Len's done nothing wrong? What the Code of Conduct says

Len's done nothing wrong... ?  Oh really.

From his Council's Code of Conduct (my bolding of the relevant parts):
--
2.6. Summary
The objectives of a Code of Conduct are to set out:
the conduct of members toward one another, staff and public;
how information is disclosed;
legislation that applies to the actions of members;
the relationship between elected members and management.
 [...]
4. Objective
The objective of the code is to meet the requirements as summarised in 2.6 of the Code and to enhance:
the effectiveness of the Auckland Council in meeting its statutory responsibilities for good local government;
the credibility and accountability of the Council within its community; and
mutual trust, respect and tolerance between all elected members and between elected members and management.
[...]
5. Key Principles
[...]
5.2. Honesty and Integrity Members have a duty to act honestly and with integrity at all times.
[...]
5.4. Declare private interests
Members must declare any private interests or personal benefits relating to their public duties and take steps to resolve any conflicts of interest in such a way that protects the public interest. This means fully disclosing actual or potential conflicts of interest; avoiding any financial or other obligation to any individual or organisation that might reasonably be thought to influence them in the performance of their duties.
5.5. Impartiality
Members should make decisions on merit and in accordance with their statutory obligations when carrying out public business. This includes the making of appointments, awarding of contracts or recommending individuals for rewards or benefits. This means fairness to all; impartial assessment; merit selection in appointments and in purchase and sale of council’s resources; considering only relevant matters.
5.6. Accountability
Members are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and should consider issues on their merits, taking into account the views of others. This means co-operating fully and honestly with the scrutiny appropriate to their particular office.
5.7. Openness
Members should be as open as possible about their actions and those of the Council and should be prepared to justify their actions. This includes approaching decision-making with an open mind and a willingness to listen to differing points of view. This means giving reasons for decisions; communicating clearly; not being close minded and taking personal ownership of comments made publicly.
5.8. Respect
Members should treat others, including council officers, with respect at all times. This means not using derogatory terms towards others, or about others, including in public-facing new media; not misrepresenting the statements or actions of others (whether they be other individual members, the Governing Body, Local Boards, committees or officers); observing the rights of other people; treating people with courtesy, and recognising the different roles others play in local government decision-making.
5.9. Duty to Uphold the Law
Members should uphold the law and, on all occasions, act in accordance with the trust the public places in them.
5.10. Stewardship
Members should ensure that the Council uses resources prudently and for lawful purposes, and that the Council maintains sufficient resources to meet its statutory obligations.
5.11. Leadership
Members should promote and support these principles by example.
[...]
7. Relationships and Behaviours
[...]
7.2. Relationships with Chief Executive and Staff
The effective performance of the Council also requires a high level of cooperation and mutual respect between elected members and staff. To ensure that level of cooperation and trust is maintained, elected members will:
 [...]
make themselves aware of the obligations that the Council and the Chief Executive have as employers and observe those requirements at all times;
treat all employees with courtesy and respect (including the avoidance of aggressive, offensive or abusive conduct towards employees);
observe any guidelines that the Chief Executive puts in place regarding contact with employees;
not do anything which compromises, or could be seen as compromising, the impartiality of an employee;
avoid publicly criticising any employee in any way, but especially in ways that reflect on the competence and integrity of the employee;
[...]
7.7. Conflicts of Interest
Attached as Appendix 1 to this Code is the Council’s Conflicts of Interest Policy. It is a requirement of this Code of Conduct that all elected members fully acquaint themselves with, and adhere strictly to, its requirements. These cover two classes of conflict of interest:
A financial conflict of interest
[...]
A non-financial conflict of interest does not have a direct personal financial component. It may arise, for example, from a personal relationship, or involvement with a non-profit organisation, or from conduct that indicates prejudice or predetermination.
The policy also requires elected members to make full and complete annual declarations of interest.
7.8. Ethics
The Auckland Council seeks to promote the highest standards of ethical conduct amongst its elected members. Accordingly, elected members will:
claim only for legitimate expenses as laid down by any determination of the Remuneration Authority then in force, and any policy of the Council developed in accordance with that determination;
not influence, or attempt to influence, any Council employee to take actions that may benefit the member, or the member’s family or business interests;
not use Council resources for personal business;
not solicit, demand, or request any gift, reward or benefit by virtue of their position. 8. Compliance
[...]
8.2. Lodging of Code of Conduct Complaints 
All complaints must be addressed to the Chief Executive (or his or her nominee).  Any allegation of a breach of the Code must relate to Section 7 of the Code, be in writing, make a specific allegation of a breach of the Code and provide corroborating evidence.
Complaints alleging a breach of the Code of Conduct may be made by any elected member or by the Chief Executive acting on behalf of staff or on behalf of a complaint from a CCO conveyed through that CCOs chief executive.
The Chief Executive may determine whether a complaint from a member of the public concerning an elected member constitutes a question of breach of the Code of Conduct. In making this determination, the Chief Executive may consult a convenor of the Independent Conduct Review Panel. The Chief Executive may determine jointly with a convenor of the Independent Review Panel to dismiss or terminate a complaint from a member of the public on grounds which may include that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious or has been adequately resolved.
8.3. Preliminary Steps
The Chief Executive may request from the complainant further information/ evidence in support of the complaint and, if considered appropriate, may also request a preliminary statement in response from the elected member against whom the complaint is lodged.
8.8. Responses to Breaches of the Code
To avoid doubt, a breach of the Code of Conduct does not constitute an offence under the Local Government Act 2002. The exact nature of the action the governing body/local board may take depends on the nature of the breach and whether there are statutory provisions dealing with the breach Where there are no statutory provisions, the governing body or local board may take the following action:
censure;
removal of the elected member from representative type bodies;
dismissal of the elected member from a position as Chair or Deputy Chair of a committee.
A decision to apply one or more of these actions requires a resolution to that effect.
--

Contrary to what Len's political backers are claiming there are several grounds upon which he could be at fault in the conduct of these trysts.  Using the arse of the advisor he appointed (and who he would soon be considering for re-appointment) to polish the table in the Ngati Whatua Room at the Town Hall while his daks are round his ankles - and while a mortified security guard looks on (knowing full well he would be sacked for the same behaviour) - is a conduct issue now it is in the public domain.  Allegations His Worship engaged in heavy breathing sex calls and wanking at his work desk in the Mayoral office during work hours all in pursuit - persistent, stalkerish pursuit according to the allegations - of one of his appointees is of public interest. 

If what Len has been up to is all kosher then what does that say about the standards at Auckland Council and his future behaviour?  What example is Len setting for the dozens of elected officials and the thousands of staff he leads?  Is it a Town Hall or Len's love nest?  Too busy drilling the help and not enough helping to drill the terminably delayed city rail tunnel.  No wonder Len has been so invigorated... but so distracted.

So the mistress - as a staff member (an advisor to the Mayor appointed by the Mayor) - may complain via the CEO, or a member of the public may complain via the CEO. There is definitely a case for Len to answer beyond the personal and family crisis he has brought upon himself.  All it takes is for one person to complain and the shit ball starts rolling.

---
UPDATE 17/10/2013 3pm:
NZ Herald reporting:
--
Auckland Council chief executive Doug McKay is this afternoon expected to announce an inquiry into the Len Brown sex scandal.
The decision was made following inquiries from the New Zealand Herald about whether Mr Brown's affair breached the council's code of conduct and conflict of interest policies.
--

That was predictable, but a bit quicker than I imagined.

Len's down trou

One of these men is a rambling clown who likes spurting his little gun, the other one is Steve Martin.

What an almighty down-trou!  Couldn't have happened to a nicer politician that has deserted his principles.  Len, you are a little fucker - aren't you.

Whaleoil:
--
by Stephen Cook
Len Brown’s hold on the Auckland mayoralty is in serious jeopardy following bombshell allegations of a two-year extra-marital affair with a council employee 25 years his junior.
[...]
Brown did not return phone calls or messages this afternoon despite multiple attempts to contact him.

