BECOME KELMARNA GARDENS

Your regular donation will help connect more school children with nature, empower people all over Auckland with sustainable living choices and develop and maintain a therapeutic garden. Join now at: www.kelmarnagardens.nz/donate

CHLÖE SWARBRICK: Auckland Central MP

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the devastating events of Thursday 20 July and share deep condolences to family and friends of those who lost their lives, along with those injured, including our first responders who put themselves in harm’s way to save others.

It is clear the care, skill and professionalism of our Police and St John Ambulance services contained the situation and saved lives and for that they deserve our deepest gratitude.

A briefing with Police and the Prime Minister confirmed that this was a tragic, isolated incident connected to the workplace with no ongoing risk, but it has understandably rocked Tāmaki Makaurau. It is in times like this that we must hold steadfast to resourcing evidence-based policy that will genuinely make our communities safer. Police made the point that this is why we are desperately overdue the gun register, which was recommended but then became politically too difficult after the 1990 Aramoana tragedy. It wasn’t until the devastation of the 15 March 2019 terrorist attack in Christchurch, that the law finally passed and is still years from full implementation.

More information will come to light as investigations are closed and communicated. For all who have been impacted, I want to encourage you to please reach out for support at any time via call or text to 1737 for support from a trained counsellor.

Violence has no place in our city nor our country. We utterly reject it and will not allow it to define us.

To that effect, the work continues on everything that protects the environment we rely on, improves our city and those who live in it.

I write this editorial fresh from an announcement with Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Carmel Sepuloni, that after several years of campaigning, we’ve secured Government funding to save the St James Theatre. The Government’s $15m contribution matches and unlocks legacy Auckland Council funding, committed back under the first term of the SuperCity with the then Mayor Len Brown.

It took our sustained campaigning, thousands of you signing our open letter, working with two rather different terms of Auckland Council leadership and a number of engagements with Ministers behind the scenes to get us here. We’ve confirmed that shovels will be breaking ground as early as the beginning of next year and the restoration will be complete before the theatre’s 100th birthday (this year marked 95), when tens of thousands of people are spilling out of the new City Rail Link station in the middle of our city’s arts and culture and learning districts. It’ll breathe new life into mid-town, give the signal to go-ahead on surrounding projects and developments and ultimately demonstrates the value of people-power.

This is what it looks like to connect the dots between our community campaigning which strengthens the hand of a local MP to negotiate and find ever-more creative paths to make things happen behind the scenes. It’s exactly this win we bear in mind as the fight turns to restoring our local Leys Library.

And as we roll into August and just a handful of weeks before our next General Election, it’s wins and challenges like this that I expect to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

When nearly every New Zealander I speak to is incredibly exhausted by the status quo, the picture being painted by both of the two legacy FPP parties and their respective leaders seems increasingly bleak. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Thirty years ago, activists broke the monotonous duopoly with their successful fight for Mixed Member Proportional. Their fight gave all of us more options, breaking wide open the window of political possibility and it’s their shoulders I stood on in the decision to join the Greens, to fight for an equitable future for people and planet.

Meaningful progress so rarely comes from the top down, because there’s so little incentive to change the status quo when you’re profiting from it.

That’s why in this campaign we’ll continue to roll out the largest grassroots mobilisation Auckland Central has ever seen, to help connect up our community in a shared vision and to realise the power to achieve the change we collectively deserve.

Whether it’s supporting West End Rowing Club in their successful bid for accessible coastal rowing boats, helping coordinate a clean-up around Coxs Bay, ensuring Watercare and Auckland Council fix pipes and clear drains at the bottom of Howe Street or supporting Richmond Road School in the well-overdue classroom rebuild, I’m here to help make things happen.

As always, there’s more to discuss but I’m hitting my word limit! If you require support from my office, please do reach out.

CHLÖE SWARBRICK, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick

GAEL BALDOCK: WELLINGTON, STOP TRYING TO CONTROL AUCKLAND (PART 2)

Wellington’s Government controls Auckland like a wayward child. This manifests from undervalued infrastructure sales to forcing spending, contributing to the city's huge debt.

