That is a code for control-freaks who want to run things behind the scenes without much chance of being got at by the people's representatives.

Which makes even more telling Franz Kafka's profound comment on government: 'After the dust of revolution has settled there arises the slime of a new bureaucracy.'

LETTERS ON THE THAMES-COROMANDEL APPLICATION

2009-09-04T18:43:00.001+12:00

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!

--

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.

LGC SAYS ISLANDS ARE CITY

2009-08-21T16:51:00.001+12:00

It's official. The village-rural Hauraki Gulf Islands, where people are one to every 55,000 square kilometres, have a community of interest with Auckland city, where people are one to every 360m square metres, but none with with the village-rural Coromandel Peninsula, where people are one to every 88,000 square metres.

That must be true. No, really, it must, because the 'independent statutory authority', the Local Government Commission, said so when it announced at 11:00am today (Friday the 21st of June 2009) that it would not be proceeding with the application to transfer the islands from Auckland's rule to Thames-Coromandel's. Two members of the LGC came to the Waiheke Community Board's boardroom to make the announcement (both Aucklanders, one recently appointed by the Minister of Local Government, Rodney Hide, to 'liase' with Hide's creation, the Auckland Transitional Agency).

But the decision was of course political. And no surprise. I have a letter from Rodney Hide dated the 9th of June in which he said that the Hauraki Gulf Islands would be staying inside Auckland's boundaries. So the LGC did its master's bidding. So much for the 'independent statutory authority.'

The rest of the Community Board certainly failed to do its job in the Thames-Coromandel exercise. After the election, like everyone elected to local government, they each swore 'faithfully and impartially to the best of their skill and judgement to act in the best interests of the Waiheke Community.' But they did no research, so they could not know which council was best. And obviously did not care, because in their submission to the LGC they said they could not be bothered.

Auckland Council is only a 4 out of 10; Thames-Coromandel is an 8 (and the National Research Bureau finds a 80-84% general satisfaction-rating each year). Thames-Coromandel is far better in every respect, especially for a community like ours. A far better mayor, a far better CEO, far better staff, far better organisational structure (Auckland has none worthy of the name), and far closer to the community. Thames-Coromandel has two ears and one mouth. Auckland has a very different anatomy.

So we tried for the best available, got the worst, and now we must live in Rodney Hide's head. No one could call that the best way to live. Not even him.

(In the General Election on November the 8th last year, Rodney Hide's ACT Party got exactly 150 votes from the Hauraki Gulf Islands--out of 4051. The ACT candidate got exactly 40--out of 4046.)

In 1989 the islands had 100% of the vote, 100% of the say and 100% of the councillors, because we had our own councils. The LGC of 1989 dumped us into the city where we soared to 2.3% of the vote, less of the say, and only one besieged councillor. Now the LGC of 2009 has dumped us into the Super Silly, where we shall have only 0.6% of the vote, even less of the say and (bar a miracle) no councillor at all.

Where from here? Babies. We need enough babies or new islanders (real islanders, not Aucklanders who sleep here), so that we have a population a tad over 10,000 at the next census night. Then we can go back to the LGC and ask for our own council. But while this government lasts, and this LGC is what it is, even that would not work.

But the possibility remains. Therefore so does the threat that if the new powers that be are not nice to us we can go back and try again in two years' time.

The only other ploy is to get the UNESCO World Heritage Status. Then there would be some international clout.

In the meantime it is a law of the jungle that those who rule you tend to make you more and more like them. Expect to see more and more citification of these village-rural islands.

:-(((

SELECT COMMITTEE ON AUCKLAND: SUBMISSION 2

2009-07-22T11:02:00.001+12:00

My oral submission to the Select Committee on the second of Rodney Hide's Auckland Bills:

Relative to local government the Remuneration Authority is chronically corrupt. For years it has poisoned the grassroots of local government by working to its own rules instead of the mandatory criteria set by Parliament in Clause 7 of Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002. It is well known that David Oughton dislikes community boards, so he treats their remuneration with contempt. Some members are paid only $206 a year, and the average means that none of us can work full-time for our communities, as our statutory duties demand, so ratepayers cannot get what they vote for. Many councillors are treated unfairly. Auckland Regional Councillors, on $22,000, are the lowest-paid regional councillors in the country. When Parliament makes good laws and bad public servants ignore
them that is corruption.

Good laws are like locks. Only the honest heed them; they never stop the dishonest. If Parliament fails to include penalties in laws, you are assuming it will be administered by angels. But the Remuneration Authority and Auckland City Council, to name two, have long proved that that assumption asks for bad local government, and gets it. The bureaucrats do what they want. And penalties must be easily and cheaply accessible to the people. Otherwise corruption wins.

That assumption of angelic administrators is a fatal flaw in what you are doing here. The other is that it is out of scale with New Zealand, way out of scale with local government and way out of kilter with it.

Good local government is government that is local and government that is good. But to achieve better local government you are centralising power into the hands of a massive bureaucracy of 6000 people, an empire that will rival or out-rival anything else in Australasia. Yet you fondly believe it will deliver a better result. Those who cannot learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Look at Auckland City Council--2300 staff, the biggest in the country, second biggest in Australasia--and it manifests everything bad about a large bureaucracy, yet you want one about three times the size.

Big bureaucracies are always the same. Inefficient, with a high internal overhead, selfish, self-centred, inward-looking, arrogant, a law unto themselves, and anti-democracy. They become impersonal machines, little interested in what the people think. They are primarily concerned with what The Machine thinks. This will just be a variation on Yes, Minister. Except it will be Yes, Mayor.

That huge bureaucracy will be out of kilter with what local government is there for--'to enable democratic local decision-making and action by and on behalf of communities'--and it will be so big that it will be way out of scale with the country.

What you are creating is a state within a state. A powerful mayor, and a powerful council, which will preside over a third of the country and its economic engine, and a very powerful bureaucracy that will rule the whole roost. They will be able to thumb their noses at Parliament.

Out here on the Harauki Gulf Islands none of the regional considerations you are so exercised about have any relevance. And the mismatch in scale is outrageous. Already Auckland City Council is far bigger than we are in power, and far bigger than Great Barrier in population. This huge bureaucracy will be much worse. Great Barrier, population 852, used to be run by three people; Waiheke, population 7689, needs only fifty; Rakino, population 12, needs 1; we do not need 2300 bureaucrats, we certainly do not need 6000.

If the local boards do not have control of local staff, control will be central and local staff will be able to thumb their noses at us even more than they do now. The Machine, even more than now, will decide for us.

The Hauraki Gulf Islands are again being swamped by a tsunami of party policy and a lust for power and territory--far larger than what hit us in 1989.

This Auckland adventure is a power-trip for a power-freak. There was no need to turn the world upside down to accomplish better regional government, which is what you are really talking about. What you want can be achieved under the present Act--if you had bothered to read it--with minor modifications. You only need to send in the tweaks, not the tanks.

For many years the Remuneration Authority has poisoned the grassroots of local government in New Zealand, particularly at the community-board grassroots. Now, in a third of the country, you are going to shoot it in the head. Because the head will be the Bureaucracy, not the People.

But we, the people, are not stupid. There is infinitely more brain out in the real world than in Parliament--certainly more than exists between Rodney Hide's ears. And there will be referendum on this--in November 2011, or 2014 if the majority takes longer to wake up. Your government ultimately will stand or fall on what you do to this third of the country.

SELECT COMMITTEE ON AUCKLAND: SUBMISSION 1

2009-07-22T10:45:00.000+12:00

My written submission to the Select Committee on the second of Rodney Hide's Auckland Bills.

LOCAL DELEGATIONS MUST BE DECIDED LOCALLY NOT REGIONALLY
Delegations Must Be Protected in Law

To ensure true local democracy the delegations to local boards in sections 13 and 15 of the Bill must be determined bottom-up not top-down. They must therefore not be handed down by the Auckland Council, because they would be subject to the same abuse that has crippled community representation under Auckland City Council. It has whittled delegations away till they are virtually non-existent. If the Auckland Council delegated them they would also be prone to the one-size fits all mentality, which would particularly impact small, far-off communities such as Waiheke. Big bureaucracies do not like exceptions.

Delegations from the Auckland Council should therefore be subject to the same democratic, independent statutory process as local body reorganisations. A reorganisation proposal can be initiated by an application validated by the signatures of 10% of the affected registered electors. It is then subject to submissions to the Local Government Commission, which hands down a ruling signed off by the Governor-General and gazetted. Because it is protected by law no council, councillor, mayor or bureaucrat can gainsay it or interfere with it.

A delegation proposal would work in the same way. A proposal would be put together by the community, detailing the delegations it wants. If that is validated by being signed by 10% of the affected registered electors it would go to the LGC as a formal application. Submissions for and against would be heard, and the LGC would then hand down its ruling. That would receive vice-regal assent and be gazetted. The Auckland Council would then operate accordingly. That would remove them from political and bureaucratic control and interference.

That is the only mechanism that will ensure that democratic local decision-making and action really is by and on behalf of communities, and that that remains so, because it will be protected in law.

REMUNERATION FOR LOCAL BOARD MUST BE SET AS LAID DOWN IN LAW
If local/community board members are to do the job set down in statute they must be compensated for the time required. Therefore Clause 7 Schedule 7 of the Local Government Act 2002, which lays down the mandatory criteria for local body remuneration, must be strictly adhered to. If the Remuneration Authority continues to ignore it, and instead uses its weird pool formula‘, which defies the law, it must be dismissed.

A community/local board job is a full-time job, so it should be paid at least $30,000. With the taxation claims that can be made for self-employed that would be adequate. No one should get rich, but they should be paid fairly, and ratepayers should get what they expect, which is impossible from part-timers.

As Thomas Paine pointed out in his classic book on democracy, democracy is representative government. But if the only people who can stand, and still eat, are those of independent means, government cannot be truly representative, which skews democracy and skews decision-making. It is a denial of natural justice, which New Zealanders are guaranteed under s27 of the Bill of Rights Act.

THERE SHOULD BE PENALTIES FOR BREACHING THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACT
Legislation too often assumes that it will be administered by angels. Sadly, that is too often not the case. Therefore there must be teeth in the legislation. Section 238 should be clarified so that there is no doubt that it applies to councillors and council officers. Then communities would have a legal weapon against those who ride rough-shod over their democratic voice.

