As Auckland chugs full steam ahead towards becoming a super city, serious questions are being raised about whether the GLBT community will be heard under the new structure. The super city's new logo The vast super city will be made up of 12 wards and 21 local boards, stretching from Franklin to Rodney. The Waitemata and Gulf seat will be one of the city's biggest, with 79,300 constituents. It will have just one councillor, with Auckland Chamber of Commerce boss and Auckland Regional Councillor Michael Barnett lining up against current ARC chair Mike Lee for the job. Other contenders are likely to come forward in the near future. The seat will encompass central Auckland suburbs such as the CBD, Grey Lynn and Ponsonby, where much of Auckland's gay population is concentrated. Gay member of the current Western Bays Community Board Bruce Kilmister fears the GLBT community could be worse off under the new super city structure. "The new arrangement is splitting off a lot of authority to Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) which will work on a commercial basis. It could be very difficult to get a hold of someone who can do anything." Kilmister says the size of the new local board constituencies is also a concern. "Eastern Bays, with a population of 36,000, will now be part of a much bigger local board area with a 78,000 population. And those local board members will only have the power to recommend action." "Currently the Eastern Bays Community Board has a $500,000 Small Local Improvement Projects (SLIPs) to administer within which there is some discretionary money which has from time to time been directed to GLBT projects, especially when the council was not forthcoming. The new local boards will still have a budget but we have yet to see if there will be any money available for members to allocate at their discretion." Maungakiekie Community Board representative Simon Randall agrees the super city will put too much power into too few hands. "Especially, in too few unelected hands in the CCOs and the council bureaucracy." Randall has been selected as a Team Maungakiekie Candidate for the Maungakiekie Sub-division of the Maungakiekie Local Board. He says how much power the new boards will actually have, will only be truly determined when they are in action. Randall says the transition agency seems to have embraced the idea that the council and local boards should be seen as equals, which he sees as promising. "The local boards may have more power over the day to day funding and support of the GBLTI Community, in which case it is important to have local boards that are aware and supportive of our community and their distinct needs." Randall says it will still be very important to have super city councillors who will fight on queer issues, pointing out the current John Banks-led Auckland City Council has shown how easy it was to take away the funding and support put in place by the previous Dick Hubbard and City Vision led council. "The fact remains that the council still will have power over the roles which local boards will get to enjoy. The real determinant will be whether or not good advocates for their local communities are elected or not." Longtime representative in Auckland local politics Lindsey Rea agrees everything will flow from the political make-up of the council. She says it will be more important than ever to have councillors who back the gay community. "A NACT lookalike Citizens is also concerned the real power will be out of the council's hands and in the hands of the unelected members of the boards of the CCOs. She has no intention of getting back into local politics herself.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Friday, 23rd April 2010 - 9:23am