According to a sworn affidavit provided by the woman, Brown – who she rated a ‘generous’ 4 out of 10 in the lovemaking stakes – would also routinely masturbate at his desk while chatting to her on the phone.
[...]
The woman has decided to speak out about the two years she spent as the mayor’s mistress after claims Brown treated her no better than “a porn star” – a reference to how, according to her, it was common practice for him to ejaculate on her during sex.
“At least if I was a hooker I would have got something out of this, but I got nothing. I was starting to feel like Monica Lewinsky,” she said.
The affair is not only likely to cost the father-of-three his career and reputation but also his 20 year-plus marriage to lawyer wife Shan Inglis. The couple have three daughters together.
[...]
She says she and Brown were having sex in the Ngati Whatua Room at the Auckland Town Hall when a security guard burst in through the door.
“It was horrific. I had no clothes on and Len had his pants down around his ankles. The security guy was clearly embarrassed and made some apologetic noises before closing the door and leaving.
“Len was distressed, saying ‘This is it, this is it… how are we going to get out of this.”
But ‘get out’ they did, she says.
“We laid low waiting for him to come out with all the detail but he never did. We were very surprised.”
--

And it just gets better and better (I mean worse and worse), but this is not the place for such salacious details. Keeping a mistress may be de rigueur  for the continental Europeans, but in the Anglosphere wowserocracies it is decidedly dodgy.  And he's a Christian too, isn't he?  If this scandal had broke during the campaign what would have happened?

NZ Herald this afternoon:
--
Mr Brown was not immediately available for comment.
Council chief executive Doug McKay went to the mayoral office at the Auckland Town Hall about 3pm to meet senior staff in Mr Brown's office and deputy mayor Penny Hulse.
Talks took place in Mr Brown's personal office.
After the talks he told the NZ Herald he had spoken with the mayor's staff about the situation.
"My job is to go back and run the organization.
"He needs some space to deal with it. He has got some family and personal issues to work through and I think we should give him a bit of time to do that," said Mr McKay,
He said he had not spoken to Mr Brown about the matter.
Mr McKay said the mayor was not at the mayoral office. His mayoral car was not parked at its spot outside the town hall.
--

And what will happen now?  Live down the disgrace... grow... learn... move on...?  Or resign in humiliation and a by-election?  Len probably needs a very great deal of space right now.  From hero to zero in 72 hours.  Second day back on the job and he hits a Cam Slater shit storm from Hell.  But I have no sympathy for a politician who connives with the National government to allow a giant tunnelling machine to be used on a motorway under Waterview and Avondale before they have even properly zoned the CBD rail link.

When he should of been focussed on the rail loop we find the only thing Len's being tunnelling over the last two years has been his pet staff member.

Board gaming: drawing a line on local electioneering

The Belgians went without a government for over a year with few problems.  The American government is currently working through a Congressional budget crisis which has seen their federal level shut down for the last fortnight (with a debt default deadline looming in a few days which could be big trouble if their Congressmen keep playing chicken).  It does not seem necessary for a government - the Cabinet or the political leaders - to be in charge 100% of the time, or for a full term, for a democratic state to function.  As long as the money is voted (or even in the case of the US when it has expired) there is a period when things will tick along as normal. 

The concept and expectation of political oversight in the system is crucial, but there are times and situations when there are only minor consequences of power and decision-making not being exercised by the Executive or the Legislature (and of course some would say there is great deal to be gained by any sort of limitation or exclusion of politicians altogether!)  I state all this to demonstrate the difference between the central and local government rules around elections in NZ.

Parliamentary elections are full of jargon: writ days, returns, quotients, proportionality, electoral officers etc., but the idea is that when an election is called the parliament concludes several weeks beforehand and the election period begins wherein MPs cannot spend on parliamentary services.  The MPs and Ministers continue to hold office in the election period, but are limited in their activities.  The reason for these rules is simple: the incumbency advantage of using those parliamentary resources - and the free publicity - is unfair on the other candidates.  The local body elections, though, appear to be conducted with quite a different understanding - a misunderstanding.

The local body politician has enough tricks up their sleeve already without having to game the election.  For example you can't help but notice all the high-profile public works (the pointless cosmetics of re-sealing a perfectly good main road again, the maintenance and cleaning of the local shopping centre etc.) will coincide with the start of the election period to give the impression the incumbents have achieved something tangible. This delivery roll-out is totally political - and also unavoidable.  I accept these things will happen and there is very little that can be done - or even that should be done about this. 

What I do object to however is attempting to run local councils right through the election period as if it was business as usual.  It is far from usual and the necessity of a local body (and all their committees) having to meet in the middle of an election is non-existent.  What possible urgency is there that committees are meeting up to two days before the election date - and almost three weeks after electors have their ballots?  Any meeting is basically going to be unfocussed anyway with such a huge distraction as an election with a propensity to descend into politics and electioneering. How can it not? It is all highly suspect. Crazy wrong.

If it is good enough for parliament to close for a month or two then it should be more than acceptable and reasonable for a local council to close up shop in plenty of time for the elections.  It is not right that the people already in office get to set and use the meetings schedule as part of their hustings.  Setting a hard date for the dissolution of the council and its boards - like 40, 50 or 60 days before the election - would be a welcome improvement to the situation.  Here's hoping this issue will garner some attention in the review parliament normally conducts after each local body election.

Housing the symptom, immigration the disease

The National government says Auckland needs more land for more houses.  The Mayor says Auckland needs more affordable houses... and "to unlock new land by fast-tracking consents for development" and is intent to run with National's Apartheid-sounding 'Special Housing Areas' to achieve it. 

Auckland doesn't need any of this of course: it is lumped with the influx of the majority of immigrants into the nation whether the city wants them or not - that is where the demand arises - from central government policy, not natural population increase. Auckland's land/housing problem is a population question, an immigration question, and ultimately a colonial question.

NZ has a more colonial demographic now than it had even before WW2.  Only 73% of the population were actually born in this country and that was the figure from 2006. Now it will probably be closer to 70%. In many parts of Auckland immigrants now make up most of the population. 2nd+ generation Pakeha (those with no immigrant parents) have been in a minority of the population for some ten years or so.  This is radical change.

Since the passing of the immigration reforms of 1987 more immigrants have settled in NZ than the entire Maori population.

The stats officials studiously avoid any population projection beyond 20 years (and the Auckland Council officials beyond even ten years!) because they will show at some point that the non-Europeans will be in the majority and this will alarm the Pakeha population (particularly the working classes locked out of home ownership and facing impaired career prospects due to the competing immigrants). The political and social tensions this will cause are more latent than apparent at present and there is an expectation the stability and appearance of social cohesion will continue without any particular effort. In other words the classic, short term 'she'll be right' attitude upon which so many a disaster has begun.

All these houses that are needed immediately and needed into the future are needed for foreigners.  No-one in Auckland politics is willing to challenge this central government policy.

The reasons for this acceptance are also ultimately colonial: the self-interest of the established Auckland settlers in increasing the value of their property and the value of their businesses.  As long as the Pakeha position in the pyramid is above the new entrants then they have an incentive to support the pyramid-building - as does the next cohort of new settlers.  The routine property covers in Metro and the NZ Listener are constant reminders of that middle class aspiration and the dominant focus of Auckland.  But eventually the pyramid sceme - because it relies on adding an exponentially growing volume of people to maintain the level of windfall gains on the value of the scarce resources held by these incumbents - must prove unsustainable and will collapse at some point.  But what will NZ look like at that point?

The property system is itself supported by the democratic political system, both of which can only function if Maori are in the minority which is why the NZ government's land wars and wholesale confiscation were followed by massive immigration (and massive borrowing from which the state has never recovered).  If Maori ever become the majority, again, then amongst a host of cultural and language changes they will deconfiscate their whenua and the superstructure of land ownership will change.  This is normal in a decolonisation process (New Caledonia/Kanakia is an interesting example in the Pacific of a staged decol) but most NZers (incl. many Maori) do not view NZ as a colonial entity even though they cannot determine at what point "independence" happened and even though they may accept the individual elements of a settler/colonial regime still persist (but not the corollary that it functions as a whole system).

Over time, with mixed marriages, this transition will occur.  However that jeopardy to the settler system is kept in check by immigration.