LOCAL BOARDS SHOULD DEVELOP LOCAL BUDGETS,
DETERMINE LOCAL RATES, and VET ALL LOCAL STAFF APPOINTMENTS
If local boards are not responsible for local income and expenditure they will be dead letters. Thames-Coromandel Community Boards do that. Waiheke and Great Barrier Boards should do the same.

Local staff should be under democratic vetting, via their boards. And all staff should live locally. Commuters can never understand the community they are working for.

For there to be good local governance there has to be local control of the staff. Not remote. If we have to put up with someone who ignores local wishes, and can get away with it because he/she is protected by the distant empire, local governance is knee-capped.

AUCKLAND IS NOT LEGALLY A CITY

2009-07-18T11:13:00.000+12:00

The flurry of amalgamations in New Zealand in 1989 got rather carried away, and when some of the country's 'cities' were createdthe small matter of the law was overlooked.

In New Zealand law, no district, no territory can be called a city, or its corporation a city council, unless it satisifies three criteria. It must have a population of at least 50,000. It must be a distinct entity and a major centre of activity in its region. And it must be predominantly urban. (The relevant bit of law, which was the same in 1989, is now in Clause 7 of Schedule 3 of the Local Government Act 2002, which can be read at www.legislation.co.nz).

Auckland 'City', Wellington 'City', Waitakere 'City' and Upper Hutt 'City' are not legally cities, because they are not predominantly urban, and there may be others. The Local Government Commission of 1989 obviously did not check to see if what they were creating complied witht the law.

When Auckland's 154.154 square kilometres was amalgamated with the Hauraki Gulf Island's 475.5 square kilometres on the 1st of November 1989, the new district was only 24.5% urban. No district that is 75.5% village-rural can call itself predominantly urban, so Auckland has not legally been a city for twenty years. Therefore every decision made over the signature, so to speak, of 'Auckland City' since 1/11/1989 has been illegal. Millions of rates notices, for example.

The Local Government Commission says Wellington is 70% rural, Waitakere is 78% rural, Upper Hutt is 92%. 92% baa-lambs, moo-cows, and blokes getting about on farm-bikes, and they called it a city! Big boo-boo, big legal mess.

The amalgamation of the Hauraki Gulf Islands with Auckland in 1989 was therefore illegal. It voided Auckland's city status. It also breached the fundamental of community of interest, because the law makes it very clear that for the sake of achieving good local government the predominantly urban and the predominantly non-urban must be kept separate. Chalk and cheese should not be put together. The two distinct types of community should not be ruled by each other.

That is why the Islands have had chronic problems with Auckland, caused by Auckland's inability to understand a village-rural-island district.

JULY 16TH FOR THAMES-COROMANDEL SAGA

2009-07-02T12:30:00.000+12:00

The next public stage in the application to the Local Government Commission to move the Hauraki Gulf Islands from Auckland City Council to the far superior Thames-Coromandel District Council is to take place at the Waiheke Island Resort on Thursday the 16th of July.

Details will be posted when the LGC releases them, which is expected to be soon.

ACC STILL SEES PINK ELEPHANTS AT MATIATIA

2009-07-02T12:24:00.000+12:00

The presentations by council officers to the Community Board at our May and June meetings of their plans for Matiatia still show that as usual they just do not get it. All they get is the typical brain-damaged desire of certain councillors to make $7 million back on the $12.5 million it cost. But if they had had the vision to buy it six years earlier they could have got it for $2.5 million and been $3 million ahead without having to lift a speculative finger. They would not 'have' to spend millions of our money on a white-elephant investment.

The officers still plan, some day, to make Matiatia a destination, and they still tell us that we want that. No. Get it dummies: it's a bus stop for floating buses. A place to come and go through, not to go to.

All they should be building is at least 600 efficiently arranged carparks near the wharf--and soon. Forget your plans for 70 apartments, and cafes, shops, eateries, etc., etc., etc. Forget your marketing puffery, your 'brown axis, your 'blue axis', your 'green axis.' Forget a marina.

Forget everything except what the island wants. Put enough carparks at the foot of the valley, where we want them, then all that unsafe roadside carparking can be done away with. And keep the bus stops at the terminal. Shifting them way up the road is just as stupid as expecting people to park out near Patagonia because you refuse to provide parking where we want it.

That would be sensible. But instead their grandiose plans reduce the present 450 carparks near the wharf to 376. Otherwise the obese white elephant will not fit.

And don't start any upgrade to Ocean View Road from the wharf to Mako Street (which is now seeking a resource consent) till the island has said yes. Otherwise the officers will do what they want--i.e., what the white elephant wants. They will have built a fait accompli with our money.

It is called democracy. Doing what the people want...

EVIL EMPIRE WASTES WAIHEKE AGAIN

2009-06-23T10:58:00.000+12:00

Once again the corrupt entity that is Auckland City Council has breached the law, breached truth, breached justice, breached fair dealing, and has ridden rough-shod over the democratic wishes of the Waiheke community by taking away the solid-waste contract from our local, not-for-profit organisation, CleanStream, and giving it to a multinational Australian-based outfit.

The dismaying truth is that Auckland City Council is an evil entity. Its profligate wickedness has assailed us, especially on the Hauraki Gulf Islands, and most especially on Waiheke, for twenty oppressive years.

The only good thing to come out of the corrupt Rodney Hide's trashing of the rule of good local-government law is that that Auckland City Council will be history. It remains to be seen whether its evil ways will simply shift to the new Auckland Council.

In New Zealand law the purpose of local government is spelt out clearly in section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002: 'The purpose of local government is (a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

To cripple, to ignore, even on a shonky pretext to disqualify democratic local decision-making and action is a blatant breach of the law. The wicked bureaucrats who recommended it and the equally wicked councillors who supported them with their votes should remember that in the end wickedness always loses.

The false-hearted Aaron Bhatnagar, who has the dishonest eyes of a vain liar, should take particular note of that. There is a God in heaven, Mr Bhatnagar. When your lungs have drawn their last breath, and your heart has beaten its last beat, and you come before his terrible throne you will find that you cannot deceive your way past him as you deceived your way past the truth, the law and the democratic will of Waiheke.

ACID TEST FOR THE ATA/SUPER-COUNCIL

2009-06-09T16:12:00.000+12:00

For Waiheke the acid test of this super-council adventure will be what the Auckland Transition Agency decides to do with the waste contract that Auckland City Council wants to ram down our throats. Will the ATA 'enable democratic local decision-making and action' and 'promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural' of our commmunity, or will it swallow Auckland's weasel-word excuse for disqualifying what the community wants and upport Auckland's agenda?

In that decision we shall see what the super-council regime has in store for us. If it goes with the community we can be optimistic. If not, there is a very cold front coming at us over the western horizon.

We should make myriads of strong representations to the ATA. I doubt that we will get much out of it, but it would be interesting to see how they said no.

LOCAL BODY OUT OF PLACE AND MIND

2009-06-09T16:05:00.000+12:00

Islanders will no doubt be overjoyed to learn that Auckland Silly Council a little while back decided to divide its empire into Places. North Place, South Place, West Place and East Place.

The Hauraki Gulf Islands have been lumped into East Place--along with Kohimarama!

Some new staff were hired to look after East Place, and were introduced. Just as a matter of interest they were asked what they had done formerly. One had been a funeral director. Which sounds very appropriate. Auckland Silly is after all a local body--that's local as in anaesthetic and body as in dead.

HISTORY AND THE NEW ORCLAND

2009-06-09T16:01:00.000+12:00

Communist countries for years were rightly condemned by the West for their heavy-handed, centrally-planned, one-size-fits-all governments and economies.

Sounds like the new Orcland.

FOUR MUST-HAVES FOR EFFECTIVE REORGANISATION

2009-05-28T17:24:00.000+12:00

The Local Government Minister has breached the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002) in the way he is trying to reorganise Auckland's local government, but we are obviously stuck with his evasion of the legal, democratic process that is meant to be handled by an independent statutory body, the Local Government Commissions, so we have to try to get the government to get it right from here on.

No reorganisation will succeed unless everything done fits the purpose of the organisation. If you do not get the why right, you will never get the what, the when, the who, the how or anything else right.

Usually in troubleshooting you have to identify the purpose before you can start fixing the mess, but in local government the purpose is already neatly printed in section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002): 'The purpose of local government is--(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.' Then section 14 lays down the principles. Anyone in local government, elected or employed, who does not know the forty words of s10 should be sacked.

'Enable democratic local decision-making and action and promote the four well-beings.' If the government does not do that, all it will achieve is a change in logos and letterheads and bureaucratic titles.

There are four things that must be done, not just for this part of the country, but for all New Zealand. The four headings are Teeth, Time, Delegations and Budgets.

Teeth. First, there must be summary penalties in the LGA2002 for those who breach it. Then any errant bureaucrat or councillor or member of a community/local board can be summarily prosecuted and either fined or in serious cases spend a few months in jail. At the moment the only penalty, which is rather restricted, is a fine of up to $5000. But if you pirate a DVD you can be fined tens of thousands. Obviously New Zealand thinks local government is far less important than a DVD.

Second, community/local boards, on behalf of their communities, must have the power to vet all staff employed in their local service centre, and all staff employed in the central office who have their community as their responsibility. We must know that we are getting suitable people, and not have the choices of senior bureaucrats foisted on us. Then, if approved, people would be hired on three months probation. Boards must also have the power to summon errant staff before them, those who have acted in breach of the law, in particular the LGA2002 and the RMA, and if necessary sack them.

Only then will the people have the upper hand, not those who work for them and are paid by them. Public servants must be public servants, never public masters.

Time. Members of community/local boards must have the time needed to do the job they were elected to do, and want to do. But they have to breathe and eat. They cannot spend the necessary time if they do not have the remuneration. But because the Remuneration Authority is corrupt, because it ignores the mandatory criteria set down in Clause 7 Schedule 7 of the LGA2002, and has instead invented its own insane rules, elected people in local government in New Zealand, in particular community boards, are not paid enough to carry out their duties. Being a member of a community/local board is a full-time job. Therefore they should be paid $30,000 a year. Not an average of less than $5000. Councillors, too, must be paid fairly, so that we do not get the ludricrous situation of Auckland Regional Councillors being the lowest-paid regional councillors in New Zealand ($22,000 a year).

That means that some the teeth needed in the LGA2002 must be aimed at the Remuneration Authority. If it does not follow the law it must be sacked, and face a penalty in court. To kneecap local government in an entire country is a very serious offence, and should be dealt with very severely.

