Westminster model of democracy outdated

These days there seems broad agreement that democracy is a system of governance where power and civic responsibility are, ideally, exercised directly by all citizens.

Unfortunately the practice is different. The people typically exercise their power through elected representatives who belong to parties and are either in Government or Opposition.

Before I go any further let me make it clear I do not belong to any political party, and nor am I exercising any judgement on various political party policies. My comment is simply raising the question of whether the current model of government is an effective use of the array of people who put themselves forward in the best interests of NZ Inc.

The majority of members of parliament are backbenchers who are not in cabinet or state ministers and are, for all intents and purposes rubber stamps, who must obey their parliamentary whips (appropriate choice of word) and leaders with respect of how they vote. That means, if an MP has a personal view on a matter they must subsume that and ‘follow the leader’. To do otherwise is to commit political suicide.

Franklin experienced that first hand in the past over the issue of our community being chopped up into bits and farmed out to other local bodies. The community had made it clear how they felt but the MP was required to vote with the party against community wishes.

In essence, the system also marginalises constituents whose MPs are in the ruling part(ies), Government MPs do not get enough opportunity to stand up and truly represent the interests of their respective constituencies. Ironically, their opposition counterparts get far more leeway.

Workplace culture is a powerful force that will see the business strategic plan either succeed or fail, no matter how good the strategy is. Culture is the high velocity oil that helps the finely tuned engine achieve peak performance.

When the report of the Parliamentary inquiry into bullying (Parliamentary Culture) was released, the Speaker said “The stressful, 24/7 nature of parliamentary work that was typically marked by power imbalances and immense loyalty made it open to bullying and harassment behaviour”.

Commentary after the release of the report referred to politics being ‘robust’ hence the bullying culture.  I understand the word ‘Robust’ to mean, strong and healthy, vigorous. The report described anything but healthy, with a quote from an interview noted in the report of inquiry summing up the true meaning pretty well, “Just because it’s politics and people are passionate doesn’t mean any of us can behave like arseholes....”

We have 120 MPs who are, ostensibly, elected by us (directly or through party votes) to represent us in the best interests of NZ Inc. However, once they reach parliament they are obligated to follow party political dogma and if they contemplate any dissention they are ‘whipped’ into line. And the whole culture of the environment in which they work is toxic.

Such a culture and practice would not be tolerated in corporate environments which pride themselves as Great Places to Work.

 

First published in the Franklin County News Thursday 4th July 2019

Local Opinions Matter

There has been quite a lot going on one way and another, but I will focus on community engagement through consultation, the type we have been invited to participate in over the last few months, and speed.

Our opinions on a variety of plans and topics have been invited including cats, dogs, water, trade waste, sports investment plan, annual budget, stopping marine pests, how much capital banks should have, the right to end your life with dignity, fireworks, speed limits, the next big dormitory suburb in our community, and use of rural land, to name a few that I have noticed.

Often there is outrage from campaigners and lobby groups that they feel they are not being listened too, their views were not taken into account during the decision making process and that consultation does not work.

The opportunities we get are mostly to provide feedback on proposals and looking to understand our concerns and the aspirations for our community. Furthermore there is an expectation that there is an obligation on us as citizens not to take democracy for granted and to engage in matters which will affect us.

However I do worry that rural, less populated communities have their voice overwhelmed by the urban dwellers. This was illustrated in the results of the Fire Works Ban consultation. The Council published a detailed analysis of the near eight thousand responses. As I recall round 73% of the responses were from urban dwellers. How do we get our rural voice heard in any significant volume amidst what we already know to be a very ill-informed urban view of agriculture and what that community does do?

And there is yet another issue which has been illustrated by the speed sign consultation. Apparently 90% of the roads in the proposal to reduce speed limits are in rural areas to counter the number of deaths and injuries on Auckland’s roads. Speed is attributed as a major factor, and the topic of speed limits is an emotive and polarising issue. Changes need to make sense to people and be backed up by evidence.

The number of fines handed out as a result of being caught speeding last year was more than three times higher than in 2017 and 20 times more than it was in 2013. The numbers are mind boggling. In 2018 there were 1,191,484 speeding infringement notices issued. That means on over a million separate occasions, drivers simply ignored the safe speed road signs. And why?

Research in NZ has shown that drivers in general, and novice drivers in particular overestimate their driving skills. As one researcher noted, drivers, “... have poor insight; they overestimate their skills and underestimate the difficulty of driving.”

Other research showed that drivers tended to overestimate the time savings at high speeds and underestimate the time savings at lower speeds. However most drivers were aware that increasing speed above 100km/hr would use more fuel.

