- By Laura Kvigstad, Auckland Council reporter funded by New Zealand on Air
Auckland councillors have raised concerns about a lack of clarity in Mayor Wayne Brown’s proposal to overhaul council-controlled organisations.
At a recent workshop of Auckland Council’s budget committee, members discussed the Draft Mayoral Proposal for the 2025-26 annual plan.
The document looks to make significant changes to the council-controlled organisations (CCOs), including absorbing back-office duties of Auckland Transport, disestablishing Eke Panuku, and consolidating the economic development, destination marketing and major events of Tātaki Auckland Unlimited into the council.
Watercare is not included in any proposed changes.
Councillor for Franklin, Andy Baker, questioned what the changes would look like in practice.
“When we talk about bringing things like [communications] – how do we keep in the specialist at say Auckland Transport who need to be there on the floor,” Baker said.
“If we’ve got group shared services and all the comms people sitting here then that isn’t going to work and there’s going to be a hole and we open ourselves up to be slapped, quite rightly.
“The last thing I want to do is suddenly rush into giving a direction when we haven’t tested how it might work, and we’re just sort of saying on paper it looks awesome like driving on the right-hand side of the road.”
The council has been increasing the number of shared services amongst the council and its CCOs and chief executive Phil Wilson said he had specifically not included communications for that reason.
“I won’t play the card of ‘you stick to governance, and I will stick to the operational design’, but there is a separation there and some of the detailed working through that needs to happen is ultimately what I’m charged with,” Wilson said.
Councillor Richard Hills said councillors were being asked to trust that things will be put back together in the middle of next year after “blowing everything up”.
“Half the problem is elected members. We give the CCOs impossible tasks and most of the time they do them, but we complain about the operational implementation of our decisions because it’s easy to stand on the front page of the paper with our arms crossed and go ‘look at the big old bad CCO’ even though it was us who made the decision and us that told them to do it.”
Hills said a change to CCOs would likely mean the councillors would need to come in for additional meetings for the added decision making it would create, and it was already difficult for some councillors to attend a lot of meetings.
Brown said the change was about putting the responsibility back onto elected people.
“The public sees us as responsible for everything and I’m not all that happy to have to apologise for things over which I’ve had no input whatsoever,” Brown said.
“I’m fed up having to say it wasn’t us because the public think we’re responsible.
“We might as well be responsible and accept that responsibility and live up to it.”
Howick councillor Maurice Williamson said for effective change management the council needed to know what problems it was trying to solve to know if the proposal would fix them.
“I think there’s no doubt that in the current CCO models the deficits dramatically outweigh any of the positives,” Williamson said.
He likened the situation to blind buying a property without knowing whether it would meet all needs.
“I don’t get enough definition or clarity about what this new house looks like. We have got the GJ Gardner man over there telling us he’s going to make sure it’s a smooth transition to this new house, but I still don’t know what the house looks like.”