Delegations. The powers and activities delegated to community/local boards must not be in the hands of politicians, either councillors or MPs. They must be in the hands of an independent statutory authority--the Local Government Commission. Then boards, on behalf of their communities, and with their consultation and support, would apply to the LGC for a list of desired delegations. What the LGC approved would be gazetted under the LGA2002, and no councillor or bureaucrat would be able to intefere with anything on it. Any who did would be liable to summary prosecution.

Only by having protected delegations can community/boards operate; only then can democratic local decision-making be protected. Honest councils give and do protect good delegations, but a protected system is needed as a bulwark against dishonest ones--such as Auckland City Council.

Budgets. Community/local boards must, on behalf of their communities, with consultation, have control over local income and expenditure. They must have full responsibility for the local budget, and they must develop the local rates, which would then be signed off by their council. Good councils, such as Thames-Coromandel District Council, already do that, but it should be a mandatory duty.

Teeth, Time/Remuneration, Protected Delegations, Budgetary Control. Unless those matters are under LOCAL control through community/local boards, there will never be good local government in New Zealand.

DEMOCRACY HAS TEETH, INTEGRITY IS ALL GUMS

2009-05-21T21:03:00.000+12:00

People who have great power will usually act only if there is something in it for them. But the super-council will never have any reason to do anything for Waiheke. We will have only 0.6% of the vote, and zero councillors out of twenty, so why should it do a blind thing for us?

Requests that mean everything to us will mean nothing to them. Pleas on our behalf from the Waiheke Local Board will fall on deaf ears.

The government may set some delegations in legislation, but as it itself has just proved by ramming through a 'technical' Act that trashed the democratic obligations of the Local Government Act 2002, legislation is only as good as the notice taken of it, no matter how good its intentions and black and white its wording. The good Dr Jekyll ends up trashed in the wicked soul of Mr Hide.

If the super-council ignored the law it would not suffer the slightest penalty, and there would be no incentive to obey it for pip-squeak Waiheke.

So we would be entirely reliant on the integrity of a majority on the super-council, and the integriryt of the bureaucracy making recommendations to it.

Integrity. Hmmm! Relying on that from a far-off super-council that will have no incentive to listen to us would be as stupid as believing in Santa Claus, Tinkerbell and the Tooth Fairy.

I would rather rely on democracy. If the Hauraki Gulf Islands were with Thames-Coromandel District Council we would have 23% of the vote, Waiheke would have two councillors out of twelve, Great Barrier would have one, and the reorganisation proposal also has the mayor on both community boards and the regional councillor present at every monthly meeting.

A full house beats an empty hand every time.

WEEDHEKE LESS WEEDY IF WE GET EW

2009-05-14T10:31:00.000+12:00

I was asked about the difference between the policies of Auckland Regional Council and Environment Waikato on noxious weeds. The short answer is that EW is much stricter.

They have different rules for different weeds, depending on how seriously they regard them. For example, unlike ARC, EW regards tobacco plant (woolly nightshade), moth plant and climbing asparagus as serious pests and works hard at containment.

Click here for the full hit-list, with EW's super-baddies highlighted with asterisks.

EVEN SHORTCHANGED ON OUR MINUTES

2009-05-07T18:48:00.000+12:00

During one of the visits I made to Thames-Coromandel District Council last year I went through some of the many reports available to the public in the foyer, which include the minutes of various meetings, from council meetings to community board meetings, and I was again struck by the contrast between Auckland's way of doing things and Thames-Coromandel's.

Auckland's minutes record the resolutions passed, reports received from staff and board members, written presentations made by people in the community, and correspondence received. Nothing else.

Thames-Coromandel's do all that too of course, but they also summarise the discussions that took place. So anyone who reads their minutes can see what happened and how it happened. They are therefore true minutes--a faithful record minute by minute.

Auckland's are not, so when its meetings pass a resolution saying that the minutes of the previous meeting are a true and correct record, they are wrong because they are only an abbreviated summary. Which is why I now always vote against that motion.

So in spite of its self-vaunted size Auckland cannot do nearly as good a job with 2300 staff as Thames-Coromandel does with 192, not even keeping minutes. Auckland also has an entire department ('Democracy Services') to handle council and community-board meetings. Thames-Coromandel doesn't.

Auckland forever skites that it is the biggest local body in New Zealand, and the second biggest in Australasia, but that does not make it the best, or the best for the Hauraki Gulf Islands. Quantity is not quality. It is easy to be bigger. You just hire more people. To be good you have to hire good people and have good management and good organisation. The overall quality of staff in Thames is noticeably higher than in Auckland's sprawling empire.

Thames-Coromandel also puts reports on consent applications near the top of community-board agendas, and it has senior staff in attendance at board meetings as a matter of course, and lists them in the minutes, which underlines the co-operative, freely communicative working relationship between the elected and the employed on the peninsula--yet another stark contrast with aloof Auckland, where the code of conduct prevents councillors from talking to any staff but the CEO (and Democracy Services).

BUILDING THE HOUSE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

2009-04-30T18:57:00.000+12:00

Winston Churchill said, 'We build our house then our houses build us.' We should therefore be careful about what sort of house we build, both literal and metaphorical.

The house of local government is critical because it builds our community. And the inexorable tendency is for those who rule you to make your community like theirs. You become remade in their image.

We must therefore ask ourselves: 'Do we want Waiheke to become like Auckland City?' 'Do we want Waiheke to become like anything on the isthmus?'

If the answer is 'No', we must build our local government house with someone else (we do not have 10,000 people, so in law we cannot build it by ourselves). And we must for the survival of our community build it with someone like us. We must look at how they have built their community and ask ourselves if we would be happy if we became like that.

Thames-Coromandel is that sort of place. Some parts we would not like (Pauanui, obviously, but that is not typical), but the most built place, Thames, is not a town that a true islander could feel uncomfortable in.

If Waiheke (even Great Barrier) became in twenty years' time like Thames is now, we would not be too unhappy about it. But if it became like Auckland we would hate it. It would no longer be Waiheke. Its essence would have died.

NO GOVERNMENT CAN ORDER LOCAL-BODY REORGANISATION

2009-04-18T18:57:00.000+12:00

Unless the government fiddles the Local Government Act 2002 and thus indulges in gerrymandering it does not have the legal power to reorganise local government anywhere in New Zealand. That task, rightly, is entirely in the hands of an independent statutory authority, the Local Government Commission.

Therefore the government's document, Making Auckland Greater, is just a reorganisation proposal, which comes under Schedule 3 of the Act and *must* follow the process laid down (which includes 60 days for public submissions). At the end of that process the LGC will, after its normal rigorous independent examination, decide exactly what happens. The government can only ask; it cannot command.

For it to set itself above the law, particularly an excellent law, which the LGA2002 is, would be most unfortunate. This is New Zealand not Zimbabwe.

Please, Mr Key and Mr Hide, let good law take its course.

SUPER-COUNCIL MEANS MINI REPRESENTATION

2009-04-18T18:54:00.000+12:00

Good local government depends on good representation and administration. Good representation depends on how much say we have in our own communities, which firstly depends on our share of the electorate, then on the calibre of those who represent us, then on the powers they have and how well they use them. Good administration depends on the calibre of the chief executive, then on the quality of the organisation he/she creates, and finally on the
calibre of staff he or she employs.

With the proposed super-Auckland the Hauraki Gulf Islands will have only 0.6% of the electorate. It is therefore unlikely that we would have a councillor of our own, because that would give us 1 out of a council of 20--which would be 5% of the representation, about 8 times our share of the electorate.

If the Chief Executive is someone like David Rankin we are doomed. From the islands' point of view that position needs to be someone far stronger and more able than usual, because most of the 2300 staff now in Auckland City Council will remain and they will be the ones we will be dealing with in the main. So they will have to wrenched into reality. That will take strength, determination and great skill.

Our two Community Board will be the same size as now, with five elected members. And it seems that that will be all, because in the government's pronouncement on the Royal Commission there is no mention of a councillor on them.

In stark contrast, if the Local Government Commission goes ahead and approves the Thames-Coromandel application we would have 23.15% of the electorate and three councillors. Two for Waiheke and one for Great Barrier. The Community Boards would also be bigger and have far more extensive powers, even developing the local budgets and local rates

The Waiheke Board would have nine members: five elected as now, the two councillors, the mayor, and an elected Maori representative. Great Barrier's Board would have eight members because it would have one councillor. The Regional Councillor would be present at every Community Board meeting. (See
www.waihekenotes.blogspot.com/2008/04/draft-reorganisation-proposal-for.html)

The three Hauraki Gulf Island councillors would sit on a council of twelve including the mayor.

Steve Ruru in Thames-Coromandel is a skilled and very able Chief Executive, with a good organisation made up of staff who are of a noticeably higher calibre than we are used to in Auckland.

The government's pronouncement also heralds the abrupt end of the Auckland City Council subsidy/gravy-train. It specifically says on page 14 that the 20 or 30 community boards will 'influence the Auckland Council by petitioning for extra services that their community wants. Services would be paid for through a targeted rate for the local area, a local rate rise or a change in priorities.'

So much for those who were against splitting from Auckland 'because only Auckland has the money.'

The government has said what it wants. But in law it can only ask the Local Government Commission to do the reorganisation. It cannot command. It has no more power than any citizen. Only the Local Government Commission has the power to make and hand down reorganisation rulings (unless the government bends the rules by altering the law). The Minister could, in theory, refuse to recommend that the LGC's ruling becomes an Order in Council (the Executive Council, signed off by the Governor General), but that would be most improper, and he would be wide open to a charge of stepping outside the rule of law.

That unelected CEO in charge of 6000 bureaucrats in the super-city proposal means that it will actually be a super-bureaucracy. All the problems on the islands come from the present city-oriented bureaucracy. A powerful super-bureaucracy will be even worse. On the peninsula there is a staff of only 192 and a good CEO, one who works well with the elected council and is monitored by it via a committee chaired by their excellent mayor (she got 97.33% of the vote on the final count at the last election).

It is going to be an interesting few months.

RANKIN TO REPRESENT AKL TO LGC

2009-04-10T15:18:00.000+12:00

An indication that Auckland City Council is now taking seriously the application before the Local Government Commission to carve the Hauraki Gulf Islands off Auckland's territory and move them to Thames-Coromandel District Council is shown by the fact that it has just nominated its CEO, David Rankin, to speak for it when the LGC holds its submissions hearings.

Interesting. Christine Watson, who had been handling the matter, has been set aside in favour of the man at the top.

