A Vision For Auckland From John Palino

A Vision for Auckland
John Palino
I have lived in Auckland for over 20 years, owning and
managing a number of businesses in the hospitality industry. I
currently own the Friend of the Farmer caf & farmers
market in Kings Plant Barn in Takanini.
Originally from New Jersey, I have had a career in my family's
industry, hospitality. I started work in my father's restaurant in
my early teens, working my way up to managing large
hospitality businesses by the time I was twenty.
Tired of the frantic pace of New York I moved to Auckland, a
beautiful city with endless potential. In the time I have been in
Auckland I have become increasingly concerned by the poor
decisions being made at local government level, especially
council overspending and overregulation.
I am running for office on a platform that will fix these
problems and address the pressing issues of excessive rates
rises and increasingly unaffordable house prices.
Copyright John Palino, Auckland, 2016

ISBN Number 978-0-473-35732-0
This book and its component parts may be reproduced.
To contact John or to contribute to his campaign
please email info@palinoformayor.co.nz or
visit www.palinoformayor.co.nz
A VISION FOR AUCKLAND
A Vision for Auckland outlines my approach to fixing the

problems our city faces.
Introduction
1.
What Auckland Needs from its Mayor and Council
2.
Auckland in the Future
12
3.
The Issues that Matter
16
4.
A Ten Percent Rates Reduction
19
5.
Auckland Rate Payers Bill of Rights
23
6.
Spending Transparency
28
7.
Council Responsibility
33
8.
Economic Growth
36
9.
Housing Affordability
43
10. Regulation
51
11. Transport
59
12. Unitary Plan
70
13. Asset Sales
77
14. Maori Representation & Issues
82
15. Unlocking Auckland's Potential
85
16. My Regional Vision for Auckland
88
JOHN PALINO
Introduction
Auckland has an amazing opportunity that many cities around
the world could only dream of. While some may be opposed to
growth, the alternative is far worse. So let's take advantage of
our challenge and make Auckland the best city in the world.
In 15 years the population of Auckland is predicted to increase
by around 400,000 people. This growth brings massive
planning issues but also brings additional revenue into the area
of some 12 billion dollars in house hold income alone.
The purpose of this book is to lay out a very clear choice
between the current council's strategy, which I am convinced is
not working and will not work, and an alternative strategy I
will put before you. I appreciate your reading this book and
allowing me to paint a picture for you of my vision for
Auckland.
Auckland's Challenge
The introduction of the Super City in 2010 was supposed to
make a positive difference for Aucklanders. Aucklanders have
not received the Super City Dividend promised when the
seven councils and Auckland Regional Council were merged.
Rather than producing savings and encouraging Auckland to
flourish, we have seen the exact opposite. An out of control

approach to regulation and spending has led to an overbearing
and unwieldy council passing costs onto Auckland ratepayers.
Auckland council staffing numbers are now far higher than the
sum of the pre amalgamation parts, congestion is worsening,
house prices are unsustainable and costs have exploded.
Over the last six years we have had a dysfunctional mayor and
council, who have drastically increased rates, massively
increased debt, and imposed restrictive and expensive
regulations and processes on all Aucklanders. On top of that
we are now learning of massive budgetary blowouts related to
IT projects and council buildings. These are only going to
compound an already problematic financial position.
The first six years of the Super City have been a lost
opportunity. Our mayor and council have failed to do the
things we expected them to do. Despite our mayor's promise of
a maximum 2.5% rates rises we have had rates rises far higher
than the rate of inflation.
In 2016 Aucklanders have a chance to replace our high
spending, regulation-heavy, mayor and council with sensible,
pragmatic leadership. Aucklanders have a chance to elect a
mayor and council who will adopt meaningful and effective,
strategies aimed at resolving Auckland's problems butoperating within a budget that reflects what ratepayers can
afford while also delivering better core services.
JOHN PALINO
Aucklanders have a chance to elect a council that changes the
direction of our city for the better, and delivers on the promised
benefits of the Super City.
I believe the best cities in the world are those where the people
who live in those cities made their own decisions. I want the
next generation of Aucklanders to be able to choose where and
how they live. I want them to be able to determine what they
do, where they do it and how they get there. The best way to
achieve this, is with a focused council which keeps costs and
regulation down.
In critiquing the policies and management of the current mayor
and council, I want to acknowledge those current councillors
and staff who have not supported many of the actions taken by
the current mayor and council as a whole. It must have been
extremely frustrating for them to be in a minority when the
majority of council was making poor decisions.
My campaign for mayor is based on having sensible and
achievable policies for the real problems facing Auckland and
Aucklanders. Auckland needs a Mayor who is prepared to
genuinely tackle these problems, not an incrementalist Mayor
who will tinker around the edges, or as Phil Goff says slow
things down. That would be like King Canute trying to hold
back the tide.