As the European population's natural increase drops their government must find more non-Europeans to negate the higher birth rate (and longer life expectancies) of Maori. The Immigration reforms starting in 1987 was precisely the vehicle for that.  I am willing to bet that it was plus or minus three years from that date that this country reached the highest point of NZ-born population.  Despite this the Maori population managed to increase, slightly, as a proportion of the whole.  Now look where we are and wait for the results of the delayed census from earlier in the year to see if Maori have in fact gone backwards over the last seven years.  Then where will all the glib assertions about a Maori resurgence and a bi-cultural nation be?  Relegated to a permamnent minority in their own country with a government aim to keep it that way is where this leads.  Where will that leave the Treaty process?

Any future settlement with the NZ government should make it clear that they have forfeited their rights to immigration by flooding the country with so many foreigners in such a short period.  How can we resolve a constitutional conflict when one side is pumping 45,000 people - almost the size of an electorate - into the conflict zone each and every year?  They will fill the country with another amount the equivalent of the entire Maori population in the next 15-20 years and no one thinks this is an issue?

Keep Auckland Guessing

Keep Auckland Moving website and the group's report is online.

Mayor Len Brown, the ideological clown, has sided again with the business lobby and the upper and middle classes against his working class supporters - just as he did when he backed the management over the unions at the Ports of Auckland lockout - this time he's bought the roading lobby's spin and is backing the pernicious cocktail of tolls and road charges to fund Auckland's transport needs.

 NZ Herald:
--
Aucklanders face heftier transport costs under either funding option put forward by an advisory group to Mayor Len Brown, but road charges are picked to provide better payback.
[...]
The 17-member mayoral group - on which business and union leaders have joined transport campaigners and the Automobile Association - is trying to build a consensus among Aucklanders while asking them which option they would "prefer" before it makes a final recommendation to city councillors in July.Mr Brown is not saying whether he will call a referendum on the issue, which centre-right councillor Cameron Brewer insisted yesterday should be held during the local body elections in October.
--

He should call his bluff. But the wording of the options and what it envisages is crucial. Probably too dangerous to contemplate though, that's why Brewer is having a poke. I heard the Mayor saying he was now in favour of charging people for using the existing roads. It must have been on radio because I can't find the statement online, just an official release about the report.

Len Brown says:
--
"I would encourage Aucklanders to look at the report and have their say as part of the consultation process. We all have a stake in Auckland's future, and our ability to move freely and easily around the city is clearly an issue that touches the lives of all Aucklanders."
--

No-one will be able to "move freely" if there are tolls and charges set up across the city. They will move expensively.

To the better off - especially the company car mob that would have all the deductable and GST-refundable tolling bills picked up by the firm anyway - the term freely means something different than it does to the plebs who are planned into what will be a bus-dependent future (see Auckland Transport Blog on the disingenious bus proponents). No more shit heaps clogging up the road - or at least the roads they use - that's how they see the solution to congestion. It is basically unfair and I would hope people reject the concept.

What I see and hear is more evidence that Len will line up with the big knobs instead of taking on Wellington where most of the problems lie.

On the issue of Auckland public transport I say again for the quazillionth time:

The problem is the transport funding is aggregated to a quasi-political group (Auckland Transport) so that the most difficult, costly and longest timeline to build (ie. rail) will always be sacrificed for shorter-term, easier and cheaper options (that will only be marginal improvements but never the best option). Until there is a separate statute establishing a rail authority for Auckland specifically mandated to build and operate the rail system over 50-100 years and mandated to strike its own rate based on the capital costs of the system (and limited to a 1.0 rate for properties within 1km and maybe a 0.5 rate for properties 1-2km from a rail station) then rail will always come last on the list.

Dooming the city to run on bloody buses forever is not an option - it just adds to the road congestion. Only a sustainable and independently funded agency for rail will have the focus and long-term planning ability to complete the task and operate the system. What a shame no-one in a position to do something has ever promoted that idea.

NZ Herald:
--
First Union secretary Robert Reid, representing unions on the mayoral group, said the Government's refusal to join the panel had made the exercise more difficult and turned it into a case of "what Aucklanders can do by themselves to get the changes and transport project which the Auckland Plan calls for".But the Government would sooner or later "have to come to the party".

Two roads
Recommendations for raising $400 million more a year on top of extra Government funding and limited public transport fare rises.

Option 1
* Rates rises: $90m
* Fuel tax rises (including a possible regional levy): $250m
* Tolls on new roads: $60m
* Average extra daily transport cost per household: 70c to 75c
* Daily travel time saving per household: 50c

Option 2
* Road tolls and charges (existing roads)*: $250m
* Extra revenue rates and fuel tax rises, and tolls on new roads: $150m.
* Average extra daily transport cost per household: 80c-110c
* Daily travel time saving per household: 95c.
* Motorway tolls or charges to pass through cordons on existing arterial routes).
--

And the context to all this congestion is not just the under-investment and mal-investment by successive governments and Auckland authorities either, the reason mega billions have to be found is because the city's population is planned to rise by some astounding figure - a million additional people over the next 30 years.

The fudges the officials are trying to sell the public revolve around deliberately underestimating the impact of immigrant flows. The unique aspect of the ethnicity figure in the Auckland Plan, for example, was it was the shortest projection by far in the whole 300+ page document at only 9 years, when everything else was 20, 30 or 40 years. They are trying to hide something that is as plain as the people in the street. And what a crowded street it will become.

--
The problem [transport] is going to get much worse. One new Aucklander is being added to our city every 20 minutes, giving us a predicted population of between 2.2 and 2.5 million by 2041
--

They are trying to assert that most of this million people will be births and people within NZ migrating to Auckland. This is so obviously false. With the natural increase being so low there is no way internal migration will make up the numbers they claim. - it is spurious. The vast majority of the million will be immigrants - most of whom will be from Asia, mainly China and India - that's the sort of facts they aren't keen to publicise. They seem keen enough on the raw numbers though - as if it were a triumph and uncontroversially a positive thing - as if they were actively aiming for a million rather than having it imposed by Wellington as a fait accompli.

Congestion is the symptom, mass immigration is actually the problem. We add more people than we can cope with and that is unsustainable. We are in a permanent infrastructural deficit. One of the more obvious answers in this situation is to stem the demand for the scarce transport resources, ie. less immigration. Cutting our meagre cloth for a whole lot of other people who are about to march in is not the best way to make a suit that fits.

Auckland plans

To what extent are the Auckland Council's plans really their own when the larger decision on population has been made by central government already? A million people - almost all of whom will be immigrants - are expected to fit into Auckland in the next 20 or so years. Aucklanders seemingly have no say in this - all they can do is try to respond to the influx with the new unitary planning system.

No-one in Auckland has yet thought to tell Wellington that their plan to put a million extra people into Auckland is impractical, costly on many levels and probably unsustainable. Auckland's fate is being decided by Wellington bureaucrats, not Aucklanders. Wellington would never plan to turn itself into an Asian city of course, but does not blanche when advocating it for the 'Northern Gotham' of Auckland.

The NZ Herald editorial:
--
Auckland's newly promulgated unitary plan has entered a rocky stretch of water called local-body election year. Members of the council and local boards are going to public meetings where they are hearing predictable opposition to the building heights and residential density envisaged for the neighbourhood. A number of the council, mainly on the right, have taken fright. They have put their names to a letter to the Prime Minister asking the Government to slow the plan's progress.
[...]
They need to harden up. The people they are hearing at public meetings are probably not a cross-section of their community. They are likely to be older, established residents who dislike change.
[...]
One year would surely be ample time for objections and appeals to be heard and decisions made. Developers, builders and - most importantly - home-seekers, should not have to wait three years to know the permitted height, density and design standards for different parts of the city.
We hear constantly from the Government and the council that Auckland has to accommodate another million people within the planning period and that the rate of new house construction is falling well short of the growth in demand. An arid argument of whether that growth should be on the periphery or within existing limits matters less than the need for a decision.
--

It would be most likely that if the Auckland Council refused to plan for an extra million people and told Wellington to put them somewhere else (and came up with a plan to only take say half or less than a million) that the government - at least a Tory government - would sack the Council and replace them with their own commissioners in the same way they did to the Canterbury Regional Council when they refused to allocate all the water to their farmer constituents. I don't believe Auckland, or any other city for that matter, has any effective control over its own destiny when mass migration is enforced from outside. It would be a task of coping and mitigating rather than planning under the type of scenario the officials envisage.