But in many other ways Auckland is carrying on as if nothing has happened, as if neither that proposal to the LGC nor the one from the government for the super-council have happened. It is still making decisions inside its bubble. It is true that it cannot be expected to put local government on hold, but there are decisions that should not be made by an entity that will soon cease to exist. Such as spending a lot of time and money on the LTCCP.

Nor should it be making decisions about the Hauraki Gulf Islands as if it will be running them for ever. One way or the other that will cease, because a new council will be. Either the Thames-Coromandel District Council or the Auckland super-Council.

All eight of the councils that are to be eliminated should be restricting themselves just to day-to-day actions and very short-term decisions. Anything else would be presumptuous, arrogant, wasteful and morally wrong.

VALUE OF WAIHEKE'S AIRPORT SHARES

2009-04-08T19:16:00.000+12:00

Page 451 of the Royal Commission's report says Auckland City Council owns 12.8% of the shares in Auckland International Airport, and that they are now worth $303.7 million. Hard on the heels of that a council report said its dividend from the shares this year was $9.7 million (and that that was below normal).

Last year I asked the airport company what percentage of shares Waiheke County Council had before Auckland took over in 1989. It wrote back saying that it was 0.115%, but could not give me the current value. The figures in the Royal Commission's report show that they are now worth $2,728,555, and that this year's dividend would have been $87,150.

Under Section 13(b)(iv) of the reorganisation proposal now before the Local Government Commission for the Thames-Coromandel application, the shares would return to the island.

SUMMARISED REACTION TO THE ROYAL COMMISSION

2009-04-03T16:49:00.000+13:00

This the letter sent to Gulf News after reading the report of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. It is a summary of the much longer posting uploaded last week.

...

O goody! The Royal Commission wants Auckland City Council to become Tamaki-makau-rau Local Council. So ACC would be TLC. What a macabre joke!

And the structure the Royal Commission wants is illegal for the rest of the country, because it falls outside the Local Government Act 2002 (see page 664 of the report), so a special Act of Parliament would be needed just for Auckland. Therefore under the heading of local government Auckland would be a country within a country. That would create a local government apartheid. A very bad move.

We should have one law for all New Zealand. Auckland is too full of itself as it is. Underlining its selfishness and arrogance in legislation would be over the top.

The Royal Commission calls its recommendation a unitary council. But it isn't, because it is not a true unified one-layer council. Nor is it the usual two-level structure of regional council and city/district councils. It is this new illegal thing, a mix of regional council and local councils. Neither fish nor fowl.

It recommends for the Hauraki Gulf Islands a few delegated crumbs, which are yet to be decided, except for being allowed to look after our own halls and reserves (big deal!), and one more member on our two community boards. But our representation on councils will be reduced. Our lone councillor would be one of 22 in the TLC. And all we would have on the Auckland Council would be one councillor out of 23 shared with all of Rodney.

APOLOGIES FOR THE FALSE SHUTDOWN

2009-03-30T12:40:00.000+13:00

I apologise for the outage that afflicted this blog in the last few days. But some fiend generated a false accusation that it was spam, so Google had to go through its investigation process to determine the truth.

Some will try anything to shut down freedom of speech when they don't like the message.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT APARTHEID BY ROYAL COMEDIANS

2009-03-28T10:00:00.004+13:00

The Royal Commissions Report on Auckland's Local Governance
-----------------------------------------------------------

Looked at just as a report it is very good. Well-researched, well-written, well-structured, well laid out, comprehensive.

But its recommendation is bad. A fudge. A confused mess.

If the government does what it wants New Zealand would become a two-tier country. Auckland would be a country within a country, and a very powerful one at that--a country called Auckland loosely affiliated with the one called New Zealand. Auckland's local government would be run under one set of laws, the rest of New Zealand would run under a different set. What Auckland would have would be illegal everywhere else. That is bad, very bad. There should be one New Zealand, all operating under one law. Auckland might as well run up a flag with that big, blue A on it and secede.

It is just the old battle between Auckland and Wellington; this time Auckland is determined to come out on top.

We would have a kind of duchy. The duke, the mayor of Auckland, would preside the new Auckland Council, and would have a enormous power (for instance, he would appoint the deputy mayor and the chairs of all the council committees). So would his council. They would preside over an empire with a third of New Zealand's population, stretching from Mercer to north of Wellsford. They would have their own special minister in the Cabinet. The power of the mayor would rival, if not exceed, that of the prime minister; and the power of the council would rival that of the government.

Auckland is too full of itself anyway. Enshrining its selfishness, arrogance and hubris in law and making it a law unto itself, would be way over the top.

In setting up a structure that needs a special law to make it legal the Royal Commission has exceeded its brief. Under 'Relevant Matters' it was told that it could investigate and receive representations on, amongst other things, 'what changes to current legislation (consistent with the purposes and principles of local government as described in the Local Government Act 2002) are considered desirable to achieve or support the achievement of the inquiry's objectives.' But it has gone beyond 'current legislation'--which is mainly the Local Government Act 2002--and invented a new Act, the Auckland Act. An Act so powerful that if that clashed with any other Act it would override it. That is monstrous.

Before the Royal Commission issued this ridiculous, hubristic thing, it was conjectured that its preferred model would be the 'super-city'. But this is a super-region. It cannot be called a city, because it contains vast swathes of rural land, although the report constantly talks of a world-class city. But that is just marketing, because the city proper ceases to exist in legal and linguistic terms. Instead there are four urban wards, which contain the 'metropolitan urban limit'--the MUL, as the Royal Commission calls it. There is no real designation of city, no definition. The super-council, the Auckland Council, presides over the whole thing, a mix of urban and rural.

The excellent legal definition of 'city in the Local Government Act 2002 has been ignored. So has the normal definition in the language. The result is a blurry fudge. Where is the city proper? What will people be able to point to and say 'That is Auckland city'? What will the world be able to point to? The Royal Commission has fudged both law and language.

It has obviously avoided 'regional' and 'city' in the legal titles it recommends so that it could evade the legal definitions in the Local Government Act 2002. The way it uses 'unitary council' is also outside the Act, in the Act that is a territorial authority that has had conferred upon it the powers of a regional council. But the Royal Commission has turned that on its head: its 'unitary council' is a regional council that operates locally through illegal 'local councils'.

And under the Act there are only three ways that a unitary council can be proposed--by a resolution of one of the affected councils, the Minister of Local Government, or a petition signed by at least 10% of the affected registered electors. There is no mention of a Royal Commission. If this so-called unitary council is to be legal it must be proposed and set up one of those ways.

The Royal Commission has done rather more than turn 'unitary council' on its head. It has fudged its meaning, because although it calls its proposed Auckland Council a unitary council it isn't one. A unitary council is the single-level alternative to the normal two-level structure in which there are a number of city and/or district councils and a regional council. In a unitary council a single regional-territorial council combines the two functions. But what the Royal Commission has invented for Auckland is neither fish nor fowl. Its 'unitary council' is somewhere between a unitary and a two-level structure. The Auckland Council is a regional council with six 'local councils'--a new sort of council that is illegal under the LGA2002 (as the Royal Commission admits on page 664). That is why they need that special Auckland Act.

The seven existing territorial councils would be trimmed to six local councils. They would be pretty much the same as they are now, except for the two in the south that would be merged into one, and they would have greatly reduced powers--only what were delegated by the super-council. The staff in the local councils would be employed by the CEO of the super-council, and managed day-to-day by their local council managers, but they would be answerable to the CEO. One of the tasks of those local councils would be 'place-shaping.'

Royal Commission? No, Royal Comedy.

The most macabre part of the joke is that the Hauraki Gulf Islands would for day-to-day matters be under the same council as now, except it would no longer be called Auckland City Council. It would be renamed the Tamaki-makau-rau Local Council. So ACC would become TLC! The same people under whose tender loving care we have been for twenty years...

The pressure of submissions from the Hauraki Gulf Island, coupled with the Royal Commission's desire to nullify the Thames-Coromandel application to the Local Government Commission, caused it to recommend more for them than for any other community. It says they should keep their community boards. But its attempt to gazump the Thames-Coromandel application has come nowhere near the level of local government that that would give the islands. And it was an attempt, because when the Commission came to Waiheke I spoke with the chairman, Hon. Peter Salmon, in the lunchbreak, and he they might come up with something that would even satisfy what was behind the LGC application. So the application has had at least that positive effect. But the trifling delegations that the Commission has proposed are nothing compared with the wide-ranging local decision-making power that community boards have with Thames-Coromandel.

Thames-Coromandel's community boards have a wide range of duties and powers, including developing local budgets and local rates, determining library hours, setting the priorities on roadworks, even sitting on some council committees. The Royal Commission has only chucked the islands a few crumbs. With Thames-Coromandel we would have a whole loaf.

The crumbs are that our community boards would have one extra member each, and they would be allowed to run their local halls and reserves (big deal!), plus whatever other delegations the super-council might allow them. For day-to-day things they would come under the TLC, except for ones not delegated it by the super-council.

Under the recommendation from the Royal Comedians all the islands would be deemed rural, except for Waiheke's main villages--i.e., all but Orapiu. They would be within the metropolitan urban limit--i.e., part of the metropolis. So for resource-consents the Royal Commission says they would trot off the TLC. The rest of Waiheke and all the other islands would go to the super-council.

The islands would have the same one councillor, but she would be 1 out of 22 on the TLC instead of 1 out of 19 on ACC. We would have no representation of our own on the super-council, the Auckland Council. For that we would share one councillor with the whole of Rodney, because the Hauraki Gulf Islands and Rodney District would make up the Northern Rural Ward, which would have 1 super-councillor out of the 23. That councillor would obviously be someone from Rodney, because it has by far the dominant population. We would have only 8.78% of the whole.

Thus the representation for the islands would be different on the super-council than for our local council. For the local council we would still be with Auckland, renamed Tamaki-makau-rau, because we would be deemed part of central Auckland. But for the super-council we would be with Rodney, because we would be in the Northern Rural Ward. Very odd.

The committee structure for the super-council would include a Rural & Islands Committee. But there are only two rural wards, each with only one councillor, and committees typically contain several times that number, and the islands would share their councillor with Rodney. Therefore even if both rural councillors were on that committee the island's voice would be very weak. Or weaker than weak, given that the chairs of all the committees would be appointed by the mayor. If he didn't care a hoot about the islands we might as well dig a hole and bury ourselves.

