The "holiday highway" debate

There does seem to be overall support for the so called holiday highway to the North - the road which will run from the Johnston's Hill tunnels bypassing Warkworth and Wellsford and ending at Te Hana, just on the edge of Rodney.

There are the opponents of course, those citing the importance of public transport and those who are concerned at yet further destruction of the habitat - perfectly reasonable arguments that need to be considered.

However the growth of the population overall, especially in Auckland does make the north a key holiday destination. In addition to that today's very large trucks are a nightmare for all of us and the statistics on the piece of SH1 to be bypassed clearly favour a new alternative. On a trip back from Warkworth recently, late on a rainy night, the relief at entering the motorway through the tunnels was immense as the safety of travelling on such a wonderful road was clearly felt.

What of the towns bypassed. Well Puhoi has already made its feelings felt after NZTA they put up a plan to see how it would fly. I think they now know that leaving Puhoi out was a lead bellied idea and they would be fools not to heed the local reaction.

Warkworth seems unfazed. They have had such a nightmare with the current upgrade of the part of SH1 which (fortunately) already bypasses the town centre that anything to take the traffic further away will be welcomed. Anyway, they will have good access to the motorway so that the Mahurangi playground will be easily accessible and the tourist opportunities will be even greater with Auckland so close.

Wellsford is the town that will greet the motorway with relief and perhaps some despair. The town will simply be bypassed. The huge trucks and constant stream of cars through its narrow main street will be gone - the relief. However those that did stop shopped at the cafes and the petrol station. Will this be a serious loss? Who knows?

However as one of the candidates for the Rodney Local Board explained to me the other day, Wellsford has the time to work this out. They have time to do the surveys, do the assessments and develop a strategic plan for the town. They can start with the simple question - "What will Wellsford be like in five years" and work from there.

Of greater importance to Wellsford is undoubtedly employment. The loss of Izard's manufacturing plant meant 300 people were put out of work. The surrounding area is good farming country but farming is not a greeat employer these days. What the Rodney Local Board needs to do is to work hard on planning for emplyment. They need to be convincing the new Auckland Council and the Government that the right investment in Wellsford will be good for all of us.

The workers of Wellsford can turn their hand to any decent manufacturing operation. With the right incentives and a motorway capable of delivering goods to Auckland within an hour or so will mean a great future for Wellsford.

There would seem to be many good reasons to get this road built.

Toeing the "party line" in local politics

"Citizens & Ratepayers and the Labour coalition parties say they will have candidates standing for all positions in the Super City. How disappointing"

So says Hugh Chapman of Kohimarama in the Herald Readers' Forum on 24th July.

He goes on to say "they just do not get the idea behind the Super City. Local boards are to enlist their residents' ideas and suggestions. If they go back to "party" people and they disagree with the backroom policy to which they have signed on, the idea will be ignored."

"Every person on the local board should be a listener. There should be no party affiliated people even standing, let alone voted for on local boards."

Thanks for that Hugh - we certainly don't need "parties" on local boards that have some sort of whip to ensure all the members vote the same way.

We need clear thinking independent people. People of a similar perspective may well band together to aid their election prospects - but they need to be independent thinkers after that.

What does representation on the new Auckland Council mean to us?

I guess we all have the general picture by now. The new local authority structure consists of a single overall mayor (who we all get to elect) and then 20 councillors who will sit in Auckland and govern the city on our behalf. In Rodney we get to elect just one of these councillors.
More locally however we get a "local board" which we elect in separate subdivisions, much along the lines of the old Rodney wards.

So what do these people do on our behalf?
Let's make sure we understand the role of the new ward councillor. He or she is elected by us, however they must act in the interests of the whole city - not just their own ward. While we will be able to ensure they understand the needs of our rural community, the ward councillor is bound to look at the wider ramifications for Auckland and vote accordingly. This may not always be to our total benefit.

Have we lost our local representation?
Well no, in fact we have probably got better opportunities for pursuing our cause than we had before. Under the old scheme our elected councillors were not only there to assist us to get what we wanted, they were also there to charge us for it - they set the rates and all the other regulatory rules and conditions that we sometimes have trouble with.
Now, the new Auckland Council will have all these regulatory responsibilities - our local board will be able to advocate strongly for us without having to defend themselves over rates and regulations.

Our new local board, with members working for you in your area will be taking your issues to the meeting room and determining the strategy for lobbying the Auckland Council. What we need are clear strategic thinkers who can take issues and rationally progress them through the corridors of power.

We need to elect effective lobbyists to our local board.

Rodney and the new Auckland Governance

The unitary authority idea is a do or die approach and I believe the latter would be the case. With only 90,000 people and a huge geographic area we simply would not have the resources to provide ourselves with the infrastructure we require (regardless of how much we manage to recover in development contributions), let alone the costs of running the activities currently handled by the ARC.


What has bothered me is that by going for a unitary authority and having the Government simply disagree, we will have left a legacy of disgruntled people who will never appreciate any benefits that do arise from the new arrangments.

My personal preference has always been to work up a submission which secures the green belt (however we define that) and ensures that the city development leap frogs across into Waimauku/Helensville in the west and Silverdale/Orewa/Hibiscus in the east. We will get all the infrastructure benefits and be able to work through our local affairs through our local board.


We will be able to lose the high costs of the overhead infrastructure we have with RDC – we must have a very high cost per ratepayer of our Council administration compared with others, not because they are inefficient or doing a poor job, but simply because with only 90,000 people we lose on the economies of scale.

Rodney is struggling to provide infrastructure across such a diverse and geographically large area that on our own, with Auckland continuing to bark at our borders we run the risk of failure.

Starting with ....

What fascinates me about British banking is how yesterday they still seem to be. Maybe it's something about the number of people - but why should that limit their ability to develop decent online banking. Compared with other parts of the world they are so far behind. It takes days to process a transaction. Even through Internet banking nothing turns up immediately. If you want a new pin number for your ATM card - they want to send it to you in the mail several days later. Whay can they not manage a new pin number over the counter? Even Internet banking payments are only available on a cheque account. Why, why not all accounts? As for Eftpos - good grief. How can they be so far behind?