Please delete this CAP preamble and email this to:
Submissions Administrator <info (at) royalcommission.govt.nz>

or send online from this website:
www.royalcommission.govt.nz

or:
Mailed submissions should be sent to the following FreePost address (no stamp is required), to be received no later than 22 April 2008:

FreePost No. 215482
Submissions Administrator
Royal Commission on Auckland Governance
Private Bag 92049
Auckland Mail Centre
Auckland 1142

Submissions close 4pm this Tuesday, April 22, 2008.
But asap if you can't by their deadline... they have till Dec 1st before their final report goes to the Government

Details of times and places for hearings (in the first three weeks of May and in June) will be available on the Commission’s website:
www.royalcommission.govt.nz/

Those who make written submissions will be personally advised of these by the royal commission at least five working days in advance of the hearing that they are invited to attend.
Phone:
09 365 2740
0800 722 400

Thanks
Citizens Against Privatisation
Auckland
Ph 09 836 6389
Or 09 828 0238

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Submission On Restructuring of Regional Governance in the Auckland region from Franklin to Rodney

From - Name: ..............................

Address: ...................................

.........................................................................................................

..........................................................................................................

email: .................................

Phone: ...............................

Organisation, if any:............................

I wish to make verbal submissions (May/June) -

Yes/No: ......

In [PICK FROM]: Rodney, North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau, Papakura, Franklin:

...............................
OR: ...........................


To the Arseholes carrying out the latest rort in the Ak Region:-

I oppose any changes to governance structures in the Auckland region unless they are legislative measures for greater democracy - like giving members of the public real redress when submissions are called for on various local body functions, and then ignored. I include in that, this exercise in manipulating the structures of power over our heads, as if you had some right to.

Present consultation processes are widely seen as a cynical farce - as is the catch-cry for the public to wait until the next elections as the only solution.

I believe the current royal commission is not designed to recommend that sort of outcome, any more than the input produced for it by the various municipalities does.

Worse, since the pressure for restructuring has come via various organisations representing only corporate interests, that lobby would be primarily served by this exercise, to the huge detriment of ordinary people.

Therefore I oppose any changes to the status quo of governance in the Auckland Region because:

• The democratic process would be further degraded, not enhanced.

• There has been no analysis since Labour's 1989 local body amalgamations. And none which proves that that round of restructuring delivered any more efficiency in public service, or enhanced democracy, or any cost benefits at all to the majority of people. Analysis of international experience actually proves the opposite. Once again, there is no evidence that the general public would be advantaged by any such restructuring.

• On the contrary, the royal commission is ordered in its Terms of Reference to facilitate the 96 recommendations of the 2007 Rates Inquiry in the Auckland region through this restructuring. It is also ordered not to take any account ("quantum") of what its royal decisions would cost or who would pay.

• All these 96 recommendations favour business interests and would further transfer the load of property taxes (rates) from the wealthy and big business onto ordinary people, especially onto renters who can't afford to own their own homes, large families, and those on small and fixed incomes. This would be done through public-private partnership privatisations of water, roads, schools, hospitals etc, and even more flat and user charges, which reduce property-value-based rates for the rich and make the much poorer majority pay instead.

• As a measure of the lack of public keenness for change, Auckland City Council has managed to attract fewer than 50 submissions on the question of governance restructuring. It would be a travesty for such small numbers of formal responses to be regarded as anything other than a preference for the status quo.

• Any local government restructuring within the Auckland region would become a template for the rest of the country, and this question should be extended to public input from across New Zealand, with genuinely adequate time for all to become informed of its real agenda and implications.

I wish to be heard at a hearing convened by the royal commission.

Signed: .......................................

Organisation if any: .............................