Auckland's crust

Tumeke blogger emeritus, @CitizenBomber, reported a severe earthquake yesterday afternoon in central Auckland. 2 quakes (3.1 and 3.9): the sway had a weird anti-gravity effect in high rises. Auckland is only very rarely struck by earthquakes, the last ones were off Waiheke Island in about 2007. Those were only 8km deep. Sunday's was 3km. The quakes in this area are volcanic related. Rangitoto is the last active cone and sits at the north west edge of the volcanic field. For those reasons I believe the next volcano will be between Motutapu and Waiheke.

The NZ government scientists seem to be divided into separate seismology and volcanology disciplines and they seem to attribute actions accordingly. Thus the NZ Herald reports a Geonet seismologist saying no evidence of a link when common sense and intuition says otherwise:

--
''... at the moment nothing indicates that this is leading to any volcanic eruptions.''
--

It would indicate potential activity in the area mentioned above. The shallowness and location indicates it is volcanic and not from a plate movement. That's what it indicates to me.

Immigration numbers

The NZ Herald's editorial this morning, 'There's no need to fear more Asians settling in Auckland', is an articulation of the standard position of the business class, the government and the local Council's official line. They are pushing the same line because their interests are served by increasing immigration. The NZ Herald itself is an immigrant founded paper making money out of the population increase, so it is not surprising they advocate for the mass immigration policy and they run editorials as short of information as the official plans. It is a propaganda exercise when they leave information out as much as it is when they try to tell people what people think.

The premise the NZ Herald starts with is that a lack of comment on the Auckland Plan means everything is fine and there is no objection to what is being projected and what is being planned. This is not the case. Wading through a report of almost 400 pages and then relying on data that is 9 years instead of the usual 30 or 50 years is why people don't object - they aren't being told the full facts or even half. The NZ Herald continues the ruse in the editorial. They blithely tell their readers :
--
''Population trends mean, in effect, that Auckland's three main ethnic groups of Europeans, Asians and people of Maori and Pacific heritage will soon be of roughly equal size.''
--
They already are, what about after that, after 9 year? Where's that in the 30-50 years of the Plan? It isn't in the Plan and the editorial carefully avoids that crucial point too. Why? Because the trends mean the Asian group will be bigger than a third, they will be the majority and it wil be an 'Asian' city by the end of this century. That is the official plan. If you object to it you are a racist - that's the official line.

Granny Herald's assertion that Asian immigrants have created ''no significant problems'' and therefore, ''why should further increase be the subject of fear?'' could best be resolved by the Granny's own record. They promoted immigration, confiscation and exploitation from the first decade they published (1860s) and Maori went from majority to a minority in that time and lost almost everything in the process to a new order of foreigners (with the Herald making on it at every turn). That is what history has to say. And we all know how that turned out for Maori. Pakeha are being told to lie back and think of NZ as the same process happens to them. We've already witnessed Beijing orchestrated political parties, rallies, newspapers, and the PRC's cultural arm, the Confucious Institute, funding Chinese language books etc. in libraries - this is the social and political reality of large numbers from China (in particular). In present numbers, from a society 30 times as old as NZ with 250 times the population, there will be problems with integratio, and the outside power whose citizens are set to be a permanent force i(and potentially a majority eventually) in what is a fresh colony (a mere 170 years old) will act to advance their interests and their people - not ours.

But what we are dealing with now is more resentment than fear. The Pakeha profiteers from immigration sit securely in their workplaces, live in their suburbs, taking their kids to their schools, and go about their social activities amongst other Pakeha without mixing with or being effected by Asian immigrnts. These Pakeha who constitute the media, business, management and government are surrounded by Pakeha and white immigrants they can relate to and communicate with rather than the increasingly typical Pakeha (and Maori) working class experience of workplaces, neighbourhoods and situations in which they are amongst Asian immigrants and subject to their influence. That experience is very different to the elite. The elite determines NZ Immigration policy and it is about making the rich richer and the immigrant richer - not about enriching everyone. The Treasury focusses on GDP and so every warm body through customs is considered a good thing in the received ideology regardless of the net effect.

In conclusion, people just aren't told the truth by their officials or by their leaders, data is fudged (the Plan conflates European and Other to get a bare majority figure for 2021) and the mantra of 'NZ needs more people' (as the immigrant leader in another article in today's paper chanted on cue) is essentially the peddling of a narrow self-interest.

Immigration swamp

It's a simple story: Grey Power represents old racist white people and any curb on immigration is racism from those who don't accept multiculturalism and diversity as the present and future of New Zealand. So far so easy.
--
NZ Herald: Racism claim splits Grey Power.

'Shand: (Grey Power)''seems to have become a group of embittered old white people''
--

When weren't they a group of embittered old white people? That's why so many of them voted NZ First and Conservative over the years, that's why they join advocacy groups, to register protest. They are complaining the secure, predictable NZ they knew is eroding to forces of globalisation and a materialistic and wanton younger generation they cannot control, and they want to do something about it. So I expect they would object to immigration policy and in particularly the plans for Auckland.

Just because the senior citizens lobby usually speaks through a pointy white pillowcase on their head and listens through a hearing aid receiving ZB talkhate radio, doesn't mean they can't challenge the mass migration policy of the NZ government in a forum, and it shouldn't mean they are instantly, automatically labelled racist for having done so. Shand is an Auckland Labour local body politician (I believe), so he has other interests in this than GP . Is he just defending Len Brown's and the Council's policies as a partisan? Let's focus on the plan.

Having read the entire bloody thing, The Auckland Plan, all 380 pages plus separately but no less eloborately produced, Addendum, one thing stood out amid all the recycled generalisations and patronisingly intoned corporate wank-speak - by what wasn't there. Every part and component of the plan (consisting of targets, projections, benchmarks etc.) refer to 15, 20, 30 and 50 year points. At the least 15, at most 50 years or more for each item... except ethnicity.

The ethniciy projections for Aucland, unlike evry other item (including population totals!) only goes to 2021. A mere 9 years in a planning document the Mayor says is for 30 years. The question is: if they are meticulously detailing and aware of ethnicity in the plan (as they are) then why is that the only issue NOT taken to 30 years, and actually less than 10? Why do you think that would be?

They can confidently project for everything to do with the city - almost all based on populaion, but no ethnicity? They predict that Asian population category to be 27% and European/other (blurred in the publication as the only typo in the entire document I've seen) at 53% in 2021. AND THEN... Nothing. Because the white people will be in a minority after that, obviously And the 'Asians' are heading for the majority of Auckland's population, obviously. This is social and political dynamite and that is why the Auckland Council don't want to mention the obvious.

The officials and politicians would have us believe that the current (points'based 1987) mass immigration (30,000+pa) policy is somehow neutral as regards national origin and numbers. It isn't really, not in practice. It is the primary tool in the economy of colonisation: a settler mentality of buying cheap land, waiting for the immigrants to pile in, and then selling it off, repeat until rich. That was the situation just before 1840, which led to the creation of NZ, and has been so ever since. It is the mechanism whereby the political guarantee of the settlers land holding (and thus their wealth and lifestyle) is effected: so long as the settlers can keep the natives in a numerical minority (eg. Israel) they will retain the land and will claim their form of democracy legitimises this state of affairs.

What the proponents of the current system should recognise is that they are not just advocating for a white minority in Auckland in ten years, or a 20-30% Chinese component of Auckland in about 30-50 years (and maybe an eventual majority as what happened in Singapore), but they are depriving Maori of ever being a majority in their own land. That is the other projection they are obscuring in their select data. The Maori population goes up from 11 to 12% in the next 9 years, according to them, but that small growth in proportion will be reversed at the rates of immigration they use. As more people enter the country with the parallel policy of encouraging immigrants to live ives within their own communities and ease of reference back to their home nations then the chances of inter-marriage and cross-cultural encounters are being effectively discouraged. The oft-heard remark, like a brag, one hears from Maori, such as Ranginui Walker, about the brown people being a majority soon is irrelevant to Maori - they are confined to minority status with the added burden of now having to justify everything to the same white people in charge that they aren't just another (and smaller) minolrity.