History says our voice would probably be weaker than weak, because at the takeover by Auckland in 1989 the then Local Government Commission stipulated that there be an island committee for at least five years. Auckland did set one up, but it refused to put the island councillor on it, and dumped the whole thing when the time was up. We therefore should not be filled with optimism if the Royal Commission's recommendations are implemented.

In saying that the Hauraki Gulf Islands should remain with central Auckland the Royal Commission has allowed itself to be seduced by that specious ferries argument (i.e., that because there are lots of ferries to Auckland we should be under the council in Auckland). But ferries are not councils, or councillors or council staff. They do not provide local government. They certainly do not create quality local government. They do not 'enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities.' Two ferries a day, or twenty--it does not make any difference to how the council operates. But it doesn't matter if getting to the central council office is a ferry and a walk or a ferry and an 80-minute drive. What does matter, and very much, is the quality of local government you get there.

Please, LGC, get us out of here into the normal world, get us out of the belly of this monstrous beast into the small-scale, friendly world of Thames-Coromandel! It is a much better council than ACC--and the Royal Commission envisages each Local Council in the Auckland empire as having the same staff as now, so the TLC is likely to have the same mindset. Exhaustive research has shown that Thames-Coromandel is a much better council, that it gives more responsive, more engaged local government, and that it cares about keeping to the Local Government Act 2002--especially the heart of the Act enshrined in section 10: 'The purpose of local government is to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of communities, and to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of communities, now and in the future.'

The proposed royal empire, the state within a state that would govern a third of the country's population, is not local government. Local has been consumed by overweening vanity and the lust for power and territory.

Shifting the islands to the peninsula would shrink the proposed Auckland empire to something reasonable. A large chunk of territory on its eastern flank would be removed. It would not stretch from the Tasman Sea right out into the Pacific Ocean. The result would be far more palatable to the nation, especially if the southern boundary did not extend past the Bombay Hills, Auckland's traditional limit.

The only silver lining in this right royal cloud is that high and mighty Auckland City Council would be reduced to a mere local council.

The Royal Commission has inadvertently underlined Auckland City Council's shonky accounting, because the data for revenue it gave the Commission is different to what it had previously given in response to requests made under the Local Government Official Information & Meetings Act.

The Royal Commission's researchers did get a figure I have been wanting for some time, namely the value of the shares in Auckland International Airport that were once held by the Waiheke County Council. The airport informed me last year that Waiheke County Council had 0.115% of the shares before Auckland took over in 1989, but it could not tell me their value. The Royal Commission reports Auckland's percentage as 12.8%, worth $303.7 million. This year's dividend to Auckland has just been reported as $9.7 million (down from normal).

Therefore under Section 13(b)(iv) of the reorganisation proposal that is now before the Local Government Commission, we would get back shares now worth $2,728,555, and this year's dividend would have been $87,150. A nice little windfall every year. If the LGC moves us.

Failing a move east, courtesy of the Local Government Commission, the best we can hope for if we have to keep going west is that the mayor and the CEO of the super-council will have skill, imagination, flair and vision. And that the CEO will hire staff of like character. And that the staff and the local councillors will care about their communities and engage with them. The Royal Commission repeatedly expresses great faith that all that will happen. But Auckland's history is mainly the opposite, so no one could be optimistic that that it would, especially for the Hauraki Gulf Islands.

There is no doubt that there are things wrong with the way Auckland is run. There is a lot wrong with Auckland, full stop. But this vast upheaval is not needed to fix the worst of it. Far simpler--and far cheaper in these economically constrained times--would be to make two changes to the Local Government Act 2002, in effect a couple of tweaks to section 14(1)(e). One would force adjacent city councils under the same regional council to have a common computer and billing system, and the other would force planning issues that cross city/district council boundaries to be handled by the regional council. That would solve most of the costly problems in Auckland without rearranging the country and doing assault and battery to the LGA2002--or to the Hauraki Gulf Islands.

WAIHEKE LIBRARY HOURS WITH THAMES-COROMANDEL

2009-03-26T19:15:00.000+13:00

Some have asked me about what the library's opening hours would be if the Local Government Commission transfers the Hauraki Gulf Islands to Thames-Coromandel District Council. They point out that the opening hours in Thames are different to what we have here.

The answer, from the Thames-Coromandel mayor, Philippa Barriball, is that with that council the community decides, through the community board, what it wants and is willing to pay for.

So if for example we went to extremes and decided that we wanted the library open 24 hours a day, and were willing to pay for that, the community board would set a targeted local rate accordingly (with Thames-Coromandel, the council does the district rates and the community boards do the local, ward rates).

(At present the library costs each ratepayer about $43 a year, reckoning on Auckland City Council figures).

GETTING THE BEST IS NEVER CRAZY

2009-03-05T22:23:00.000+13:00

There are many islanders who say that the application to the Local Government Commission to change the council is crazy, or looney, or some such.

Really?

Is it crazy or looney to try to try to get the best available council? It is crazy or looney to take advantage of the procedure put into the law for every New Zealander so that we can get good local government to the highest standard?

Of course not.

It can certainly be called 'crazy', or not very bright, to put up with the worst year after year, decade after decade, and not do a thing about it--never to try to better ourselves.

We can ask the LGC the question: 'Which council is best for us?' We should ask it. We have asked it.

The LGC is now going through a rigorous process, point by point, whose statutory aim is good local government for us--that the council we are put with or kept with is the best. No one needs to fear getting the best. No one should.

WAIHEKE COMMUNITY BOARD IS BREAKING THE LAW

2009-02-28T17:57:00.001+13:00

Everyone elected to a local government office in New Zealand has to go through a formal swearing-in at which he or she must make the statutory promise set down in the Local Government Act 2002. For every member of the Waiheke Community Board that is: 'I, [name], declare that I will faithfully and impartially, and according to the best of my skill and judgement, execute and perform, in the best interests of Waiheke, the powers, authorities, and duties vested in, or imposed upon, me as a member of the Waiheke Community Board by virtue of the Local Government Act 2002, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, or any other Act.'

That is, or is meant to be, a legally binding promise to the community. Therefore board members who in any issue fail to be faithful and impartial, who fail to act according the best of their individual skill and judgement, who fail to act in the best interests of the Waiheke Community are not just doing badly, they are breaking the law. They are in breach of the Local Government Act 2002 (and could be prosecuted).

Over the last twenty years the Waiheke Community Board has considered many issues, small, medium and large. In very many of them it has done brilliantly. The present Board is no exception. When it is on song and acting as should it does superbly well.

But over the last year or so it has been faced with the biggest issue that has ever come before it, the biggest issue that ever could come before it: Which is the best council for this community? Which of the two councils available, Auckland City Council or Thames-Coromandel District Council provides the best in local government, particularly for village-rural-island communities? That is the question posed by the application to the Local Government Commission (LGC) in which it has been asked to make a boundary-change, which if successful would transfer us from Auckland City Council to Thames-Coromandel District Council. That is a very serious question. The answer will affect the lives of islanders for a long time.

What was the Community Board's response? Did it do an exhaustive comparative analysis of the two councils so that it would know with certainty which is the best, and would be able to say so confidently to the community? No. It did the abject opposite. By majority vote it has twice voted to disassociate itself from anything to do with the application to the LGC, and now by majority it has voted to make a submission opposing it. In all that it has broken the law, because it has not been faithful and served the community according to statute; it has been partial not impartial because it refused to consider any option except Auckland; it has not exercised any skill and judgement at all, let alone its best, because it has done no investigation--nothing--certainly not the exhaustive research needed to establish which council is best and is best for our community. Therefore it cannot have acted in the community's best interests, because it has no idea which option is best. And it has not carried out the detailed analysis required by the Local Government Act 2002, so it cannot say anything about this issue that can have any validity under the laws of New Zealand--laws put there to ensure that we get the best in local government.

It has in effect said to the community, 'We don't care if you have the best council or not, because we are not going to look for the best on your behalf. As far as we are concerned you will be staying with Auckland, no matter whether it is good, bad or mediocre.'

Therefore in this great issue five of its six members have turned their statutory promise into a lie. They have broken faith with the Waiheke community. They have acted in contempt of it.

..

Now, even if they had the will to, and they don't, they cannot do the vast amount of research needed to act in this matter as the Local Government Act 2002 demands, because there is not enough time before the deadline set under the Act. They have to do analyses under at least four areas of it, and huge amounts of information must be gathered from many sources in both councils, both documentary and live witnesses. That takes a long time. They have only a fraction of what is necessary. So anything they do now can be no more than cursory, and therefore will fall well below the best of their skill and judgement. In this most important issue they have not worked in the best interests of the community according to the Act; now they cannot.

WHY CARRIG'S LETTER IS DEFAMATORY

2009-02-27T13:54:00.000+13:00

Its overall tenor is defamatory. Its obvious aim was to bury me in public odium and contempt. Its clearly malicious intent and torrent of provable falsehoods go well beyond fair comment.

I am accused of turning Waiheke into a joke. Proof? And making a fool of the Community Board. Proof?

I am accused of breaking my promise for 'good sound governance.' False. That is what this process is all about, and it can be proved beyond all shadow of a dream of a nuance of doubt--with a pile of documentary evidence--that Thames-Coromandel is much better at it than Auckland. To accuse someone in public office of lying to get that office is serious.

I am accused of having a hidden agenda towards Auckland City, another accusation of gaining public office by lying, this time with concealment. The accusation is also false. My campaign leaflet made perfectly clear what I thought of Auckland and touched on its shortcomings, such as the planning botch at Matiatia. The leaflet also had the address of my blog, which made that even clearer. The blog also mentioned, as an idea, Thames-Coromandel, but I can prove with three witnesses and documentary evidence that I did not know till the 11th of January, well after the election, just what process was available to us for a change in council, so I could not possibly have planned it before the election; and my first contact with Thames was on November the 5th, for which I have witnesses and my phone bill as evidence. I also put the matter before the community board at the earliest opportunity after I had been able to get in touch with everyone necessary.

Then the letter descends into a wild attempt to blacken me by associating me with a farrago of nonsense, as if I would be the cause of all the ruin and catastrophe it prophesies.

I am accused of lunacy. If that is true he should try to have me committed under section 8 of the Mental Health Act. Pursuing a legal, democratic process open to all New Zealanders in an attempt to have us moved to a better council cannot fairly or truly be described as lunacy.

The 'community vote' is another falsehood with which he tries to portray me as a profligate bogeyman. There is no referendum. And local government with Thames would be millions of dollars cheaper than with Auckland. That again is provable with documentary evidence. To falsely accuse a public official of wilfully setting out to waste public money is defamatory.