So in short, drivers generally don’t give a damn about road speed safety signs; believe they are much better drivers than they really are; overestimate the travel time saved through speeding; and although they know speed will cost them more petrol, they do it anyway.

So we think reducing the road safety speed limits will make a difference how?  

 

First published in the Franklin County News p14 May 9th 2019

Is there enough land to feed us?

Think about how much food you eat each day. Now think about how big the human population is and how much food is needed to feed all of those people.

One thing is universal and that is our need to eat to sustain our lives. Without food we can no longer exist. We fail to realise that by allowing our cities to grow without interruption, we are literally and rapidly starving ourselves. Urbanisation is threatening food supplies all across the planet.

The rapid loss of agricultural land is prevalent throughout the world, and clearly shows that crops cannot compete with the sprawl characteristics of cities. Urban centres have forgotten that their existence is totally dependent upon the rural areas surrounding them. The continued rise in population rates is so adversely affecting the carrying capacity of the planet, making aspects of food production much more worrisome and problematic.
With almost half of New Zealand’s land area committed to pasture and crops we could assume there is still plenty of land to spare.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub raises serious concerns whether New Zealanders have been lulled into a sense there is plenty of land to go around in our supposedly lightly populated country.

Many of our urban communities grew up as support centres for the agricultural community around them. Pukekohe would be an example. But is it the best use of land? What happens to our ability to produce food when that high quality land is taken out of production? Once it has gone into houses, you don’t get it back.

According to Landcare research only 5% of our land is fertile and versatile enough to produce food without the need for ‘significant manipulation’. Examples of ‘Manipulation’ include fertiliser and irrigation. So would the population be prepared to let farmers use more fertiliser and develop more irrigation to produce the food lost as a result of urban sprawl? Given their view of agriculture has been negatively well conditioned by shrieking lobby groups supported by mainstream media, I’m confidently predicting the answer is ‘No’.

Without doubt, good quality food is a necessity.

Horticulture NZ tells us that productive land to the south of Auckland is a mere 4,300 hectares. Taking the land out of production over the years could cost up to 4,500 fulltime jobs and mean fruit and vegetable prices in Auckland would go up 58%.

From 2002 to 2016, NZ’s vegetable growing area declined by 30%. The area of land devoted to agricultural fell by almost a million hectares in the decade to 2012. For the growth of 100,000 extra people, about 2,100 hectares of residential area is required.

New Zealand has limited national information on how quickly our versatile land is shifting to urban use. Auckland will gain another 26,000 people a year between now and 2050. Not only is the soil lost, but the population that needs feeding from the remaining land will have grown by a third. And with a city bursting with people there is the associated demands for more roads, motorways and upgraded sewers and storm water systems.

The research agency Motu recommends shifting from meat and milk production to horticulture, requiring at least 100,000 hectares more horticultural land and possibly up to 250,000 hectares.

Estimates suggest that by 2050 food production will need to have increased by 60% on 2005 levels to feed a growing global population.

In the last past 40 years, earth has lost one third of its arable land. Research has calculated that nearly 33% of the world’s adequate or high quality food producing land has been lost.

Published in the Franklin County News, Thursday 14 March 2019, page 6, Conversations, "Is there enough food to eat."

 

Pukekohe Project Plans Hard to Find

I read late last year about a regeneration programme for Pukekohe. The information did not give me the ingredients necessary to get excited about our future, well Pukekohe’s anyway.

Apparently great development is going to be ‘Unlocked’ (with a capital ‘U’).

The information certainly confirmed much of what we already know, special housing developments, rapidly increasing population, the need for better transport connections, attracting more investment.

Yes we know a strong local economy is vital, and the cornerstone to much needed employment, but what is the answer to the “So what” question?

The Maori word ‘Panuku’ in English is a verb meaning “to move, move on”. To move on is an encouraging but rather vague indication of, what exactly?

I searched the Auckland Council website and found the Panuku Development Auckland page which told me it was about shaping spaces for Aucklanders to love. Great news I was on the track. There was a Project Map tab so I naturally clicked to see where we featured. Well the news is, we don’t. Franklin isn’t on the map.

But I was not giving up. I clicked on the Projects tab and scrolled down the list of great photographs with location labels but there was nothing with Franklin, or Pukekohe, or Waiuku on it.

Then I clicked on the ‘Latest News’ tab and up came an aerial photo of Pukekohe with a label, ‘Panuku to help shape Pukekohe’s future – a new future is being envisaged for Pukekohe’. I clicked on that, excited that I was getting closer to something actually informative about our future, but no it was, disappointingly, word for word the PR statement.