Having a full discussion about immigration, race and culture (and land claims) without epithets and slogans however is almost impossible in this climate. The interests of the property-obsessed middle classes and the establishment combine with the reflexivity against racism of the lefty iiberal to create a void of public discourse. The matters are usually siloed off into the safety of specialist subject matter like real estate or economics or the Treaty rather than as a whole and Maori and their view not featuring at all in most regards. The hurdle most Pakeha find in thier mental path - and it explains their ambivalency - is the limited degree of national conciousness (compared with Maor). The Pakeha are aware of their position as the beneficiaries of the supression of Maori and that they are immigrants or the product of them, so it seems churlish and selfish and inconsistent to ever stop the sort of large scale immigration we've had since 1840. They are justifying continued colonisation based on former colonisatilon:

It is right to wonder what the population make up will be in 30, 50, 100 years - not just 9 years and wonder what might change as a result and what should stay the same. It might not be polite to mention in the leafy, white, static, Devonport, Herne Bay and the Eastern suburbs where they reap the unearned capital appreciation delivered by mass migration without having the whole face, vibe and composition of their own communities changed radically in the last 10-15 years like many working class neighbourhoods have, but it should be mentioned. Sacrificing so easily the hneritage of poorer areas whilst officialdom gets pedantic over each rung of an internal ballastrade in a nice suburb is the consequence of the policy as administered, It does all appear to be about money in the final analysis, we don't actually NEED so many extra people each year for any non-money, non-economic reason do we? There is no identified necessity on social grounds to import the tens of thousands of people NZ does year in, year out. I don't think the case for desirability was even attempted by those who have criticized this Grey Power outburst.

It wouldn't be New Zealand without massive immigration, and it won't be Aotearoa until it is stopped.

In power

The AECT trustee elections are underway and the incumbent right leaning C&R group is stacking the deck to ensure another win.
-----
Matt McCarten:
Evidence of what I regard as one of the country's most dodgy pieces of electoral behaviour landed in Auckland isthmus and Manukau letterboxes this week.
The people behind this breathtaking cynicism were the five incumbents on what's called the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust. [...] It owns $2 billion Vector power company shares. The trustees stand for election every three years. Their only job is to pay out Vector's dividends.
The incumbent trustees are all up for re-election. And they have rigged the game. Two weeks before ballot papers were sent out they posted a cheque for $320 to every household where a voter lives.
-----

McCarten goes on to explain the troughing trustees have nothing to do really apart from setting the dividend disbursement to the beneficiaries. For this minimal task they are remunerated to the eyeballs and two of them have another chance at going to the trough upon becoming Vector directors. The main point here though is the opportunistic timing and that the trustees have changed things in order to do so:
-----
NZ Herald:
Trust chairman William Cairns explained the problem was caused by the trust deed, which required trustees to pay shareholders inside a specific timeframe.
He said it would take a court decision to change the deed.
"To change the trust deed is a lot of expense."
It has now emerged the trust went to the High Court at Auckland in 2010 and won the right to pay the dividend at any stage of the financial year.
The rule change meant it could have been paid after the election this month. It was paid on September 26, and voting papers were mailed on October 10.
-----

So, the payout is made just a fortnight before the election starts... and the consumers are supposed to swallow the story that it's an unrelated coincidence!? That it is "just technical" !? It is totally shameless.
-----
NZ Herald:
Returning officer Dale Ofsoske said he had previously raised concerns with the trust about the proximity of the dividend to the election.
"It does come uncomfortably close."
The Herald asked Mr Cairns how he appeared to have confused the timing issue.
"This is a technical issue," he said.
Independent candidate Doug Armstrong said the judge who made the change had not considered the effect of the change on the election.
Mr Armstrong said it gave "sitting trustees total flexibility to time the dividend to suit themselves".
"They're playing Santa Claus with the voters, and no one is going to vote against Santa Claus."
David Shand, a candidate for the Your Power Team, said it was cynical of the trustees to make the dividend payment just before voting papers were sent out - and then use trust money to pay for an advertising campaign about the dividend in which they featured.
-----

Putting the gross cynicism of the C&R ticket to one side, people may wonder what the point of playing politics with trustee positions is if they aren't really capable of doing anything anyway. Does it matter what political stripe they are? Won't the overall result that matters to consumers, inter alia the dividend payout, still be the same? The answer is probably yes, but with the way it is being run at the moment why would you want to encourage that behaviour? Check out 'Your Power Team' (the Labour/Green ticket) candidate profiles here for the alternative.

 Voting closes 24 October. Only 16% voted last time so those who do post their ballots can be sure their vote will count.  

Also I will note here that my perennial gripe - the (lack of an) undergrounding scheme - still grinds on at an impossibly slow pace.  

The Council doesn't want to have anything to do with it and refuses to resource the necessary co-operation between utilities and agencies to make it happen. Naturally enough the lines company (and Telecom/Chorus) don't want to have anything to do with it either because it will cost them: firstly, up front in cash and secondly, they may have to sacrifice their monopoly local distribution that exists with only two users being allowed on the overhead lines should a competitive, multi-use conduit be introduced.

The missed opportunities to align the Council's footpath concreting with undergrounding is tantamount to economic and aesthetic sabotage. When they concrete and don't underground they are condemning the street to the 50-60 year life span of the concrete (before it can be efficiently undertaken).   So we have a miserable $10m a year (now $13m) allocated in the AECT-Vector agreement to undergrounding. How long will it take at this rate to underground all of suburban Auckland's overhead lines? 50 years? 100 years? 200 years? This is what happens when no-one cares and no-one takes responsibility.

Zoning out on buses

Auckland or Alabama asks Phil Twyford:
-----
NZ Herald:
A draft published by Auckland Transport for public discussion shows eight travel zones proposed for introduction between the middle of next year and the end of 2014.Unless the plan is radically overhauled after submissions on the regional public transport plan close on November 5, passengers will be able to travel to central Auckland from as far north as Long Bay for a two-zone fare, at a price yet to be determined.
But it will cost a three-zone fare to travel from anywhere west of New Lynn or south of Onehunga or Otahuhu, despite New Lynn and Onehunga being 10km from the city centre, compared with 20km from Long Bay to downtown.
Mr Twyford, Labour's transport spokesman, said that was blatantly unfair on low-income working families in his area and South Auckland who relied on public transport.
"It looks like the public transport map for Alabama, 1955."The parts of West Auckland I represent are probably the worst served by public transport of any area in Auckland City. I don't believe they should be disadvantaged in this way."
-----

I've tried looking at the main site, and at the Auckland Transport website, but there's an impenetrable amount of reports and plans and they're all a million pages long and packed with management-wank-speak... so I haven't found the zoning bit yet, and I'm going to give up trying very, very soon.

Found the maps, but they can't be right. The no-change map indicates hardly anywhere with less than 15 minute frequency of service and yet one of the supposed routes is a green line doing a big loop going down Meola Rd (Pt Chev) and Valley Rd (Mt Eden) - that must be a new one because in all the years I've known it there are almost no buses at all along those streets.

The proposed map shows sub 15 minute services everywhere including a few East-West cross town services that start and finish in odd places. Looks good compared to the no-change map, but that won't matter if they are all going in odd directions where there is no direct route, forcing punters to change services at nodes.

Any change to bus routes, stages and the numbering system in Auckland will be controversial. The numbers and the stages are etched into Aucklanders minds - even the ones with cars - and changing that will need a high threshold of added consumer/commuter utility if the case is to made to change anything. As usual though it will be the car drivers making the policy for the public transport users and that means they will get things wrong because of their indifference and inexperience; like the assumption that a commuter would prefer to change services to save time rather than wait another 5 - 10 minutes for a direct service. In my experience to make the time saving worth the hassle (and risk of missing) the transfer (especially between modes) you would need a bullet train in the mix.

There is so much that can go awry when trying to change something as complicated and as historically entrenched as the bus system, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted. An improvement would be in the zoning system, but not as Twyford has described it, by giving a discount to the North Shore. The stages are lumped awkwardly at the moment with it possible to get two stages on the train from Glenn Innes, but someone up the road from the Pt Chev shops (almost half the distance away from the city as GI) must pay 3 stages on the bus. These inequalities need to be ironed out in any reform.