This book will provide Aucklanders with an outline of my
approach to solving the problems Auckland and Aucklanders
face. I do not pretend to have all the answers and I do not
pretend to have all the skills or expertise to be able to do it by
myself, but I have the skill to share a vision with others with
the skills to achieve this vision. I have talked to many
experienced and competent people who are as frustrated as I
am about where the city is going and want to assist in getting
the City back onto a pragmatic pathway that will succeed.
What I hope this book will also show you is that the current
Mayor and Council's policies and processes have demonstrably
not worked and have no prospect of working.
What is required is a plan for the city that is pragmatic and
based on real numbers rather than driven by ideologues who
ignore the facts and it must be driven by the silent majority, not
determined by noisy minority pressure groups with their own
agendas.
JOHN PALINO
My key strategy planks are:
To implement a comprehensive and transparent budget
that reduces rates by 10% over my first term
To introduce an Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights that
will hold Council responsible for meeting and managing
within budgets
To make Council spending transparent to Ratepayers so
they can judge whether or not their money is being spent
sensibly
To ensure Council priorities are focused on core services
and resolving the key problems facing Auckland
To provide a planning and regulatory framework that
allows and encourages the private sector to genuinely
provide affordable new housing in the numbers required
To promote economic growth by ensuring business
friendly policies and a pragmatic regulatory environment
and associated processes
To provide a long term city plan that reduces traffic
congestion by creating an environment that encourages
and allows businesses to develop in locations and
provide employment opportunities near where people
want to live

To abandon the current council ideology that increasing
housing density in existing suburbs will solve traffic
congestion problems and provide affordable housing
To provide an Iwi consultation process for resource
consents that is limited to genuine cultural issues, that is
speedy and cost certain
To hold council officers to account for poor or tardy
decisions by establishing a Citizens Decision Review
Panel, including relevant external experts, that
ratepayers can appeal to
I welcome your feedback to these policies and strategies. Please

contact me at john@palinoformayor.co.nz
John Palino
April 2016
JOHN PALINO
1. What Auckland needs from its
Mayor and Council
Anyone following the Auckland Council since it was first
formed would assume that the only part of Auckland that
mattered is the CBD, and that the Mayor, Councillors, and
Council staff are convinced they know what is best for
Auckland and are not really interested in listening to other
points of view.
Yet Auckland is not just the CBD. It is a part of a large region
with many distinct and diverse communities. Within this region
is the city centre.
On a global scale Auckland is a small city, and it will never be
any more than a small city by international standards. People
do not live in Auckland because they want to live in tiny
apartments in a huge city, they live in Auckland because it is a
fantastic place to live and their kids and grandkids can grow up
with a place to play outside and a decent lifestyle.
Auckland needs to be a place where people can still buy houses
and raise their families on properties with outside spaces. We
also need a council that is fiscally responsible, not out of control
in terms of spending and massive rate increases.
We need an Auckland that grows sensibly with its population,
rather than an Auckland that is driven by town planning and