But wait, I spotted some small print right down the bottom of the webpage, ‘Board Reports’ so clicked on it and up popped a heading for future meeting dates (there were none) then a list of previous meeting dates, back a couple of years (well that is as far as I could be bothered looking on a quick scan).

At the time of looking, the last meeting of the Board of Directors was on the   28^th November 2018. The notice advised, ‘The general nature of business will be to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations....’ I thought I would have a look at what transpired at the previous meeting held on 24^th October. Apparently the general nature of business was to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations.

I thought I might go have a look at what was under the date for other meetings before that and found that, yep you guessed it, the general nature of business was to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations.

Having clicked through a bunch of those I got bored and my partner yelled, “Are you ready for some dinner?” and I said “Yes thank you.” Then left the computer with my anticipatory excitement deflated.

I really was interested in finding out, beyond the PR announcement, where we were moving on to.

First published in the Franklin County News, page 4, Conversations, “Pukekohe Project Plans Hard to Find”, Tuesday 5^th February 2019.

What comes first - People or Infrastructure?

The concept of the development of Paerata began before Franklin became part of Auckland when the then Auckland Regional Council were looking for areas to build more houses. One of the other areas they were considering was the Pukekohe A&P Showgrounds, and that subsequently took some 5 years to fight off.

I was Chairman of the Franklin Economic Development Agency at the time, bringing together the economic, business and tourism groups to look at ways to develop opportunities for Franklin.

There are many who believe that the sole reason for annexing Franklin into Auckland City was purely and simply a land grab to enable them to build the huge number of houses they anticipated would be needed for the burgeoning Auckland population - and they had pretty much run out of land in the city.

One of the issues raised then and still relevant, is the use of elite soils on which to build houses. Now we are flat out building dormitory suburbs in Franklin in elite soils.. And the fact is that Franklin will go from being one of the least populated of the 21 Wards of Auckland, to the most populated in a relatively short period of time.

The owners of the land were looking at how to develop that and originally were looking at a concept of Live, Work, Play. This would be a mix of businesses and homes so people could either bicycle or walk to work and hence develop a true sense of community where people got to spend more time with their families and be involved in their community. A lovely ideal.

Regardless of the model, for me there are a couple of issues with any housing development. The first is using elite soils to build on. The second is our approach of people first, then infrastructure.

In 1950 the average farm fed 27 people, by 1917 the number had risen to 150 people fed per farm. The experts predict that by 2050 the world population will reach 9.6 billion. That is a lot of mouth's to feed. To meet that future demand, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation  estimates that agricultural production will need to increase by 60%.

More homes are needed to house that population. Its a world wide issue. However the world's farmland is decreasing. Every two years an area roughly the size of Britain is lost to agriculture. as houses are built on prime agricultural elite soils. So what is Auckland's food security policy? Or will we just increase our food imports from unregulated providers elsewhere in the world.

One of New Zealand's most popular and colourful local politicians, Dove-Meyer Robinson was the longest serving mayor of Auckland city, holding office for 18 years between 1959 and 1980. He had a vision of the future and the development north of the city. And he wanted to build a bridge that would see the road, rail, pedestrian, cycling needs of a growing city way into the future. The Government of the day said he didn't need that and offered him one third of the cost. Of course we all know more capacity for road traffic was needed pretty soon after and more recently  we have been regretting the lack of that rail link.

That minimalist approach to infrastructure has continued, hence we are always playing catch-up.

Currently I drive 48 kilometres to work. If I were to take public transport, it could be three train rides and at least one bus. It takes around an hour and a half by car, sometimes two, and God willing there are no accidents which stem the flow completely.

That is at least 3 hours per day, 15 hours per week, 750 hours a year I do not get to spend with family, community or other interests such as, sport and church. As thousands more houses come on line, that commute is going to increase substantially and in a very short space of time. As new house come on line and are occupied, there will be more and more commuter traffic. The wasted time will dramatically increase and the social cost to families and communities will be immense.

The only major infrastructure project to deal with or more likely mitigate somewhat is the  short stretch of motorway widening between Karaka and Takanini.

I had the good fortune to see a development in China. I saw houses, highways, rail, town centre, schools and services - everything you would need to support a large population but not a single person in sight except construction workers. When everything was finished then the people came to take up residence.

How sensible is that?

Extracts from this BLOG were first published by Stuff.co.nz on Monday 3rd December 2018.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/109019658/new-4500home-subdivision-in-paerata-will-only-add-to-traffic-woes-residents-say