Another one

And another one bites the dust...
-----
NZ Herald:
A man is in a critical condition after being hit by a train in the Auckland suburb of Avondale.
Police said the man was hit by the passenger train at a railway crossing on St George Road about 12.10pm.
Auckland Transport said all western line services between Avondale and New Lynn have been suspended due to the incident and delays should be expected on the line.
-----
Stuff:
[...] Firefighters were called to help remove the man from under the train.
-----

I blogged back in June when someone got bowled in Mt Albert:

The policy forever has been to leave all the rail lines unfenced. This is a result of officials not caring how many people die, the companies operating the system not caring how many people die, and underfunding by local and central government so that the question is never raised.

The fact is that if you are going - as Auckland is - from a couple of trains an hour on the lines to one every five minutes then two important and unavoidable consequences follow: the lax attitude to fencing off the tracks is going to result in more pedestrian deaths and the resistance to getting rid of level crossings will result in longer road traffic and pedestrian delays (which add to frustration and make running the barriers more likely).

Fencing off the tracks and elimination of level crossings is one in the same thing and should be approached together. The fencing will probably be less than the cost of the level crossing works, and it will all be a very expensive exercise - but a necessary one. Auckland can't continue to run even the number of services it has now without regular loss of life - and the future will be worse. How many more people will need to die before one of the multitude of agencies responsible for the Auckland trains does something?

Still waiting.
 

Tolling a division of society

The clamour for road taxes continues. The Council staff pushing for tolls want a million bucks from Council to keep pushing for tolls...
NZ Herald: Auckland motorists face a growing possibility of paying tolls to keep using existing roads under council staff recommendations for plugging a transport funding gap of up to $15 billion.

A special meeting of Auckland Council's governing body has been called for Thursday to consider a report recommending a $1.1 million study of three options - road tolls or "congestion charging", regional fuel taxes and higher parking fees.

Tolling - or "congestion charging" or whatever euphemism is employed - is the worst option.

Once a toll is set it is very easy to put it up and very difficult to remove it (the Tauranga Council kept charging tolls on a bridge even after the legal authority had ended and kept charging even when the Attorney-General sent a letter saying they were acting unlawfully!). And to toll any road that is already built and paid for is unacceptable, and iniquitous.

To ration the road in such a monetary way  (tolls and also the penalties for not paying the toll) means that it will see the poor and working classes relatively disadvantaged and the wealthy unaffected. The only transport behaviour influenced will be at the lower income deciles who the staff at the Council imagine will forego their cars for (under-funded, patchy and sporadic) public transport and thus leave the middle classes (such as themselves) at greater ease on the motorways without all the peasants and their shit heaps clogging up their roads. A public sphere becoming a private sphere. The potential for a divided, first and second class, society will be one step closer if tolling is ever imposed.

The issue of civil rights, eg. freedom of movement, is a bit lofty for local government types to consider, but is of critical importance in understanding the philosophical implications of tolling. For a city such as Auckland, with the isthmus and two harbours creating natural barriers, the free passage of people and vessels and vehicles (for trade amongst other purposes) is important for the functioning of the city. Tamaki Makaurau - and the portages in particular - have always been a place of transit as well as a destination for many centuries.

The free passage through and within Tamaki Makaurau was established under Maori custom and ought to be respected as a useful and valuable principle. Treaties in the 1830s relating to the Tamaki river were made between tribes - it would be interesting to see what they have to say on the issue.  The concept of free passage is worth defending and worth amplifying into the modern era by declaring that no tolls should be put on any roadway in the city. The question as to whether this should apply to new roads that will not be built without the tolling revenue (such as how the Auckland Harbour Bridge was funded) is a moot point typically dealt with by a fixed term of tolling (but see the Tauranga example above).

NZ Herald:

Preferred funding tools, based on 161 submissions:
57 % Tolling new roads
48 % Regional fuel tax
43 % Congestion charges on busy existing roads
38 % Property development levies
34 % Extra parking charges
28 % Extra airport departure taxes
26 % Visitor taxes
23 % Network tolls
23 % General rates
22 % Targeted rates.

My suggestion - one I've put to previous Councils - is the least popular: the targeted rate. At the moment (or at least under the old ARC - and why would it have changed?) there is a transport rate applied to areas with public transport. The map shows it is rather too wide - some areas with very sparse bus services are in the zone. I'm not sure how much money this raises, but it will be only a small fraction of the amount spent (the rest being general rates and central government subsidies).

A stand-alone rail authority is the only realistic way that Auckland's rail infrastructure will be planned, built and managed - with its own board, with its own funding and under its own statute, free of the Council lolly-grabbing at present where the expense, difficulties and long-term nature of rail will always mean the funds are distributed to the shitty buses and other peripheral things, with rail losing out every time, every year, year in and year out since the 1920s when a CBD rail tunnel was first planned, and especially since they dismantled the tramways in the late 1950s and opted for a motorway culture. A separate rail authority would change that, but it seems politically beyond the small minds in office and the even smaller minds in the bureaucracy to contemplate any of this. (As an example of how fixed the staff are, the last time I checked there were NO feasibility studies whatsoever into bringing rail to the North Shore!)

The funding for the rail authority should come from their own targetted rate - to be set narrower than the present general public transport rate: a whole rate in areas 1km from a station and a half rate from 1km to 2km from a station. 2km is about 15-20 minutes walk.  It may be the least popular idea but there is a practical justification in so far as properties closer to a train station would be expected to have higher valuations because of the proximity.

Auckland rail deaths III

Stuff:

A man killed after being hit by a train in Mt Albert today was understood to have been walking along the tracks.

 

Don't know how many times I have to say it...

• Auckland rail deaths II
• Train fatality: elderly victim ruins rail commute
• Auckland rail deaths: "what's in it for the operator?" 

The policy forever has been to leave all the rail lines unfenced. This is a result of officials not caring how many people die, the companies operating the system not caring how many people die, and underfunding by local and central government so that the question is never raised.

The fact is that if you are going - as Auckland is - from a couple of trains an hour on the lines to one every five minutes then two important and unavoidable consequences follow: the lax attitude to fencing off the tracks is going to result in more pedestrian deaths and the resistance to getting rid of level crossings will result in longer road traffic and pedestrian delays (which add to frustration and make running the barriers more likely).

Fencing off the tracks and elimination of level crossings is one in the same thing and should be approached together. The fencing will probably be less than the cost of the level crossing works, and it will all be a very expensive exercise - but a necessary one. Auckland can't continue to run even the number of services it has now without regular loss of life - and the future will be worse. How many more people will need to die before one of the multitude of agencies responsible for the Auckland trains does something?

Stuff:
Today's incident is the latest in a series of accidents involving trains in Auckland recently.
In April Simondrai Robson died after falling under a train at Ranui train station.
Police said Robson fell under the train while leaving the platform.
The same month a woman broke her ankle after being dragged along the tracks near St Lukes Rd after her bike became entangled with a train.
In February a woman died after being hit by a train while walking along railway tracks near New Lynn.
In December a person died after being hit near Middlemore Hospital.

Signs

The storm in an ethnic melting pot that was the foreign language sign debate remained a spark last week and like so many other media-feulled incindiaries has failed to ignite into the racial blaze the media may have hoped for. Usually these issues need a visible and vocal central point of crisis if the flames are to be stoked - and none have come about.  So instead of one clash point we merely have statistics and opinion polling which never cross the visceral threshold.

This is a hot issue - despite the lack of a cause celebre - and it is deserving of a discussion. The main reason it is not and why it is derided as a sensible topic by the commentariat - especially the left - is partly the blind faith in mass immigration and unintegrated multiculturalism that most middle class people have and also the fact that most of the people doing all the opinion writing in the media are from the well-to-do suburbs where they remain quaratined in Pakeha zones and are thus largely unaffected by the rise of ethnic precincts. The other reason discussion never seems to get very far is that the oxygen in the debate is absorbed rapidly by Winston Peters and other reactionary conservatives.  It becomes a normal response just to ignore the entire issue because once a divisive race-baiter like Peters is involved no one wants to be on whatever side of the argument he is on.

