Jul 3, 2008
In the elections of 1986 the Mount Albert Labour Party elected me to the Mount Albert City Council. This was a totally new experience for me, and I approached the task with a certain trepidation.
My Labour predecessor had been a small time businessman who owned flats, and who, on finding himself elected, promptly forgot his socialist connections and went about single-mindedly adding to his empire. Most of the others on the Council were to some degree right of centre, though not necessarily committed to any particular agenda, except to the extent that they were goaded to it from time to time by socialist rhetoric such as emanated from one of my Labour colleagues who ardently carried the crimson flag into any debate where it could conceivably be unfurled. My other Labour colleague was a big Maori lady who was not very politically motivated but who did a lot of good work among the youth of Kingsland.
None of these seemed to offer a very good guide as to how a novice councillor should conduct himself, and neither did I feel much inspired by the advice of a second-term councillor of the rightish group, who confided to me that he had resolved that he would say nothing in Council meetings during his first term of office. (As I became more experienced I began to wonder why he had altered this policy during his second term of office).
So I went and asked the advice of young Judith Tizard, who had already had the experience of a couple of terms on the Auckland Hospital Board as a minority of one. She explained that in her situation she was to some degree dependent on the goodwill of the others, since anything she put forward on her own could easily be dismissed by allowing it to lapse for want of a seconder. However she explained that the "Tories" as she called them did not actually have a coherent political philosophy, and from time to time would come up with a quite sensible suggestion which happened to fit well with her own thinking, and she would then leap to their support and try to ensure that the measure was adopted. On matters with which she disagreed she was inclined to lie low. Since the bulk of the business transacted was of no political consequence she could participate in those discussions as she saw fit. It turned out to be sound advice.
The Mount Albert Council was well run, and had negligible debt, so I was a bit alarmed when I noticed n the meeting agenda a proposal that we should borrow some hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a new sewer line near to the mayor's house. Was this a departure from policy? Was the mayor getting special treatment? Had I detected a minor conspiracy? On the principle of "the more you know, the better your luck", I went to see the City Engineer. (You can do that when you're a councillor). I didn't get the Engineer but I got his deputy, a bright-eyed young fellow, who I suppose had handled this sort of thing dozens of times.
"What's this about a new sewer line round the back of the mountain?" I asked.
"Oh", he said, "It should have been done years ago. The existing line was put in when there were very few houses round there, and now the damn thing overflows into the stormwater every time we get heavy rain".
I was glad I had asked. At the next council meeting, when the item came up on the agenda, I leapt to my feet and moved the engineer's recommendation, somewhat to the surprise of the mayor, and also of my socialist colleague whom I had forgotten to forewarn. In any case there was no difficulty in finding a seconder. I think the mayor had been expecting the measure could take quite a bit of pushing to get it through.
On another occasion a friend asked if the council couldn't institute an organic rubbish collection. Tentative enquiries indicated that it was not practical, but then New Lynn Borough managed it, as did Auckland City, one suburb at a time. So I got in touch with New Lynn council and got a few facts and figures, and submitted a proposal, backed by a slide show showing Mount Albert shrouded in smoke from weekend fires of garden rubbish. After a bit of discussion the council agreed to give it a go, and it became a very popular annual event. Two of the senior councillors told me afterwards that they had been trying for years to get some such service going, but without success. Whether my previous support for the sewer line helped, I don't know.
But all good things must come to an end. In 1989 Michael Bassett, as Labour Minister for Local Government, decreed that Auckland's 22 local authorities should be amalgamated. Most councilors were opposed to the idea, but they were not all of one mind. Some wanted no change at all; others wanted a compromise arrangement with the "Three Mounts" forming one city, but neither of these options was acceptable to the government. I was more or less alone in favouring the Government view, holding that Auckland was one city as far as the rest of the world was concerned, and that its infrastructure had already suffered too much from the fragmentation set up when the size of a borough was determined by the distance a horse and dray could convey a roadman from the headquarters to his place of work each day. Some senior citizens felt that they would lose their power to influence individual councillors, {a right that the majority of citizens never used), and they would lose their sense of community. I argued that communities were based on schools, church groups and sports clubs, not councils, and that even an amalgamated Auckland would still be quite a small city by world standards. I don't know that I convinced anyone but amalgamation happened anyway and our Mount Albert mayor became deputy mayor of the new city, and hasn't complained since.
So that was my foray into local government. I think it was worth doing, and I met and worked with some interesting people, but I think it would become boring after a while.