I told the truth; I am doing what I am sworn to do under the Local Government Act 2002; I have hidden nothing. His letter maliciously says the opposite.

REQUEST TO MARKETPLACE OVER CARRIG'S LETTER

2009-02-26T00:39:00.000+13:00

PROMINENT APOLOGY, PLEASE

Printing a letter, open or not, addressed to me but not giving me right of reply in the same issue is very unfair as well as a breach of the principles of the New Zealand Press Council. Using as an excuse that it was advertising not editorial when it was so obviously editorial masquerading at advertising only compounds the error of judgement. Even worse, there was no truth in the letter. The writer was communicating with his own unsupportable guesses, wild accusations and fictitious headlines, not with me. I am very disappointed that Marketplace fell from its usual high standard and printed the thing. The very least you should have done was to hold it over for a week so as to give me the right of reply that good journalism demands.

MY REPLY TO BILL CARRIG'S LETTER

2009-02-26T00:35:00.004+13:00

I should be grateful to you, Bill Carrig. Because if the best the opposition can hurl at our attempt to get the best local government for the islands is the rubbish you published at great expense in your open-letter advertisement in Waiheke Marketplace (February the 25th 2009), the attempt must be on the right track. [Letter reproduced below this reply]

There is not a word of truth in your diatribe, and you show in every line his abysmal ignorance of any facts and of local government law. You have interviewed your mirror, your have communed with your word--processor, you have invented an army of straw men then viciously knocked them over, you have whirled down a malignant spiral of your own invention and told the world that it has my name on it.

First you accuse me of having 'a personal hidden agenda towards the Auckland City Council.' False. The pre-election leaflet that I handed out by the thousands, I assume also to you, clearly said, 'I love this island and don't want to see it trashed. I want to remain its good old pleasant self. The Board's first duty is to defend it against speculators who see it as a money-machine instead of a place to live, developers who carelessly wreck its pleasantness, and the ruinous skulduggery of Auckland City.' There was other material in similar vein. Then at the foot of the leaflet, in large letters, I said: 'Local decisions should be made locally. Waiheke is NOT a suburb of Auckland.' Also on the leaflet was the address of this blog, which still has at the start the first postings made before the election, albeit with some updates made in the light of later knowledge (such as in the next paragraph). Nothing was hidden. Everything was in plain view. If you failed to see it that was because you were not looking.

I also have three reputable witnesses to the fact that I did not know till the 11th of January 2009, months after the election, just what change-of-council process existed in the Local Government Act 2002 for the Hauraki Gulf Islands relative to Thames-Coromandel, or any council. It was therefore impossible for me to have planned it before the election in September and October the previous year. The most Thames-Coromandel could have been was a theoretical thought, which is what it was--not of how it could be done, if that was a better council than Auckland. I had no contact with Thames-Coromandel before the 5th of November 2008, and I can prove that from notes, the witnesses I spoke to, and my telephone bills.

You also say that I promised to be a 'team player' when I talked to you on the boat. I most certainly did not. Nor should I, and it would be quite improper to, because no member of any community board is required to be. Everyone elected to local government must in law swear to act to the best of his or her individual skill and judgement. It is a community board operating under the law for the community, not a rugby team trying to beat the opposition.

Yes, I did promise sound governance. That is why, having identified with exhaustive research that Thames-Coromandel District Council is a much better at it than Auckland City Council, I initiated the democratic legal process to change the boundary (a better council, note, not perfect, because perfection does not exist on earth). I am keeping my promise.

You have done no research, like the rest of the Waiheke Community Board, so you are incapable of making a judgement worthy of the name. Neither are they. Except that they, in failing to do that, have broken the law. You have only broken sense, logic and good judgement.

The costs you then fling at the community are as much fiction and nonsense as the rest of your foolish letter. First there is no community vote (the assumption that there was one is what put people off trying for a change of council before this). But even if there were, the cost for all the islands would not be $1 million, not $500,000, not even $100,000. It would be $27,000. For Waiheke alone it would be $25,000 (costings supplied by Independent Election Services).

You say 'in anybody's language it is not going to be a cost-effective exercise in today's economic climate.' Really! That may be so in your language, which is clearly divorced from reality. The truth is that the difference between the huge sum that Auckand allocates to the islands for our 'share' of running the 2300-person empire on the isthmus and what we would contribute to Thames-Coromandel if we were with them is $3.92 million. So we would be $3.92 million better off. In today's economic climate, slashing $3.92 million off our costs would probably be considered a better situation. Except, obviously, by you and others of similar sort who prefer hubristic guesses to the truth. (Figures supplied by Auckland and Thames-Coromandel.)

Next come your so-called 'commercial facts and future media headlines', a list of fictions so far off the wall that even Chicken Licken would be ashamed of such knavish scaremongering. She at least could claim to have been hit on the head by a falling nut.

To call 'lunacy' using a democratic legal process set up by Parliament to ensure that we can get the best available standard of local government shows that you care nothing for truth and think that loud defamation makes a good substitute.

Having said all that, even if I had planned the petition/application before the election and concealed it, neither you nor anyone else could have any valid complaint, because all New Zealanders are deemed to know all the law, including you, and the application is a legal process open to everyone. To act within the law in the best interests of the community is a laudable thing, and to condemn it is to condemn an excellent piece of democratic law.

Everyone in public office is expected to do his best, using the tools available in law, and because everyone is deemed to know the law, you are deemed to know that a petition/application of this kind might be started by anyone, including someone elected, even someone you voted for. You should be applauding.

In future, Bill Carrig, do the research, establish the real facts, don't interview your mirror, take an intensive course in logical thought. And spend your spare thousands on people in need. Don't waste it on defamatory advertorial excrement and vomit.

BILL CARRIG'S DEFAMATORY LETTER

2009-02-26T00:31:00.000+13:00

25 February 2009 {{published in Waiheke Marketplace}}

Open Letter to Nobilangelo Ceramalus

Dear Nobilangelo,
Normally, I neither have the time or the inclination to write an open letter, but I feel compelled to in this instance.

Finding someone who voted for you at the 2007 elections is like trying to get someone to admit they voted for MMP!

Well, I'll will [stet] put my hand up and say I did vote for you. (I can hear the roar of laughter at my momentary act of stupidity from my friends, most of whom are fellow commuters. To them I say, 'Live by the sword then die by the sword.')

I have however come to realise, this single tick, in my moment of madness, is the most regretted decision, in my entire voting life. Owning up, however, to giving you my tick, gives me the right to tell you what a complete fool you a making of yourself, the Community Board and, by association, the rest of the residents on our beautiful island. You have turned us into a joke--back to the days when we were known as 'Cadbury Island' and not as we should be, the 'Jewel in the Gulf'.

Let's recap why I voted for you-you promised good sound governance. Isn't that what you told me on the ferry? I seem to recall `team player' being mentioned as well. Not some hair brained idea of secession from Auckland City. Did you tell me before I voted for you that you had a personal hidden agenda towards the Auckland City Council? Why didn't you? Would this have altered my decision? You bet, along with, I suspect, the other 1096 voters--assuming you voted for yourself.

Who knows what the ultimate cost of this will be--estimates range from as low as $100,000 to as high as over $500,000 to a full community vote of over $1million. Now go and mathematically calculate this on a per household basis. In anybody's language it is not going to be a cost effective exercise in today's economic climate.

Putting aside for one moment your personal agenda towards Auckland City, let's think about some of the commercial facts and future media headlines.

'Tourism Auckland withdraws funding from Waiheke'

'Island seniors may possibly lose Super Gold Card travel privileges if Waiheke goes with Thames Coromandel/Waikato Regional Council'

'Health services review their involvement in Waiheke'

'Thames-Coromandel Council declines sponsorship of headland-Sculpture on the Gulf'

'Landfill to be established on Waiheke as too costly to transport to the Waikato'

My message is simple, if you have not already gathered. Stop this lunacy especially in these tough and challenging economic times--or haven't you noticed? An overwhelming majority in our community do not want secession from Auckland City--and you know what, you are going to be shown we don't.

Yours faithfully,
Bill Carrig.

Authorised and paid for by Bill Carrig, Te Whare Wiremu, 21 Coromandel Road, Sandy Bay, Waiheke Island.

ARC'S BENT BUDGET FOR BECKHAM

2009-02-20T16:43:00.000+13:00

The Auckland Regional Council's gamble with ratepayers' money on soccer star David Beckham's New Zealand fizzer, which lost it $1.79 million, is being exposed as a nasty little sty of corruption. Is Auckland Regional Council as shonky as Auckland City Council?

May the Almighty free the Hauraki Gulf Islands from both of them and transfer us ASAP to Thames-Coromandel District Council and Environment Waikato! Surely the Local Government Commission cannot decide otherwise. Thames-Coromandel and EW are councils that stick to the basics, stick to the law and do a good job. They do not get above themselves and behave as if they are Lord High Everything.

Here is New Zealand Herald's take on the story. And Stuff NZ's.

There was also ARC's big $8-million wastage a few years back on its contract with EDS for a billing system. It had been sending its rates bills inexpensively by adding a line or two to the rates bills of all the district councils. Then it decided to get its own computer empire, so it signed a three-year contract for $11 million with EDS. A comprehensive analysis showed that if it had gone elsewhere and not used an obsolete empire like EDS it could have got the same thing for $3 million. It's only your money, folks. ARC's chairman Mike Lee kept very quiet about that one. (Now the Auditor-General's office is going to take a look at it.)

With that sort of thing going on, the so-called Super City is more likely to be Shonky City. The elected part of ARC has obviously not been keeping a good enough watch on the employed part. The latter is given far too much leeway.

But for John Banks to come over all smug and holier-than-thou shows how out of touch he is with David Rankin's inept empire. Handing him authority to spend up to $4 million over his own signature, as ACC has just done, is putting temptation in the way of incompetence and inviting yet more nasty shemozzles to the city's doorstep.

HGI REORGANISATION PROPOSAL

2009-02-20T13:25:00.000+13:00

The latest version of the reorganisation proposal, as submitted to the Local Government Commission, is at this address.
is at this address. It has been updated many times from the first version posted in April 2008, and there have been many postings since then so it is now well down the blog. This posting will make it much easier to find.

It has also been revised and updated since the version that was sent to the LGC with the petition/application, so it differs from the one shown on the LGC's website. But the excellent map shown there is accurate because the area of the proposal has not changed, just the wording. There have been improvements, corrections, deletions, modifications, and information that has come in since lodgement has generated some new sub-sections. But it is essentially the same. The variation is only in detail.