NZ Herald:

Massey University researchers Robin Peace and Ian Goodwin studied 500 "linguistic landscape" photographs taken in five Auckland locations - Northcote, Dominion Rd, Meadowlands, Auckland CBD and Papatoetoe - for their study, "The Cosmopolitics of Linguistic Landscapes".
Many of the signs were for migrant businesses and featured languages other than English.
[...]
Some New Zealanders responded with "annoyance" or "repugnance" when faced with a space that did not make immediate, translatable sense, she said.
That was backed by nzherald.co.nz poll findings showing 39 per cent of people thought all immigrants should use English on their business signs.
A further 40 per cent of respondents said English translations should be offered beside ethnic scripts on business signs and 21 per cent said the signs should be accepted as New Zealand was a diverse society.
The findings were based on a sample size of about 8100 people.

I listened to RNZ last week where Jim Mora and Brian Edwards had their chat with whoever the female middle class Pakeha lady was and they were mystified by the sign issue. Dr Edwards gave a typical precis of the scene for the Pakeha upper middle class: Foreign signs are a bit of colour, ethnic neighbourhoods are great to visit, great food etc., I'm comfortable with foreign language signage.

He's comfy because all that stuff is occuring in someone else's neighbourhood. He only visits these places where these quaint and eclectic ethnic people dwell as an act of tourism. If half the shops along Jervious Road in the leafy coastal inner city suburb of Herne Bay had turned Chinese in the last 10-15 years as they have done along Dominion Road - for example - then I wager his reaction would most definitely not be the same. So too with David Slack (to pick a random "liberal" - no offence) and everyone else living in Devonport - their comments should be put into context: they live in a white enclave where the immigrants are usually white too: South Africans and Europeans. These people still live in the areas most closely resembling the old NZ and are the least exposed to the consequences of large-scale non-white, non-English speaking immigration.  That is why this class of person is so dismissive of concerns over ethnic ghettoisation and why they think nothing is wrong - they simply have not experienced living there.

The people who have paid big bucks to live in their exclusive white enclaves regard their "villages" as heritage areas, protected places where they have rules that tell you what sort of veranda ballustrade one must have to maintain the look of the place. They like these rules because they preserve what they have and keep the place looking the way they prefer it.  And yet these same people think nothing of having entire shopping centres  - in someone else's suburb of course - turning radically, within a very short space of time, into unrecognisable ethnic ghettoes swamped with foreign language signage.  Why aren't they capable of retaining heritage in the same way that the wealthy suburbs are?

If half the places of business in Devonport had Chinese language out front and even a quarter of the population of dear old Devo was non-white and non-English speaking do you really expect the liberal intelligensia of that burg to be so nonplussed? I lived in Devonport when there were still working class people and the Naval families living there, and they've all been pushed out, so it is now more exclusivist and snotty than it ever was before.

When I lived in Mount Eden just off the top of Dominion Road in the early 1990s I can recall only one local Chinese shop, Steve's. Steve and his wife were Chinese and had a takeaways on the corner. And Steve and his missus could speak English quite well.  Last time I went down Dominion Road maybe half the shops had non-English signage and one even had massive Chinese national flags flying all over it. It is a completely different place to what it was. Some would say this is all varying shades of racism of course.
The problem does stem from the immigration policy.  It is an obvious fault that many people the government lets into the country to live just don't speak English and therefore cannot communicate with the rest of society. From that policy flows the demand for foreign language services; a demand that just simply should not exist.  This demand puts added pressure on government and other service providers and it also creates internal demand. 

And the problem? The greatest issue is that English speakers not only cannot use whatever services are provided (as the service person cannot communicate) but it is the knowledge that they are not welcome in those shops. They are not for the public as such but for the other. They might as well have "You are not welcome" on it as the only thing in English for what it amounts to. And the finite nature of one's local shops - so important to local identity it would be undeniable to say - is the rub: for every new non-English speaking shop that opens it usually means that an English speaking one has been replaced. Less and less service for the old type of people, more and more services for the new type of people.

And with critical mass achieved in many areas of Auckland the linguistic community becomes self-supporting and notions of integrating immigrant communities into the culture already here becomes more distant.

unfare

The base units of standard domestic goods and services spirals - pretty much as I predicted. After they got rid of the 5c piece the loaf of bread, the newspaper, the pint of milk and the bus fare was locked into massive relative increases. It was announced the price of standard postage would go up almost 20% this month. The jumps are now 10c instead of 5c and are already contributing to inflation pressure.

NZ Herald: Bus, train and ferry fares are set to increase by up to 90 cents in Auckland.

Auckland Transport today said its annual review of fares had found prices had not kept pace with cost increases throughout the city.

Public transport operations manager Mark Lambert said some bus, ferry and rail fares would increase between 10 cents and 90 cents from April 29.

Train users will be hit hardest, with prices for one to four stage tickets set to rise by 20c each.

A seven-stage ticket - the equivalent of a trip from Britomart to Waitakere - will go up 90c to $9.80, and six stage tickets will rise 70 cents to $7.90.

And as usual there is only a fortnight warning so people can't plan to change to other modes.

Tolling for a loop

And that loop is Mayor Len Brown. He has said he was in favour of tolling Auckland's roads before the election and now he's floating the idea of putting it to the people by way of referendum. It's a hazy, crazy, lazy, idea and ought to be rejected.

NZ Herald: Tolls and congestion charges will be included in his first 10-year budget as alternative funding sources to rates and taxes to meet a $10 billion funding shortfall for major transport projects.

Mr Brown yesterday told a Herald Project Auckland business lunch that he was considering a referendum to get a mandate...

No, no ,no. Tolling is the worst option and the referendum should be that the whole of Auckland remain toll-free - I would like to see that as the question. Furthermore when the replacement to the Auckland Council is established the City's charter should enshrine the toll-free status of Auckland.

Why anyone would put their hand up for yet another set of charges is beyond me.

Tolls are wrong:
1. It means only the wealthy can move about as they please while the poor are restricted due to cost, therefore the freedom of movement becomes unnecessarily divided on class lines.
2. The damn roads are already paid for - the only argument possible for tolls is on a new bit of roading that would not have been possible otherwise.
3. 'Rat-running' of local streets to avoid the tolled bits (or areas in the case of a "congestion charge") creates another set of problems in those suburbs. The problem is moved rather than solved.
4. The congestion ideas are just tolls by another name and it punishes those who have to travel at certain times or to certain locations that are not within their control (so it gouges them without being able to change their behaviour).
5. There is little if any off-setting increase in the quality, availability or frequency of public transport services for all the increases in the rates and charges already in existence, so it is highly doubtful that will change.

I've said it a million times so I might as well say it again: the reason there is no rail loop through the city and the train system isn't electrified - even after 50+ years of planning - is because there has never been a stand-alone institution tasked with doing it and no credible long-term funding plan for such an agency. If there was a dedicated rates portion (as there is currently for general public transport - which mainly goes to subsidise the bus companies) levied specifically for the purpose of rail on areas within say a mile of a rail station and that money went directly to the rail transit agency then they would have the means to build the system. It would take a lot of time and a lot of money but if we had started 50 years ago it would probably be complete by now. If we keep dicking around without that plan we will still be in a mess in another 50 years - and that is where we are going.

If the local bodies (now just one local body) keeps dividing the funding up between different modes as it has done then rail will always lose out as it is the hardest option needing the most money and planning to work. It is however the best system - as every other city of a similar size and type in the world will attest. If you keep subjecting rail to the political and short-term 3-5 year thinking of Councils and the governments of the day then we will never have the system. A rail agency for Auckland needs its own legislation and funding stream.

Foisting an unfair tolling regime that will endure forever - let's be realistic it will only be ratcheted upwards once established - on the long-suffering motorists just to build a single rail tunnel is a continuation of the failure of forethought and political courage that has marred Auckland for generations.

Wellington takeover of waterfront extraordinary political move

Minister for the Rugby World Cup Murray McCully's announcement that the government now controls Party Central is a low blow for Len Brown's leadership of the Auckland Super City and one that is predicated on an avoidance of the responsibility that central government has in creating the mess that was the opening ceremony. Apparently democratic process can be overstepped when it comes to rugby, and now not only do Aucklanders have to cope with the swells of people, but they also have to cope with interference from Wellington. Under the bizarrely named 'Rugby World Cup Empowerment Act', the National government have managed a deft political move against the left-leaning Auckland City Council. Apparently this can also be announced without even telling the mayor in advance.

