Hiding the costs from Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 7:58 pm, June 1st, 2011 - 18 comments
Categories: accountability, auckland supercity, national/act government, rodney hide - Tags: ,

Ever notice how all this Tory rhetoric about “personal responsibility” goes right out the window when push comes to shove? Personal responsibility is always for other people. When they stuff up it’s all about denial, obfuscation, and blaming someone else.

Take Rodney Hide for example. (Please – take him!) Is he taking responsibility for his negligent costing of the Auckland merger? Yeah right:

Hide keeps distance from IT blowout

Super City reporter Local Government Minister Rodney Hide says there is nothing contradictory about a promise last year to build a new Super City computer system for $126 million and the final bill of $576 million.

I can help you out there Rodney! The contradiction is $576 million – $126 million = $450 million. That’s a $450 million contradiction that is going to sock Auckland ratepayers right in the wallets.

At no stage in the Herald article or in a May 27, 2010, press release on transition costs did Mr Hide mention the long-term IT costs, which were presented to Auckland councillors behind closed doors this month.

Making matters worse for ratepayers, the council has only budgeted $150 million for the $450 million cost over the next eight years. This has left a $300 million shortfall that will have to be borrowed or paid for from rates at a time of economic hardship.

If Hide had a shred of personal responsibility in him he would resign for this fiasco. Fat chance. Aucklanders won’t even have the satisfaction of kicking him out at the election. But they can still kick out the arrogant government that steamrollered all over the city, with no regard for good process or public opinion.

18 comments on “Hiding the costs from Auckland ”

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  1. Colonial Viper 1
    1 June 2011 at 8:19 pm

    Righties believe in pay for performance right? so why not dock it from Hide’s pay for the next, oh, 2000 years? That’s how strategically incompetent this NACT Government is.

  2. Rebecca 2
    1 June 2011 at 9:19 pm

    What a load of b*ll.

    The $450 million estimate is for the cost of the Auckland Council IT system over the next ten years!!!

    We have to remember here that what the council spends on the IT system is the council’s choice.

    The council can decide to go with a basic IT system, or it can go with a gold plated, rolls royce system, it is up to them. And the only people that can stop them are the Auckland ratepayers, and the only way they can do that is by voting this council out!

    To try and suggest that Rodney Hide has any control over what the Auckland council – or any council for that matter – decides to spend its money on over the next decade is ridiculous.

    • Draco T Bastard 2.1
      1 June 2011 at 10:27 pm

      Rodney Hide is directly responsible for the new computer system being necessary at a faster pace making it more expensive than would have otherwise been the case. If he’d followed the royal commission’s guidelines instead of throwing them out and putting his own plans in place then it would have been cheaper.

      That said you may not have noticed but the whole point of the exercise, according to Rodders, was to save money – not throw it away which is what he actually did.

    • Colonial Viper 2.2
      1 June 2011 at 10:35 pm

      We have to remember here that what the council spends on the IT system is the council’s choice.

      Yeah because the Council could choose to keep all the IT systems separate like they are today and not spend anything.

      yeah right

    • mickysavage 2.3
      2 June 2011 at 8:02 am

      Ummm
       
      The Transition Authority kicked it all off and signed these non tendered contracts with Deloittes and others.
       
      Nothing to do with Len sorry but good try Rebecca.
       
      Don’t you love it when this Government stuffs up and then tries to blame Len!

    • Gramsci 2.4
      3 June 2011 at 5:45 pm

      What you seem to be ignoring is that there are a plethora of legacy systems holding vital information. The previous councils did not even use the same software for the fundamentals such as rating. Then there are the difference in the systems for building permits, parking fee collection, etc etc.

      The money has to be spent on trying to make all those systems talk to each other in the first instance.
      Otherwise it would take years to collect that information again and in the meantime the new Auckland Council would have no way to legitimately collect rates and fees to fund the things we ask councils to do for us.

      In this case there is no “cheap” option and no easy way to estimate how much it costs as the problems in getting the systems to talk to each other will often only become apparent once the work begins and testing starts.

      Not defending Hyde, just pointing out that the Auckland Council hasn’t got much “choice”.

  3. Deadly_NZ 3
    1 June 2011 at 9:25 pm

    And this is just one more reason you are paying, I am sorry but you all gets what you all voted for. And if someone did’nt do their sums and believed the Yellow Gnome, then I am sorry but you voted for it and as more NACT voters live up there in the rich areas, and they were willing conspirators in the last election that got said Yellow Gnome elected. I am sorry but you did choose to live up there with 2 to 4 hours traffic jams, Exorbitant rents. Move south it’s much better down here. I read an article on some of the boarding houses up there, and they are disgusting. and I pay less than the 180-220 they pay a week for a shitty room, for a 2 bedroom house on a big section. Yep I am in Levin but my blood pressure is down my stress levels are down and my health is up. not a bad trade off, You all got Screwed by the Gnome.