(My apologies to islanders other than Waihekeans for the name of this blog, which has become more of a Hauraki Gulf Islands blog than a Waiheke one, but the name was chosen well before the reorganisation application was thought of and initiated.)

LGC MEDIA RELEASE SUBMISSIONS PHASE

2009-02-20T13:10:00.000+13:00

LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMISSION: Media Release, 16 February 2009 {{with my additions}}

COMMISSION CONSULTS ON HAURAKI GULF PROPOSAL

The Local Government Commission is calling for submissions on a proposal for the transfer of the Hauraki Gulf Islands (except for Rangitoto Island and Browns Island) from Auckland City and Auckland Region to Thames-Coromandel District and Waikato Region.

The proposal was initiated by a petition signed by over 700 electors living within the area.

In November 2008 the Auckland City Council, Thames-Coromandel District Council, Auckland Regional Council and Waikato Regional Council decided that the proposal should be referred to the Commission for consideration and decision rather than being dealt with by the Councils.

Further information about the proposal, including a map of the affected area can be viewed at the Commission's website (www.lgc.govt). {{The latest, revised version of the proposal, submitted to the LGC in January 2009, can seen at this address}}

Submissions may be made on any matter relevant to the proposal, including

* whether or not the proposal should proceed; and
* whether some modification or variation of the proposal should be adopted.

The Commission is also consulting with the affected and adjoining local authorities, the proposer, relevant government agencies, and iwi.

The closing date for submissions is 20 April 2009.

After the closing date for submissions the process is as follows:

* The Commission sends copies of the submissions it has received to the representative of the electors [1], and provides the opportunity for the representative of the electors to withdraw the proposal.

* If the proposal is not withdrawn, the Commission decides whether to issue a draft reorganisation scheme (based on the proposal or on some modification of or variation to the proposal), or not to proceed with the proposal.

* As part of making that decision the Commission will meet with the proposers, the affected and neighbouring local authorities and those submitters who wish to meet with the Commission. In addition, the Commission may make any further inquiries and investigations that it considers appropriate.

* If the Commission issues a draft reorganisation scheme, it invites submissions on the draft scheme.

* The Commission considers all submissions it has received, and decides whether to issue a final reorganisation based on the draft scheme (with or without modifications), or to decline to proceed with the scheme.

Further information about the procedure to be followed may be found on the Commission's website by clicking the 'Guidelines' button.

Media inquiries:
Donald Riezebos
Chief Executive Officer
Local Government Commission
Phone: 04 460 2241
Fax: 04 460 2201

[1] The representative of electors may act on behalf of the proposers. The representative of electors is one of the proposers appointed by the Commission to carry out that role. {{In January 2009, the Commission appointed Nobilangelo Ceramalus to be the representative.}}

LGC MEDIA RELEASE (BELATED POSTING)

2009-02-20T13:06:00.000+13:00

LOCAL GOVERNMENT COMMISSION: Media Release, 10 December 2008 {{with my additions}}

PROPOSAL FOR TRANSFER OF HAURAKI GULF ISLANDS TO THAMES-COROMANDEL DISTRICT

The Local Government Commission has received a proposal for the transfer of responsibility for the Hauraki Gulf Islands (except for Rangitoto Island and Browns Island) from Auckland City Council and Auckland Region to Thames-Coromandel District and Waikato Region.

The proposal was initiated by a petition signed by over 700 electors living within the area. In November 2008, the Auckland City Council, Thames-Coromandel District Council, Auckland Regional Council and Waikato Regional Council decided that the proposal should be referred to the Commission for consideration and decision rather than being dealt with by the Councils.

A copy of the proposal and a map of the affected area can be viewed at the Commission's website (www.lgc.govt). {{The latest, revised version of the proposal, submitted to the LGC in January 2009, can seen at this address}}

The next step in the process is for the Commission to determine a person or organisation to be the representative of the electors who signed the proposal. This is required by clause 36 of Schedule 3 of the Local Government Act 2002. The representative of electors may act on behalf of the proposers. {{In January 2009 the Local Government Commission appointed Nobilangelo Ceramalus the representative.}}

Following the appointment of a representative, the Commission will call for public submissions. Members of the public will have 60 days in which to make a submission. The Commission will also consult with the affected and adjoining local authorities, relevant government agencies, and iwi.

Further information on the process may be found on the Commission's website by clicking the 'Guidelines' button.

Media inquiries:
Donald Riezebos
Chief Executive Officer
Local Government Commission
Phone: 04 460 2241
Fax: 04 460 2201

MALICE NOT MATHS

2009-02-19T20:32:00.002+13:00

A malicious rumour being put about by the small-but-nasty tribe says that if the Local Government Commission rules in favour of transferring the Hauraki Gulf Islands to Thames-Coromandel District Council the changeover would cost us $2 million.

Bunkum!

Those responsible for that fiction are obviously no good at simple arithmetic, and know nothing relevant about computer systems. Nowadays office information is held on computers; and council information centres on property records. There are 7843 properties on the islands (occupied by 8648 people and several hundred dogs), so what the malicious are saying is that it would cost $255 to copy and reformat each computerised property record. That means that if all that fictitious work were done manually by people on the average income--$40,000 or $153 a day--it would take a day and half to convert each record, which would add up to a staggering 13,000 man-days of work--i.e., 54 years of slog for one person or 5.4 years for ten people.

That may look real on some weird planet where they worship the Tooth Fairy, eat their left feet and drink nitric acid. But back here in the real world (where my career includes being computer manager for a local body and systems executive for a large company), that would not be how the conversion would be done. Most of it would be done at computer-speed by computers, not at snail-speed by people. Which means it would not take years or cost millions.

I have had a quotation for one of the most difficult bits, and it would take only two or three days at $1250 a day--a maximum of $3750. Other parts of the conversion would cost the same sort of money, because all you need to do is get a copy of the data on a disk (and a few thousand records is a trivial number for a computer), then you run them through small, easily-written programs to change the format from the one used by Auckland to the one used by Thames-Coromandel. There would also need to be some manual data-entry to fill any gaps, but even if every bit of the entire 7843 property records had to be entered, which would certainly not be the case, that would take only days for a handful of moderately competent operators being paid $15-20 an hour. A fast operator, such as I have employed, can do 27,000 keystrokes an hour.

The staff in the islands' service centres would need some retraining, but even if twenty-five people each spent a week in Thames living in a hotel at $200 a day, plus travel expenses of $100 each, that would be only $27,500.

In short, the total cost of the changeover would be in the tens of thousands not the millions. But if Auckland did try to flim-flam us by charging fifty alien arms and thirty-two liddle green legs for those disk-copies we could drag it before the Auditor-General and/or the Ombudsmen, and the officers responsible could be haled into the District Court under the Local Government Act 2002 and each fined up to $5000.

Once the changeover to Thames-Coromandel was complete, the latest figures supplied by Auckland show that we would save $3.92 million a year in our allocation to the council's central running-costs ($5.732m-$1.8m), which works out at $16,333 a working day, so the exercise would rapidly pay for itself. For example, if it cost $70,000 it would pay for itself in just four days, or in eight days if it were $140,000--so even that fictitious $2m pricetag would pay for itself in four months.

The nasties are also overlooking another piece of simple arithmetic. If their malicious rumour were true, and a changeover for 8628 islanders to Thames-Coromandel really was going to cost $2 million, then it would also be true that a changeover for 1.4 million mainlanders to the Supercilious City would cost $325 million. Which underlines the falsity of their rumour.

As Victor Hugo said: 'The malicious have a dark happiness.'

REPLY TO YET ANOTHER HOOPERISM

2009-02-11T19:50:00.000+13:00

Please, Graham Hooper! Stop interviewing your mirror and your computer. Stop writing fiction that pretends to be fact. Instead do the research and get the truth. Then your writing will be as good as your excellent photography.

First, get the point--which is good local government, and a stack of documentation proves that Thames-Coromandel is much better at it than Auckland. And please realise that applying for good local government in 2009 has no connection whatsoever with where some Waihekeans bought their food in 1840. Truly.

Your conjecture that people signed the petition/application to the Local Government Commission just to escape from me is libellous to me and to them (it also ignores the fact that I did not collect all the signatures). And your claim to superiority in being smart enough not to succumb to a desire for better local government is misplaced vanity piled on libel.

Your letter ended with even more confusion. I made a well-documented point about Auckland failing to get millions of dollars of government roading subsidy, in contrast to Thames-Coromandel. But you managed by some illogical sideslip to turn that into an attack on Thames-Coromandel with your invention that it has never applied for a subsidy to replace the Kopu bridge. You are wrong, wrong, wrong. It did not fail to apply. It could not apply. Because it does not own that bridge. It comes under the jurisdiction of the New Zealand Transport Agency (formerly called Transit New Zealand). The NZTA does intend replacing it--as you would know if you had read its projects document for that part of the country (it is prominently displayed in the foyer of the Thames-Coromandel District Council). And it was announced on the 11th of February that work on the $47 million project is to start in July this year.

You say Thames-Coromandel is my 'beloved.' Odd choice of word. I like them, I admire their far more democratic and accountable way of working, I like their close attention to the Local Government Act 2002. I see that their small-community understanding and empathy would work well for the islands; I see that they are a good council at elected level at employed levels and in the relationship between them; I see that they have a much better mayor and CEO.

But my liddle heart doesn't go pitter-pat over them. I have studied them carefully, and have never seen any white wings or golden haloes. I even got down on me hands and knees in the middle of the main street of Thames and had a dig with me Swiss Army knife, backed up with me runcible spoon, and to my acute disappointment found that the targetted rate to pave the streets with gold has yet to be implemented. So they are not perfect. No one is. They are just much better than that shemozzle on the other horizon.

As you would also know if you had done research instead of exploring the fluff in your navel.

I am disappointed that Marketplace fell from its usual high standard in publishing such dubious stuff--and in the very week that Waiheke Week ceased, an unlamented organ that proved again and again that it did not adhere to the principles of the New Zealand Press Council.

As Oliver Wendell Holmes wisely said: 'Freedom of speech does not give you the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre.' Graham's letter was only a small cry in that class, but it was as false and therefore could do no good.

RATES AND REBATES IN THAMES

2009-02-11T19:47:00.000+13:00

An elderly woman came up to me in Placemakers and asked if the rates rebates would still be available if the Local Government Commission moves us to Thames-Coromandel District Council.