While the move could be seen as an attempt at public relations to save face against international news stories on Auckland's overstuffed trains, run over pedestrians and beaten up waka wahine, Aucklanders are hardly fooled into the idea that it is all Brown's fault. In fact, we do remember Key jumping up and down about Party Central for some months. The idea that so many people would turn up to the waterfront is hardly unexpected, it is after all New Zealand's national sport, and of course with tickets to the games being out of the reach of many people's incomes during economically tough times, the opening ceremony would have been one of the ways to participate in the action. Given that a lot of people were drinking, the demand for public transport should have been predicted. Apparently as Minister for the Rugby World Cup McCully never thought to contest numbers. As a Minister with oversight on the event, McCully should be taking a greater share of the responsibility for the nightmare that was the opening night.

But this is where further examination makes it clear that teflon John and his party actually have the lion's share of responsibility for the lack of planning, and that the problems seem to have been caused by Government interference from Wellington. Transport for the event was overseen by Auckland Transport Agency, which is a Council Controlled Organization (CCOs). However, as Labour MP Phil Twyford the model for CCOs was one that raised concerns about how much the Council would be able to have input into their running. Twyford argued that the CCOs “are going to be so big and so powerful it will be difficult for the council and mayor to hold them accountable.” As Councillor Leila Boyle for CityVision said in 2009:

"The Waterfront Development Agency, with its government appointed directors, will take over a substantial but undefined part of the Heart of the City and Auckland's CBD. Key Auckland assets, activities, treasures and heritage are all being moved from accountable, transparent, democratic control into the hands of Rodney Hide's appointed directors."

Councillor Cathy Casey said, "The ATA's new CCO structure is pushing the public further and further away from having any real ability to influence decisions around delivery of services. The ATA is giving the public an opportunity to comment on the CCOs' service delivery 'either through the governing body or the Local Boards'. But how will that work if boards have no councillor members? The message will have to be filtered through to one or more councillors by the board chair. It will be diluted further when those councillors raise the matter at either the Council Committee or the full Auckland Council, if they even can, or will, do that on the board's behalf."

As Frankly Speaking highlights, in this CCO structure for Auckland Transport only two of the board members are from Auckland City Council. The other FIVE are appointed by Government.

What is problematic is that given the fact these problems seem to have arisen through interference from central government and a lack of control from the Council, the Rugby World Cup is being used to further diminish the democratic structure of Council for Aucklanders.

Aurora Hotel

Yesterday afternoon cracks began appearing in the facade and at 10pm last night the Council made the decision to demolished it - without the owners' consent. While their knocking shop was knocked down in just a few hours the legal battle will not be resolved in such short order. I heard about it and today I visited the site and I still can't quite believe it has happened. It's all gone.

I am reminded of three incidents.

Firstly, just down from what is now a pile of Victorian bricks on the same side of the street, is the old facade of the Victoria Street TAB. In the late 80s/early 90s when the building behind it was being constructed the front slumped suddenly and it looked like it would collapse onto the street. It was debated whether to let it fall onto the street or preserve it. It was braced and preserved. Could this not have been done in the instance of the Aurora?

Secondly, the Waitakere City Council eventually bought the old New Lynn Hotel a few years ago - it was a facade shell - in order to preserve it. It was about the only notable historical building along that area of Great North Road (the Avondale stables burnt down earlier this year). But this year the Council concluded it couldn't be saved and they demolished it. There is a new building going up on the site right now. It was a scandal that it was the Council itself that destroyed the Hotel given that the only reason they bought it was to save it as a heritage asset. It was not in an acute state - they just couldn't be arsed making an effort. Easier to run a bulldozer through it. Pathetic - such a waste. A landmark destroyed by its supposed steward.

So when I hear it was the Council that demanded the Aurora be demolished - completely levelled - I am not at all trusting of the local authority's competence in having done that.

The third incident was the first time I was ever a patron of the Aurora in its era as a traditional type public bar. A group of us Auckland University students staggered in during a capping pub crawl in the early 90s. It was dank and dark and it was one of the last on the official list, but not too far down that I can't remember. The surly old crusty regulars were already overwhelmed with drunken, raving, puking teenagers at that point. It had some charm - we had very little - and getting less with each plastic cup of DB Export downed.

The Council

The NZ Herald is updating the first Auckland Council meeting this morning. I wish they would drop the "Super" city shit. It was lame when it was first coined and is even more ghastly now - it's The Council. The Council already has a comprehensive wikipedia page, even if the map isn't quite right (the SE portion of the Hunua was in the old Auckland Region, but is outside the new Council area):The swearing in "inauguration" was last night and not everyone was happy at the length of the Town Hall ceremony. The powhiri is usually upsetting to Pakeha - because they are made to feel every bit as culturally marginalised as Maori are in official public life - and last night was to be no exception judging from Rudman's comments and others. While complaints about lack of translation into English are fair, it does raise the issue of translation into te reo Maori for the rest of official business. The multicultural touches were in evidence:

There were many such "only in multicultural Auckland" moments. Such as when Mayor Brown and his deputy, Penny Hulse, both resplendent in feather cloaks, were shown to their places on the stage by the Maori "protocol officer".

The mayor was shown to the prime spot in the front row, but Penny Hulse, being a female, was firmly shown - was that a moment of protest from her? - into the row behind, with the other womenfolk.

There was much talk from everyone from Prime Minister John Key down of how unifying the new one-council reorganisation would be in bringing Auckland's diverse communities together.

The choir - at least a third of whom were of Maori or Pacific Island descent, and switching from a Samoan village song to an English coronation anthem - showed that process is already well under way.

The mayor, a legendary vocalist, couldn't resist bursting forth with a waiata about, he said, love trust and honour.

Before he opened his mouth, the choir, most of the councillors and the audience were on their feet joining in harmony. If he can only keep everyone singing his tune in the months to come, he's made.

It wasn't all touchy feely by any means. In a strong speech, he stuck to his commitment to public transport, particularly rail to the airport and North Shore.

Mixed feelings reported by some at the demise of the old councils created in the 1989 amalgamations. It was good to discuss some of the issues facing the new council with the Deputy Mayor, Penny Hulse, on Mr Bradbury's 'Citizen A' show last week (the You Tube clip of that is a few posts below this one) and by the way she put a bullet in the "nonsense" notion of having to go to a Cabinet committee run by Rodney Hide to get anything out of central government is an indication that the velvet gloves are coming off.

The frog-march that Rodney Hide has put the old councils - and the people of Auckland - through to create his vision of the new city structure has been traumatic and frustrating, but as one of the Auckland select committee members, Phil Twyford, notes:Yes, it is a left wing Council - despite the mix of independents and right wingers who hold positions of responsibility - and they are going to have to negotiate with the Capital to get anything of significance done. Already there is a fear in Wellington (NZ's third largest city) of what a co-ordinated single voice for Auckland (one-third of the population) will be able to get. The fact is that although it will not be anything more than Auckland's fair share it will nevertheless be at the expense of other areas, esp. Wellington (that has hitherto siphoned the central government coffers over the decades for their pet projects) and upon the usual resentment of the nation's biggest city there is evidence already of a backlash brewing - from Twyford's own caucus colleague Stuart Nash:Len Brown's major projects all have huge bills attached and the expectations he is setting are quite high:I suspected that there had never been a feasibility study for rail to the North Shore, and when I asked the ARC librarian (just a few years ago) what research had been done all she could find was a paragraph in an old report saying that it would probably cost a lot of money so they couldn't be bothered doing the study. That's right. Nothing. They were too busy working on the plans for glorified bus lanes (something they had been doing since the mid 80's) to think about rail. I bet the cost would have been in the same ballpark though considering the elaborate separate motorway and even more elaborate bus stations they ended up building.

The squandering of scarce resources, the misallocation of money, the lack of planning, the lack of political will, the inability of agencies to co-ordinate, and the resistance from the Wellington bureaucracy have been nothing short of sabotage. Hopefully this will change with the new Council. I wish them the best of luck, because they have a massive task and a mountain of work ahead of them.