Watercare supplies one of the country’s best clean drinking water supplies. The infrastructure investment in the ‘Central Interceptor’ project, separating sewage from stormwater, includes Waitakere Ranges' dams in reserves asset. Auckland doesn’t need ‘3 Waters’, nor the pittance ‘offered’ for this well working, valuable asset. Besides, too many of our reserves have already been sold.

Central Government removed ‘Tree Protection’ resulting in a reduction of our ‘Urban Ngahere’ that removes bird habitat in the city, and hasn't protected the fertile growing land from development.

Rodney Hide set up the SuperCity giving little power to the governing ody to actually govern over these so-called ‘Council Controlled Organisations’.

Government’s transport controls have been costly:

Auckland Transport just announced a $400m shortfall in its budget but isn’t legally required to balance the books like council has just done.

· John Key’s ‘departing shot’ of Government (NZTA) financing 51% of cycleways leaving AT liable for 49%. Controlling cycleway location by narrowing arterial roads creates congestion.

The law that restricted council ownership of public transport was recently removed but buy back is now beyond our city’s means. Profit-centric private companies have assets stripped, including land for bus parking, and concentrated on profit not service. This has made the system unreliable and virtually impossible to coordinate and regulate costs –eg, ferry fares increase.

Government bound Auckland responsible for half the cost of the ‘Central Rail Link’ open-ended contract resulting in a budget blowout from $1b to $4.5b. Per kilometre, this is now the most expensive tunneling project in the world. They’ve pushed ‘Light Rail’, “the project nobody wants and the rest of the country doesn’t want to pay for.” If this follows the budget-blowout of CRL, it will be a sum large enough to solve most of Auckland's transport issues concentrated on a small tract of land.

· They’ve wasted millions on alternative ideas for minority users: ‘Sky Path’ add-on to the Auckland Harbour Bridge; or a seperate walking and cycling bridge; or opening up a lane for a few cyclists who could use a bus.

· They have proposed five different harbour crossings whilst expecting ratepayers to vote in a ‘popularity contest’ rather than integrating them into existing motorways.

· ‘Road to Zero’ has forced upon us humps and bumps and speed restrictions, including a 30km radius around schools 24/7, rather than solar powered flashing signs for morning and afternoon tides of children traveling between home and school.

Government amended the Land Transport Management Act 2003, that sets the city’s transport priorities in the Regional Land Transport Plan in 2013. This amalgamated two planning documents, council’s Regional Transport Strategy and Auckland Transport’s investment programme.

Wrongly leaving ultimate responsibility with AT and the governing body without a statutory role in developing the transport strategy in Auckland.

After five years of consultation, the Auckland town plan was superceded by the Unitary Plan that planned housing intensification along transport corridors until Government interfered again:

Special Housing Areas were imposed, including Great North Road.

The Housing Enabling Act allowed three-storey high residences with three houses per section.

The January 2023 floods proved that’s stupidity, so Government committed Auckland to Strategic Withdrawal buyback plan of flood-prone properties.

As well as being a dismal real estate agent, Panuku is also dabbling as developer with Kāinga Ōra (a combination of old Housing New Zealand, corporate iwi and developers).

· Central government demanded an overnight decision for Kāinga Ōra to control a tract of land along the Light Rail corridor, overriding the Unitary Plan. The whole governing body voted unanimously against it.

KO are pushing to do the same in four other areas (more on this next month).

Consultation is about to begin:

On two Māori Wards to be added to the 20 elected councillors in 13 wards. Yet National Party already mandated nine unelected representatives of Mana Whenua with voting rights as the Independent Maori Statutory Board (IMSB), with a $387k yearly budget. www.imsb.maori.nz

The Long Term Plan akhaveyoursay.nz/futureauckland

Where to from here?

Cutting costs while delivering the same or similar services with no meaningful attempt to address the root causes of a financial malaise is not the solution.

Auckland has to control its own destiny.

(GAEL BALDOCK)  PN GaelB@xtra.co.nz