regulations set by ideologues. These ideologues believe the
future is to fit more and more people into existing suburbs by
building multi-story intensive housing because they do not
measure the value you get when you play with your kids in
your backyard, sunbathe or grow a veggie garden. There is a
place for dense urban living in Auckland, but it is not in our
suburbs.
We need an Auckland where existing property rights are
protected, rather than having council mandated high density
apartments blocking existing homes' views and sunlight and
causing further congestion on suburban roads.
We need an Auckland that grows efficiently, and a Council that
understands retrofitting infrastructure to existing suburbs is
often more expensive than building new infrastructure. It is
also impossible to expand suburban roads to cope with the
higher traffic numbers associated with higher density housing.
We need a mayor and a council that understands that the
biggest driver of inequality in Auckland is the prohibitively
high cost of new housing for our young families, and that
council planning policy, regulations and processes are the
primary driver of this inequality.
We need a mayor and a council that stops trying to shoehorn
people and businesses into a tiny area when we have plenty of
space for expansion.
JOHN PALINO
We need a mayor and a council that is not ideologically driven
but genuinely listens to what the majority of Aucklanders want.
We need to speed up Council decision making in most areas
where they interact with the public. We must again let
Aucklanders make decisions about their lives, homes and
businesses within a council can do environment rather than a
can't do bureaucratic mess.
We need a mayor and a council that introduces a sensible City
Plan that allows for Auckland to expand without losing its
character, and without losing all the reasons people want to live
here. We need a mayor that understands cause and effect not
only in the immediate time frame but also over the next ten
years.
We need a council that plans for expansion by freeing up land
supply and introduces sensible density regulations that allow
and encourage the development of new, satellite CBDs which
are located close to major linking transport routes.
We need a mayor and a council that is willing to come to some
sort of sensible compromise on obligations to Maori, rather than
imposing expensive and time-consuming Iwi consultation
requirements on Auckland.
10

Most importantly we need a Mayor who is capable and
prepared to take the necessary decisions to make this happen.
We need a Mayor who will challenge the ideologues whose
failed policies have caused Auckland's housing to be
unaffordable and rates to increase to unnecessarily high levels.
The vision outlined in this book is one I hope and believe
Aucklanders can and will embrace as being sensible and
meeting their needs and aspirations.
Our city has gone backwards after two terms of an incompetent
Mayor and an ideologically driven council.
The issues facing Auckland can be overcome. We just need
change at the top and pragmatists with a sound vision running
our city.
11
JOHN PALINO
2. Auckland in the Future
Auckland is an expanding city. It is going to continue to expand
while people want to move to Auckland from within New
Zealand and from overseas.
Auckland Council has a population that generally perceives the
council as out of touch, out of control and which uses
ratepayers like an unlimited ATM machine. This needs to be
fixed, and fixed quickly. It will only be achieved by a mayor
and a council that are willing to make pragmatic decisions that
allow Auckland to live within its means and within a planning
framework that clearly accommodates the expected population
growth.
Controlling rates, controlling council expansion, and
controlling expensive, time consuming regulation and
processes will all be necessary if the council wants Aucklanders
to trust them again. We have to stop the massive spend up, we
have to live within our means, and we have to make pragmatic
decisions about how Auckland grows.
Auckland is going to expand. Statistics New Zealand projects
the population of Auckland to reach two million people by
2033 1. We cannot expect our current city to simply add nearly
500,000 new people within the current or slightly expanded
http://goo.gl/q3RhA5
12

boundaries as the current Unitary Plan proposes. Nor will the
vast majority of them work in the CDB or live in existing
suburbs.
Future population increases present Auckland with a series of
challenges. For Auckland to function properly, at the same time
as continuing to be a place Aucklanders want to live, we need
sensible and transparent policy settings. Policy needs to be
driven by pragmatism, not ideology, by understanding what
has gone wrong in the past, and fixing it. A future mayor and
council will have the collective wisdom to learn from other
cities' good and bad experiences rather than the current
ideologically driven approach.
The ideologically driven Smart Growth policies of the current
council have held Auckland back. They have contributed to
2
making Auckland the fourth least affordable city in the world.