  4. Zaphod Beeblebrox 4
    1 June 2011 at 10:02 pm

    Send the bill to Epsom voters! Its their fault.

  5. Steve Withers 5
    1 June 2011 at 10:27 pm

    The money wasted is only part of the picture…and not the worst part.

    The structure foisted on us by National was intended, via FPP, to allow the largest minority (them – they thought – in the form of C&R) to run Auckland. Call it a precursor to life after they also manage to get rid of MMP.

    The only flaw in the plan was so many candidates stood in each ward that 13 of the 20 councilors elected got less than 30% of the vote…and C&R only got 5 seats out of 20. The Greens even managed to elect a non-branded councilor on the North Shore thanks to FPP wasting over 80% of the votes in Albany Ward.

    Oops.

    But the structure was never intended to actually work…..and now that problems are appearing the people who foisted this broken mess on Auckland are……maybe you guessed it…..blaming Mayor Len Brown.

    The gall…..Amazing.

    Overall, the democratic disaster in Auckland is the absolute worst part of the whole mess National and ACT created. How can it be anything else when 62.5% of all votes cast – the vast majority – didn’t elect even one councilor.

    • Draco T Bastard 5.1
      1 June 2011 at 10:30 pm

      How can it be anything else when 62.5% of all votes cast – the vast majority – didn’t elect even one councilor.

      But, as you said, that’s what it was designed to do.

  6. Peter Bains 6
    1 June 2011 at 10:28 pm

    Less than Lens lemon rail scheme.

    • Colonial Viper 6.1
      1 June 2011 at 10:33 pm

      hey peter bains you better catch up with the future, its ROADS which are now becoming obsolescent.

      You and other anti-future neanderthals need to go back to your oil rich caves because for everyone else, peak oil has already hit.

      RAIL is the future my man, and you belong in the past.

      • terryg 6.1.1
        2 June 2011 at 12:38 am

        And why is rail the future, in the post-peak-oil world – which the IEA now acknowledges was 2008?

        basic physics.

        the aerodynamic losses of a vehicle are mostly due to the cross-sectional area of the front of the vehicle, and are nearly independant of the length of the vehicle.

        so a ford transit van, a bendy bus, a kenworth B-train (2-trailer) and a 1km long deisel-electric train travelling at the same speed all have similar aerodynamic loss – yet the amount of cargo/passengers varies by about 3 orders of magnitude (1000:1)

        RWNJs can waffle, spin and lie – hell, they can whinny, bleat and moo – but it doesnt change the physics. Alas some semblence of understanding of science is required to understand this – an area where the RW is notoriously inept, and none more so than the religious right.

    • marsman 6.2
      1 June 2011 at 10:42 pm

      Much less than Joyce’s holiday highway and equally unnecessary. However even at a glance one can see that Len’s Rail Idea is sound unless one enjoys congested roads.

    • Georgecom 6.3
      1 June 2011 at 10:48 pm

      And a heck of a lot less than a huge loss making highway north of Auckland eh Peter. Scrapping the 0.6 (averaged) BCR holiday highway will pay for the IT costs 4 times over.

  7. tc 7
    2 June 2011 at 8:04 am

    Hide ford and foley would all have known……they’re not stupid and would have ensured the excuses and blame train is setup ready to roll after deploying the consultants like deloittes etc.

    Ford only liked green light reports, sent them back to be made green if they weren’t, so the old ‘nobody told me…..the reports were green etc’ is a mantra you’ll hear a bit IMO.

  8. mickysavage 8
    2 June 2011 at 8:09 am

    I have done some reading into and around the MOT/Treasury analysis.
     
    One premise they relied on was that ; the cost of oil would rise only by the rate of inflation untion .  It would be $3.75 a litre in 2041.  If only.
     
    We are seeing the attempted destruction of a vital post oil transport asset for petty politics.  We are seeing the bogus misapplication of models to deliberately sabotague something that Auckland needs and wants.
     
    Shame on them, shame on them.
     
     

  9. Tom Gould 9
    2 June 2011 at 10:20 am

    Key is ‘doing a supercity’ on the whole country, and like the supercity, it will take a while to find out the truth, well after all the craven Herald headlines are in the landfill, and it’s all too late.

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