Sacking the Auckland Transport Board & cutting deals to decongest traffic in central Auckland – JT vs Goff week 1
You can say many things about JT, lack of vision isn’t one of them.
He announced last week that if he is elected, he will sack the Board of Auckland Transport and today announced not only moving the Port north but he will cut a deal to personally decongest traffic in the CBD.
By getting the Trucking interests, the Port interests and the Union interests to agree to driving in at night to avoid peak hour traffic is impressive.
On top of that, here is the campaign pledge…
1. Open the Books and Clean the House
Aucklanders pay billions in rates and charges, but where does all that money go? Auckland has ended up with the most council staff ever, the biggest wage bill ever – and yet the most out of touch and secretive management ever. I will open all the doors and open all the books. We will find out who the billions arebeing paid to, what it’s being spent on, and why.
2. Return Democracy to Neighbourhoods
Too much power in our city is controlled by faceless managers in central Auckland. Control of the city must go back into the hands of the people. I will return local resources and decisions to local elected boards and their communities.
3. Bring Public Assets back under Democratic Control
Three quarters of Auckland Council’s assets are controlled by bureaucrats with no accountability. I want allCouncil owned organisations under democratic control. As a first step I will appoint elected councillors on every Council business board to ensure openness and oversight.
4. Crack down on Waste and Incompetence
Aucklanders deserve accountability and high performance from their Council. I will establish an Integrity Unit to investigate corruption, unacceptable conduct, and incompetence. This unit will report directly to me as your mayor. Aucklanders can be confident that their serious complaints will come to my desk for action.
5. Proper Partnership with Central Government
Aucklanders pay a huge part of the government’s costs. So why are Aucklanders forced to pay an extra fuel tax when no other region does? The present mayor should never have agreed to that. The hugeinfrastructure pressure on Auckland is the direct outcome of Central Government’s unplannedimmigration, and Auckland ratepayers shouldn’t have to pick up the entire bill. As the new mayor representing a third of the country, I will expect a more equal partnership, especially with transport and housing.
…he’s pretty serious about shaking things up.
Many promises, like in any election campaign, now what die Goff once promise, what die Len Brown promise before that, and what was delivered?
John Tamihere will not be able to do as much as he suggests he will, as he will soon realise, the most laws and regulations are made in Wellington, and Auckland Council has to work and operate within that framework.
And getting rid of what exists is always harder than first establishing it.
I would not rely all that much of his great talk now.
If Councillors that will be voted will not agree with him, how is he going to bring in stuff and sort out stuff that they may not agree with, at least not the way he may propose to do it?
It is electioneering, nothing much else.
The alternative is to get Steven Joyce to again use his own web to corrupt any transport issue to get it across the line like he did in 2014 as transport Minister then, listen to the audio clip then to “relive those last days of a bad nightmare then.
Joyce was found by your best best friend now as Sean Plunket & ‘Matthew Hooten’ uncovered it during the discussion then that Joyce was corrupt and released the evidence of it on the talk back show in 2014 around the time of that election, when Joyce had illegally promoted a roading contact through his own mega agency he constructed to control us all called MBIE, sunshine.
Joyce was more corrupt far more than English was , -so don’t go down that road. Duncan Garner, Michele Boag and Mike Williams were there and heard the Revelations that Joyce illegally did a illegal deal through MBIE to get a $100 million Dollar road across the line without doing it legally.
« Sean Plunket comes around on the Watergate comparison (‘Dirty Politics’)The escape of exnzpat, Part 24 »
Matthew Hooton’s assertions re the Prime Minister’s Office Posted in 31 August 2014
Peter Aranyi9 Comments »
hooton‘Explosive’ is one of those words that gets kicked around in politics and political reporting to the point where it’s almost lost its meaning. But it’s not an exaggeration to describe right wing spin doctor and self-declared National Party loyalist Matthew Hooton‘s performance on Radio LIVE this morning as incendiary.
He effectively called Prime Minister John Key ‘dishonest’, said the PM’s office and chief of staff Wayne Eagleson is implicated in the Dirty Tricks scandal (viz. the SIS-Goff-OIA affair) and more, described Jason Ede’s black-ops brigade as ‘acting under orders’.
And in a fiery exchange, he described former National Party President (and present-day apologist) Michelle Boag as ‘a hack’ with ‘no political views’ who is ‘all about is defending a government that has behaved in ways that [are] literally indefensible and you know it’ …
Listen for yourself. UPDATE: The ‘fiery exchange’ has now been highlighted as a RadioLIVE editor’s audio pick here. — Available on demand at RadioLIVE.co.nz dial up Sunday 10am.* Click to listen at Radio LIVE Click to listen at Radio LIVE (archived below) * I’ve archived it here too (audio player below) because RadioLIVE only keeps 7 days audio available and I’ve noticed sometimes Mediaworks launders its talkback station’s audio feed when things get … contentious. Mark Sainsbury hosts ‘Sunday morning’ at RadioLIVE with guests Michelle Boag, Mike Williams, Matthew Hooton & Duncan Garner 31 Aug 2014 MP3 file enclosure:
http://www.thepaepae.com/wp-uploads/2014/08/Boag-Hooton-Williams-RadioLIVE-Sunday-morning-31Aug14.mp3 24057464 audio/mpeg
Sounds more or less like an Auckland version of Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign pitch. Remember how that turned out? Yeah, me too.