Smart Growth ideologues are attempting to impose high
density on some of our beautiful, leafy suburbs. This will
totally change the character of Auckland and it will also be
exceptionally expensive for Aucklanders. Retrofitting and
upgrading existing infrastructure is more expensive and
disruptive than building new areas for Aucklanders to live and
work in.
12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2016
13
JOHN PALINO
Roads are already full, yet council wants more people to live in
existing suburbs without any cost effective and efficient way of
improving transport in these areas.
Auckland lacks the necessary infrastructure for this kind of
very weak and mismanaged intensification and by increasing
the intensification we infringe on the property rights of existing
owners. A family with a nice villa with a view of the sea does
not want to have their view and sunlight blocked out by a 4
story apartment block, any more than they want to sit in traffic
on a bottle neck suburban road.
Yet our mayor and his Smart Growth approach has chosen to
prioritise restricting land supply and to turn Auckland into
something it does not want to be. In a country where we have
built on less than one percent of available land, and have
twenty thousand square kilometres more land than Britain with
about one fifteenth of the population, we do not have a land
supply problem. We have a lack of common sense.
For Auckland to realise its full future potential we need to stop
the ideological drive that demands more homes in existing
suburbs. We need a council that realises the costs imposed on
Aucklanders of this approach is the biggest challenge facing
Auckland, and no amount of tinkering around the edges will fix
it. Intensification is for city centres and master planned growth
areas, not for established suburbs. Once council realises that,
14

we will begin to grow Auckland without the turmoil we are
seeing today.
A future Auckland must be able to develop new housing
within a cost structure that young Aucklanders can afford. This
CAN be achieved if the right policy and regulatory framework
is adopted.
The Mayor and Council of Auckland needs to make new
housing affordability a high priority issue. Reducing runaway
new housing costs will provide massive benefit to Aucklanders
and Auckland. Building more houses and letting our region
and cities grow will help stimulate economic growth, as well as
reduce the inequality caused by unaffordable housing.
Auckland also needs a sensible approach to creating new areas
for our expanding population to work in. It makes no sense to
focus resources and money on the one CBD when the vast
majority of people will not work there either now or in the
future.
To reduce Aucklanders commuting costs and lost productivity
we need to encourage new commercial development in discrete
zones close to where new housing can be economically
developed. Auckland has space to allow new commercial
development within a strategically planned approach that takes
into account where people want to live and work at the same
time reducing existing roading congestion. It is around new
satellite CBDs that commercial intensification is required not in
existing suburbs.
15
JOHN PALINO
3. The Issues that Matter
Aucklanders were promised a new start with the Super City.
We were to get regional wide planning, sensible decisions
about Auckland's future, and cost efficiencies from the
amalgamation of our councils.
Yet few Aucklanders believe they have benefited from the
Super City. The major problems facing Auckland have not been
dealt with, and in many cases have got considerably worse.
Rates rises are out of control, due to council spending growth
being out of control.
Our council has imposed expensive regulations and processes
on us, pushing up the cost of housing, and the cost of living.
These costs are impacting negatively one way or another on
most Aucklanders. At the same time the increased costs have
not resulted in fixing the serious problems facing the city.
Not only are rate rises out of control, they are matched by a lack
of transparency. The lack of transparency allows council to hide
inefficiencies, incompetency, and spend heavily in areas that
are not the responsibility of the council.
Auckland Council should be providing superb services in its
core areas of responsibility, rather than duplicating other
governmental organisations services.
16