Of course. Those rebates for people on low incomes are from the government, not councils. So they are available no matter which council you are with.

She was also worried that our rates would rise, because she had noticed that the rates in Thames township are much higher. Yes, they are higher, but that is because Thames's rates include charges for reticulated water and wastewater, which Waiheke does not have. But even with those charges in Thames and a few other places, the average rates for the whole peninsula are $83 lower than the average on Waiheke. And when those charges are taken off the average rates are $290 lower. Even better, when Auckland's rates-rises over the last two years are replaced with Thames-Coromandel's changes (they actually went down 8.98% in 2007/2008), the peninsula's average is $502 lower than Waiheke's.

On top of that, the reorganisation document rules out an increase in rates for the first year, then it limits any rises to the change in the consumer-price index (unless the community decides otherwise).

THAMES-COROMANDEL'S RATES LOWER

2009-02-11T19:42:00.000+13:00

A number of people have said they are afraid that if we were with Thames-Coromandel we would pay much higher rates, because they are very high in Thames township. But Thames has reticulated water and wastewater, which we don't have, so you cannot compare its rates with ours. In fact, the average rates over the whole peninsula are between $290 and $502 lower than ours.

In Thames-Coromandel's 2008-2009 annual plan I was struck by the very low rates-increase. For communities like those on the Hauraki Gulf Islands--i.e., ones without reticulated wastewater and water--the average increase per property was only 2.08%. The previous year, for the same category of properties, there was actually a decrease of 8.98%.

On that basis, given Waiheke's average rate per property of $1624, there would have been an average drop of $226 last year and a rise of $34 this year, making a net drop of $116 over the past two years to make a new average of $1508.

But that is misleading, because of course the starting-point would not have been $1624. That is the starting-point made by Auckland; but the average rates in Thames-Coromandel for properties of our type was $1374. So if we had been with Thames-Coromandel, and the same basis had applied, the average rates per property last year would have gone down from $1374 to $1252, then risen to the new average this year of $1278, a net drop of $96.

Digging the equivalent changes out of Auckland City was a rigmarole. I had to use a channel available to community board members, which showed that there had been an average rise of 3.4% on Waiheke in 2007-2008 (following the 45% the previous year) and 6% in 2008-2009, which made that average of $1624 rise by $55 to $1679 then by $101 to $1780, a net rise of $156.

Thus if there were two identical Waihekes, one under Auckland and one with Thames-Coromandel, the average property with Thames-Coromandel would be paying an average of $502 per year less than the one with Auckland.

REMUNERATION AUTHORITY CORRUPTION

2009-02-11T19:34:00.000+13:00

A chronic, fundamental problem in New Zealand's local government is that the Remuneration Authority has long been operating illegally. The way remuneration must be set for people elected to local public office is laid down in the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002)--Clause 7 Schedule 7 sets down a list of mandatory criteria, a clear, simple, admirable list. But the Authority ignores it. Many years ago it replaced that with its own 'law,' the so-called pool formula.

Clause 7 says those elected to local-body office must be paid a fair amount, that it must be fair to ratepayers (neither robbing them nor letting them down by paying so little that they cannot get good service), and that it must attract and retain competent people.

Why, then does Parliament let the Remuneration Authority get away with treating the law with such obvious contempt? The pool formula begins with a complicated calculation that has nothing to do with the law, instead allocating points to each council on weird system that might as well have been beamed in by Little Green Zonks for all the relevance it has to reality. The points are converted to dollars by multiplying them by 4.080, 3.468, 3.310, or 2.942 at various break-points. That gives the pool of money for each council. Councillors then decide how it should be parcelled out to them and community board members, and put a proposal to the Remuneration Authority. Once the Authority agrees it rubberstamps it, which sets the individual remunerations.

The result is that most community board members in New Zealand, including those under Auckland City, and many councillors, are being paid far below the minimum legal hourly rate. Some community board members are on as little as $206 a year, or $412 or $618. Auckland Regional Councillors, who have to make decisions for 1.4 million people, the biggest region in the country, are paid only $22,000 a year. Hardly enough to 'attract and retain competent people' as the law commands. And very unfair to ratepayers, because the people they vote for cannot afford to spend the time needed for the service they have the right to.

Therefore the only people who can afford to stand for local-body positions are those of independent means. So local democracy is not representative, because the positions are not open to everyone. Unrepresentative democracy is not democracy at all.

The Remuneration Authority is acting unlawfully, it has been doing it for years, it is therefore guilty of misfeasance--it is corrupt. It should be sacked.

CITY OR ISLAND?

2009-01-29T18:51:00.000+13:00

What is Waiheke? Is it an island, or is it part of Auckland City? Is it to stay island or become city? Is island life to become city life? Is it to keep the unique character defined by islanders in Essentially Waiheke, or is it to lose that for ever?

If our future is to be city, we must stay with Auckland City and accept its rule, its terms and conditions, its decisions, and its way of life as our way of life.

If our future is to be island, we must escape from the city. The ideal would be to escape to people like us. Fortunately, in Thames-Coromandel we have that ideal about the same distance from our eastern coast as Queen Street's glass and steel canyon is from our western.

The word peninsula means almost an island; Thames-Coromandel's mayor, Philippa Barriball describes the peninsula as 'one huge big Waiheke Island'; and Coromandel-Colville Councillor John Morrissey describes islanders as 'the closest kin we've got.'

They are our kind of people; like us they fiercely defend their unique, non-city way of life; like us they have a village-rural character and charm. We belong with them, not with the city. Especially a Supercilious City.

NOT ORCLAND

2009-01-29T18:46:00.000+13:00

This is Waiheke Island. It is an island in the Hauraki Gulf. It is a Hauraki Gulf Island. It is not an Auckland Island, it is not an Auckland City Island, it is not an Auckland City Suburb Island. It is in name, in geography, and in ecology a place apart, a place that rightfully belongs with the other places of the same kind.

Waiheke is immersed in the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park, which is dominated by three elements: the broad waters of the Gulf, the Coromandel Peninsula and the Gulf Islands. The peninsula and the islands are the only elements immersed in the park; together they have the bulk of the land area and the coastline.

Waiheke is not inextricably linked to Auckland. There are transport links, as there are with everywhere else in New Zealand; there are economic links, as there are with all the rest of New Zealand, for which Auckland is the economic engine; there are personal links, as there are with all the rest of New Zealand. But none of those define our true existence. We are islanders not Aucklanders.

If Auckland city, even the entire Auckland region, were to vanish off the face of the earth, Waiheke would remain. It would go through a time of hardship as it adjusted, but it would survive. But if the Hauraki Gulf were to vanish it would vanish. It is the Hauraki Gulf that we are inextricably linked to in the true sense of that term. We cannot escape from the Gulf; we can escape from Auckland.

If you live next door to the Smiths that does not mean you must think of yourself as part of the Smith family and change your name to Smith. Even if you stayed on your side of the fence you would still not have to let the Smiths run your life. Living next door does not mean that you belong neck and crop to your neighbour.

Especially if your neighbour is the neighbour from hell. Then you owe it to yourself to look elsewhere for good friendship, and if you can find it to nurture it and let it nurture you.

HAPPY OLD YEAR

2009-01-03T17:17:00.000+13:00

Deputy Mayor David Hay has been quoted by Cr Denise Roche as saying that dealing with Waiheke's rubbish costs $710 per head. But figures prised out of Auckland City Council using the Local Government Official Information & Meetings Act (LGOIMA--pronounced ligoymuh) show him to be very slightly out.

The cost of dealing with our rubbish in the 2007/2008 financial year was $1,961,710 and dealing with our recycling cost $537,077, a total of $2,498,787. The revenue for rubbish (bags, transfer station fees, etc) was $465,053. So the net total was $2,033,744. That comes to $264.50 per head--$5 a week (or $316.54 per property if you prefer--$6 a week).

Nowhere near $710. Perhaps he was using our population figure for 1976, back when it was 2846.

The cost of rubbish/recycling the previous year was $2,104,351, so this year it cost a hefty 18.7% more. Why?

LGOIMA also shows that Auckland made a profit of $254,497 on Waiheke's wharves in 2007/2008 (an income of $1,711,165 less expenditure of $1,456,668).

LGOIMA also shows that Auckland missed out on over $3 million of government roading subsidies for Waiheke in 2007/2008. It achieved only $3,114,329 of the $6,601,822 that it should have got.

RESPONSE TO WICKED AND WEAK

2008-12-19T20:08:00.000+13:00

Wicked and Weak, also called the Slag Rag, asked me what was my hope for Waiheke in the New Year.

I wonder if it published my response. I never read that so-called newspaper so I shall never know.

Here it is: My hope for the Waiheke Community in 2009 is a much better standard of local government, and for 'Waiheke Week' to start keeping faithfully to the principles of the New Zealand Press Council.

OUTRAGEOUSLY EXPENSIVE DISTRICT PLAN

2008-11-29T13:49:00.000+13:00

Auckland's habit trying to force what it wants down the throats of the islands created an expensive problem when it launched the Proposed District Plan for the Hauraki Gulf Islands. The thing was called a dog's breakfast, although it is a moot point whether any self-respecting dog would have come anywhere near it for any meal, even if starving. It was badly conceived, badly written, and insensitive to the islands.

It soon faced 4000 submissions from the 8628 islanders. It dealt to swathes of them simply by crossing them out--true democracy, that--but the long-running hearings for what was left did not finish till November 2008. The cost was huge, as figures gained under the Local Government Official Information Act show. For Great Barrier alone the expenditures for 2005/2006 to 2007/2008 were $226,585, $192,669 and $251,012, a total of $670,266, 9.2% of the total council income over those years. On an island of 852 residents it works out at $787 per head. On Waiheke the costs were $896,000, $856,000 and $581,243 in the same three years ($1,135,093 had been budgeted for 2007/2008), a total of $2,333,243, or $306.92 per head. Even tiny Rakino, with a permanent population of only 12, paid out $25,554 in 2006/2007, which was 12.47% of the council's income for the island that year. That all comes to an outrageous $3,029,063, or $351.07 per head over all the islands. But it is not over yet. The hearing committee now has to deliberate until its ruling comes out next April.

To put that in perspective, if isthmus Auckland had gone through the same process and had had the same relativities there would have been been 183,600 submissions from its 396,030 residents, and the whole process would have cost a staggering $139 million.

Auckland's incompetence and poor governance created that problem. The ratepayers paid for it. Again.