The draft Auckland Unitary Plan is massive and complex. The Auckland Transport Blog helps in untangling issues around intensification vs sprawl. The government & some right wing councillors want sprawl & to delay implementation. The Akl Council website has some cool videos visualising the planned developments. And social housing?
The Draft Auckland Unitary Plan has much to commend it. It focuses on resource management, responds to the reality of climate change & aims for a more dense but ‘liveable’ city. It has weaknesses, embraces destructive “growth” and raises questions: e.g. about affordable housing & environmental management.
Phil Twyford is the Labour MP for Te Atatu, and Labour’s spokesperson on Housing and Auckland Issues. He is also asking the same questions that many Aucklanders keep asking as they watch a succession of government ministers trying to valiantly advance backwards into Auckland’s past with no obvious purpose.
Nick Smith, of the forked tongue, is challenging Auckland council’s plan for affordable compact housing. It will do nothing for housing affordability, transport, the environment. It is undemocratic, over-rides the council, and will enrich developers.
It’s 9 months until polls close in the 2013 local body elections. Len Brown has just been rated the 7th best mayor in the world. So, who’s going to stand up from the Right? 9 months is no time to get the brand recognition needed to take the most powerful political job in the country outside Cabinet’s top 5. Does no rightie want to run because they’re sure to lose?
Like many other well-paid people in their 30’s. Lyn is getting depressed watching a toehold Auckland property disappear out of her grasp. Of course the well rounded gits in Wellington will get ‘worried’ about this and want to make property available 50kms away. But spending an hour or two of your life driving each day is hardly useful to anyone apart from the land bankers, property developers and used car sales who seem to be of such importance to the National party.
The Police Report into the Banks.com affair, which Labour has distributed to the media, is a gold mine. Banks is shown to be a liar and completely unethical. He insisted that Dotcom’s donation be anonymised. He used the donations, which he had told media he didn’t remember, as an excuse not to help Dotcom while a minister. Banks is lying low now. Key has to sack him.
The bill for the Nats’ Auckland “supercity” is arriving in ratepayers’ letterboxes. Some are in for a nasty shock…
Why did Banks lie about a discount hotel room where Dotcom was staying, then say he bargained it himself? Who made $15K of radio ad donations to his campaign? What did Nats on Banks’ ‘mentor group’ and ACT leaders know about the anonymised donations? How much info did Banks get from Williamson on Dotcom’s OIO application? Why has Key still not spoken to Banks to ask any of these question?
Something to do in Auckland tonight: What: Special screening of The Muppets Where: Hoyts Sylvia Park, Mt Wellington When: Tonight, April 3rd, 6.10pm […]
Things are not going so well for Ports of Auckland. “Ports of Auckland lifts lock-out amid board rift” sums it up…
Apparently the Auckland Council doesn’t know how much the POAL fiasco is costing. Rough estimates suggest that the cost is at least $400,000 a day, probably significantly more. No wonder the Council doesn’t want to know.
We’ve received the following press release from Auckland Council Local Board members calling on Len Brown and the councilors to stand up to PoAL’s out of control management. The workers want to work and be more productive. The bosses want to screw them out of their pay to increase profits and are acting irrationally in pursuit of that goal.
I wish to tender my resignation as Chair of the Ports of Auckland Board. I took a profitable and efficient Port and lost it millions of dollars in contracts. I spent, inappropriately, substantial amounts of money on a public relations campaign against our staff that could have been spent reinvesting in the port or returning to Auckland Council. The financial position of the Port is in a dire decline. We wish
Emergency Council Meetings, mediation, court action – the fight continues on a number of fronts. But at the core of the dispute is the SuperCity structure National set up – to give Council company boards free-rein, and democratically elected members no say.
It turns out that the report that provided the basis for a 12% return on equity at the Ports of Auckland is based not on something commissioned by them. Instead it comes from the previous employers of the current chairman at PoA, who have previously been interested in buying ports in NZ. And the comparisons used for the ROE are spurious.
