Len Brown is about to hoist a parasitic private sector consortium onto the backs of Auckland ratepayers.
Brown’s so-called “Skypath” project is a cycleway/pathway across Auckland Harbour Bridge which the Mayor says will enable people to bike or walk from Devonport to St Heliers.
The concept is good, the implementation long overdue and Brown is right to say it will be a “game-changer” for cycling and pedestrian travel around Auckland.
But Brown is proposing it be built by a so-called public-private partnership or PPP and is promoting the idea in a speech to be delivered today (foreshadowed by the New Zealand Herald yesterday) to the Greater East Tamaki Business Association.
Brown’s speech is quoted as saying “The SkyPath will be Auckland’s first public private partnership (PPP) … This is a chance to cut our teeth on PPPs and show that we can deliver real value for money and better outcomes for ratepayers.”
The last sentence is pure sophistry. The big majority of PPPs across the globe are deals that guarantee the profits of private sector investors while ensuring the risks are met by ratepayers or taxpayers. PPPs are a parasitic relationship where the private sector feeds off the public sector host.
None of us should be under any illusion that Brown’s Council will be able to negotiate a deal which gives “real value for money and better outcomes ratepayers” with a legion of corporate lawyers.
The fact the corporate sector love PPPs is the very reason we should reject them out of hand. If this one goes ahead it will be a millstone around ratepayers’ necks for decades to come.
The council can borrow, build and run such a cycleway more cheaply than the private sector.
But the cost should not be met by borrowing anyway. The money should come from the billions of capital spent each year on new tarseal highways traversing Auckland – roads we won’t need if we develop integrated, free public transport on buses, trains and ferries across the city.
The rest of Brown’s speech promotes the usual business mantra for Auckland – aiming for growth of five to six percent; shifting to an export focussed economy; greater migration to promote growth and the need to attract more international investment and talent. We’ve heard it all before.
On the other hand his speech says nothing about the living wage. He has given up this fight before it’s started. Business doesn’t want it so Brown will oblige by stifling it as far as it could apply to Auckland City.
The most interesting thing about Brown is that he is referred to as a centre-left Mayor but where’s the evidence? Instead he’s taking on a David-Lange-type role – a smiling, cheerful, labourish persona which acts as the public face for a deeply right-wing policy prescription.
And like David Lange, Len Brown is tolerated by right-wing businesspeople, not because they like him but because he is eminently malleable to their demands.
It’s quite amazing that people think it’s acceptable to charge money to walk across a bridge that’s free to drive across.
I guess those are the same people whose idea of cycling is to load the $5k carbon fibre bike on the back of the SUV, drive from Albany or Drury into town, dress in racing team replica lycra complete with needle flap and cycle a few hundred metres along Tamaki Drive to a cafe for breakfast, before putting the bike back on the car and heading for the mall.
Very droll RICH, your cyclist is one element of the two disparate Aucklands I see everyday.
John’s post is totally correct. Len tolerated, not liked, by the monied suits moving from one air conditioned space to another as they do their best to squeeze every dollar out of the city. Would perma tanned Pallino have been any different? Just even more business friendly.
Pity Brown did not resign and a new election get held as Minto for Mayor could have had another bite at the issues like free transport and living wage.
But this PPP obsession is not unique, it is common all over the world, it is the “solution” that councils and state governments seek, when they feel they cannot impose higher financial burdens on the rate payers, the tax payers and so forth.
One way to go around it would be to simply build the infrastructure needed, and then act as operator and charge for the use. Then we will have the user pays debate again.
I am no fan of PPP arrangements, but whatever is debated and wanted by some, it will cause costs, and they will have to be met. PPPs seem a bit stupid, as the ones willing to invest will usually not just want to have costs covered, they will also have a “profit motive”.
That is what turns me off PPPs, and that is why I prefer Council to be upfront and honest with its residents, and tell them, we can and are willing to do this or that, but it will cost, and that is what we need to raise this way or in another way.
Len Brown does not even seem to put that question to us, hence he behaves like any common “right” or conservative administrator, to just go ahead and do what he things must be done.
I will also oppose some of the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan, as it is top down administration, presenting us with thousands of pages of “proposals”, which not even the experts will read in detail.
How damned “democratic” is that, even-though some will bother to make submissions on parts of it.
The modern, complex administrations and societies we are locked in seem to dictate to us, rather than be inclusive at local levels, no matter how well they try to present it to us.
I am disillusioned with much of what goes on, want a better Auckland, but that will also only work with input and participation by the right kind of central government. We do not have that “right” kind of central government, so we will not get good input, I fear.
It may be best to move out of Auckland and live somewhere else, I increasingly think. But wherever we go, we have similar issues.
By the way, yes, if we spend less on motorways and so, that could finance such projects, but then you have to tell the voters with their many cars, that they will have to restrict their travel and lifestyles.
People should stand up and raise voices against all this en masse, but they merely feel to be little wheels in huge systems, and have given up even trying. Welcome to an Orwellian society!
Agree with you, that should be what councils should be doing: work out how much a project will cost, tell the general public, and be open about how it will be financed. Simple. No shady backroom deals. This is what most people want.
Len Brown is toothless anyway, but I suspect no Auckland mayor could ever do anything in this city without at least tacit approval of big business. This is the way this city works, in fact the “real” mayors, i.e. the people with real power are not the elected Mayor but the unelected business leaders. It may be true elsewhere but I think it is particularly true in Auckland, given that any big corporation can threaten to up sticks and leave, and that would leave Auckland with nothing. At least Wellington has the beehive to keep it going. Auckland has mde its bed with big business, now it must lie in it.
I hadn’t thought of Brown as Lange before, but it makes sense. Both lawyers, and the job of lawyers is to make the actions of those they represent look reasonable and justified. That’s what they’re doing by applying a thin wash of faded pink stain to a dung heap of far right policies. Lange was far more successful, but Brown’s job is easier because it was all handed to him by Hide, and many in the opposition are a bit tired.
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