Desiree Washington

Brian Rud­man: Ref­er­en­dum calls dis­tract us from cre­at­ing true demo­c­ra­tic governance

Brian Rud­man pro­vides a refresh­ing view of the silly calls for a ref­er­en­dum on the Super City.

Every time I hear some­one advo­cat­ing a ref­er­en­dum I cringe. Surely the $9 mil­lion anti-smacking cha­rade is evi­dence enough that ask­ing the great unwashed to say yes or no to a com­plex, many-faceted conun­drum is a dumb way to go.

In recent weeks we’ve had Labour leader Phil Goff demand­ing a ref­er­en­dum on the Auck­land Super City, and now Labour’s Auck­land issues spokesman, Phil Twyford, is intro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion requir­ing a ref­er­en­dum before any pub­licly owned com­mu­nity assets are sold. But, oddly, only when Auck­land assets are at risk.

Well pre­cisely. But Rud­man goes further.

Per­haps I’ve been snooz­ing of late, but the only Auck­lan­ders I’m aware of who worry them­selves to sleep about such things are pro­fes­sion­als hand-wringers like intre­pid water rights cam­paigner Penny Bright and a few old-style left­ies who keep Roger Dou­glas voodoo dolls on their man­tel­pieces to remind them of the bad old days.

Heh, Rud­man is clearly going to get bom­barded with those angry ital­i­cised and bolded emails with every ‘S’ turned into ‘$’ from Mad Penny. Could be worse he could get the angry lit­tle unwashed man who reck­ons he hasn’t paid rates for 10 years scream­ing in his face what a c**t he is and how given half a chance he’d bash him. The same lit­tle smelly loser who prob­a­bly rents given his thread-bare cloth­ing didn’t take up my offer to give it a go and see how he gets on.

Rud­man then points out some incon­ve­nient facts for the rent-an-outrage mob;

I know it won’t reas­sure the worry-warts, but four years ago the tide actu­ally turned when pub­licly owned Auck­land Regional Hold­ings, headed by Act sup­porter Judith Bas­sett, bought the 20 per cent of Ports of Auck­land shares in pri­vate hands, return­ing the port com­pany to full pub­lic own­er­ship. A few weeks ago, when port com­pany chair­man Gary Judd refloated the idea of pri­vati­sa­tion, he was uncer­e­mo­ni­ously sacked. Even more recently, the right-dominated Auck­land City Coun­cil endorsed a 10-year city plan with a com­mit­ment not to sell its air­port shares.

Despite this, some are still con­vinced that the Super City rev­o­lu­tion is just a smoke­screen, cov­er­ing up a das­tardly grand plan to pri­va­tise the remain­ing community-owned assets. The grand-daddy of the con­spir­a­cies is that Mark Ford, for­mer chief exec­u­tive of pub­licly owned bulk water sup­plier Water­care and now chair­man of the Auck­land Tran­si­tion Author­ity, is a tool of the forces of evil, inte­grat­ing Water­care and the local retail water com­pa­nies into one, in prepa­ra­tion for hand­ing Auckland’s water sys­tem over to a pri­vate inter­na­tional water mogul.

Even Rud­man sees through the mad emails and let­ters that keep arriv­ing about Mark Ford.

Mr Twyford’s bill will also out­law the sale of parks, swim­ming pools, libraries, halls and pub­lic hous­ing with­out ref­er­en­dum support.

The bill seems fuelled by the more extreme planks of the Act Party’s elec­tion man­i­festo restrict­ing local gov­ern­ment to “core” busi­ness. Act leader Rod­ney Hide is the Min­is­ter of Local Gov­ern­ment but he’s a min­is­ter out­side Cab­i­net, with lit­tle real sway. All he has is his tooth­less ide­o­log­i­cal bark. The left, instead of wet­ting them­selves every time he yapped, would be smarter to pat him on the head, and walk on.

OMG! Did Rud­man just tell the left to stop wet­ting their pants and to pat Rod­ney on the head.…he did. Wise advice.

Ref­er­en­dums are expen­sive, and eas­ily manip­u­lated. In his Super City poll, what ques­tion is Mr Goff propos­ing? How do you decide such cru­cial details as the pow­ers of the local boards by ref­er­en­dum? The issue of asset sales is slightly more com­pli­cated than a sim­ple yes or no.

Pre­cisely. It is sim­ply ridicu­lous to even sug­gest it yet that is what Phil Goff increas­ingly sounds like as each day passes. Ridiculous.

Back in 2007, I saw noth­ing wrong with sell­ing Auck­land City’s 12.75 per cent of air­port shares, as long as the cash was spent on new infra­struc­ture, some­thing like the restora­tion of the St James The­atre, or repairs to the Aotea under­ground carpark. But I backed full pub­lic own­er­ship of the port because I saw that as a way of ensur­ing future water­front devel­op­ments would be done for the good of all Aucklanders.

It’s impos­si­ble to reflect these kinds of nuances in a ref­er­en­dum. What we need to con­cen­trate on is cre­at­ing a truly demo­c­ra­tic, ward-based model of gov­er­nance, in which every Auck­lan­der feels rep­re­sented. That way the per­cep­tion that ref­er­en­dums were a good thing would fade away.

Finally Rud­man comes clean. I can’t find too much to find fault with that arti­cle. One of Rudman’s finest. Pity the left wing will now card him as a Tory Turncoat.