After months on the side-line, David Shearer and Len Brown have been forced to choose a side in the Ports of Auckland dispute by the irrational and unreasonable behaviour of the Ports management. Shearer has come out against casualisation and marched with the workers in Saturday. Brown has offered mediation between the parties.
The travesty of the Port of Auckland dispute is that we have a publicly-owned company trying to slash its workers’ pay so that it can try to undercut another majority publicly owned company that has already slashed wages, the only winners being the foreign shipping lines. Well, here’s some of our representatives standing up for Auckland workers.
Steven Joyce isn’t a big believer in democracy. He has overruled Treasury, the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry for the Environment to make sure that the government keeps control of Auckland’s transport funds, and Auckland Transport is unaccountable to Aucklanders.
Nick Smith is looking at issuing a “Government policy statement” to ensure that the Auckland Plan complies with their agenda. They may ban the urban limits that are proposed to keep green, productive land around Auckland and help ensure rates stay low and public transport works in a more liveable city.
A video clip from Parliament yesterday. Goff calmly and systematically rips Key and the government apart on Friday’s RWC fiasco. Armstrong calls it Goff’s “best speech in a long time”.
The government’s handling of the RWC opening and the resulting chaos has been both incompetent and insulting to Auckland. “Seizing control” is simply adding insult to injury.
McCully is Minister for the RWC. He claimed the government had done “their best” and assured Auckland that the transport systems were ready to go. He was wrong in every respect. In the aftermath of the fiasco McCully now needs to front up and get three things right…
The RWC public transport fiasco was not a good look for our biggest city, and not a great advertisement to the world.
National are not acting in accordance with Auckland’s wishes. Aucklanders want public transport, and its Council wants a quality compact sustainable eco-city – National seem to be aiming to frustrate that. Aucklanders should submit their views to strengthen our voice against the government.
Apologies to non-Aucklanders, but this is an appeal for those in the Queen City to make sure they have their say on the future shape of our biggest city.
Len wants your input, fellow Aucklanders!
Even considering putting in a new harbor crossing without heavy rail that hooks into our existing public transport rail system is simply ideological stupidity by National. Well it is good to see that Aucklanders recognize the critical requirement for a new harbor crossing – “Rail crossing wins big backing in poll”. The sample is small but quite clear…
Steven Joyce and the NZ Transport Authority seem to be living in the 20th century. You know the time, when there was a strong causation and correlation between rising numbers of people and increased use of roads. But neither appear to have caught up with the 21st century where that isn’t happening. Yearning for the 1960’s in planning transport infrastructure doesn’t help Auckland or the rest of NZ
This post was going to be about Auckland Unleashed which is being released today, but has been somewhat, er, derailed, by the bridge vs tunnel report that’s come out.
National will reject Auckland Council and Aucklanders’ view on what their future city should look like. Instead they propose One ever more sprawling city, with ever more sprawling motorways, ever more cars clogging its veins, ever less community, and ever less government money.
It’s been revealed that the Government, having decided against dedicated Maori seats on the supercity council, gave appointed Maori advisers votes on council committees under its supercity legislation. That’s just unacceptable, we can’t have appointees voting equally to democratically-elected council members.
You not only can expect to be spied on more after an overhaul of the SIS, but you sure as hell shouldn’t be […]
National’s handling of the Auckland SuperCity process was profoundly undemocratic in a multitude of ways. Thank goodness, and the common sense of Aucklanders, that a “Labour Mayor from South Auckland” was elected to sort out at least some of the resulting mess. Len Brown has pledged to hold talks on dedicated Maori seats on the Council. It’s great to see that Brown is open to correcting National’s injustice on this matter.
Happy Birthday Auckland! The new Supercity is now in effect, with Mayor Len Brown at the helm. How is the tension between a left wing mayor representing a third of the country, and a right wing central government, going to play out? The Nats can’t afford to let Auckland fail…