Battles between the Mayor and council planners on one side
and central government on the other mean that sensible
initiatives to make housing affordable have failed. House prices
have increased to levels out of reach for many Aucklanders
because of Council adherence to a failed Smart Growth
ideology. Council is holding back new housing supply, and
threatening existing home owners with unwanted
intensification in their suburbs.
A bloated bureaucracy that drags Aucklanders through a long,
illogical and complex planning process to make land available
for new housing and obtain resource consents is restricting
economic development.
Auckland's economic development is also being held back by
housing costs absorbing high percentages of household income.
The current proposed Unitary Plan is an abject failure. It will
increase new house prices, change the nature of our beautiful
suburbs (thereby potentially reducing the value of existing
homes), and increase the strain on existing infrastructure. We
need a fundamental rethink about what the City Plan needs to
allow Auckland to thrive and grow, at the same time as
keeping Auckland's character.
The current mayor and council's focus on the CBD means that
vast amounts of money is being spent on a rail loop that will do
little to solve Auckland's transport issues. The CBD focus
17
JOHN PALINO
makes no sense when huge numbers of Aucklanders will never
work there and increasing numbers will not even visit it on a
regular basis.
These are the issues that matter. They are big issues and they
need real solutions. They also need a mayor and a council who
believes that to make Auckland function properly requires a
factual and properly thought through approach rather than one
driven by ideology where the facts are either quietly ignored or
manipulated.
When choosing who to vote for in this election please considers
who is best placed to deal with these issues. Who will protect a
failed status quo and offer only incremental solutions to the
problems Auckland faces? Who has actual solutions that will
work and who is prepared to challenge the local bureaucrats
and minority pressure groups that are getting in the way of
Auckland thriving?
18

4. A Ten Percent Rates Reduction
Ratepayers in Auckland have faced massive rates increases
forced on them by a wasteful council that believes it knows
how to spend ratepayers' money better than ratepayers know
how to spend it themselves. Since the formation of the
Auckland Council rates have risen from an initial increase of
2.9% pa to last year's unprecedented 9.9% pa. Many ratepayers
have had increases far in excess of these levels.
Even these huge rates increases have been insufficient to fund
council's reckless spending. In the last five years Council
debt/liabilities have increased by approximately $5 billion
dollars. This means that the Auckland Council in five years has
accumulated more debt/liabilities than the combined
accumulated debt of all of its predecessors over the previous
100 years.
Rates and Debt increases have been matched by a massive
increase in spending. Council has simply increased rates and
borrowings rather than curbing spending or seeking
efficiencies. This huge increase has largely been the result of
poor quality and unnecessary spending on non-core activities,
personal pet projects and huge cost blowouts.
As it stands, Auckland Council's budget is significantly outside
the norms of New Zealand local government. For example, staff
19
JOHN PALINO
salary spending (including consultants) is approximately 27%
of all expenditures while the historical average had been closer
to 20%.
Auckland Council's discretionary spending on non-core areas is
currently running at 26% of total spending. Many other
Councils' spending on non-core areas is often less than half this
percentage.
Debt levels have soared to approximately $20,000 per ratepayer.
Council staff numbers rose by over 2000 from a 2011 total of
9,300 to stand at around 11,380 in 2015. This total excludes
many contracted and consulting staff.
I want to make it clear I have had some very positive
experiences with very helpful council staff. These people have
helped me and my businesses comply with consenting
conditions and have been a pleasure to work with. My concern
is not with staff in essential areas, it is the cost of staff in nonessential roles that are undertaking tasks that are not Auckland
Council's responsibility.
The waste and inefficiencies of present Council operations
mean that the Council, following the 2016 election will have a
wide scope to reduce rates. Finding savings to allow a 10% rates
reduction across three years is very achievable.
20

Savings leading to rate reductions will come from a
combination of savings including:
Efficiencies promised from the amalgamation

Proper bidding processes and intelligent controls
over contractor spending
Reduction of non-core and wasteful spending
Reduced spending on discretionary activities
Payroll costs down from 27% of operating
expenditures to a level closer to the historic
average of New Zealand councils.
If elected I will institute a full review of council spending with

cost savings passed on to ratepayers and redirected to essential
core spending. This policy is so important that I will be
dedicating 25% of the Mayor's office budget to seeking cost
savings and efficiency gains. I will also make this a Key
Performance Indicator for the Council CEO, to ensure that all
council staff understand that rates reductions is a key platform
of my administration.
21
JOHN PALINO
John Palino's Pledge on Rates Reduction
1. Introduce a budget that will reduce rates by 10% over the first
term of a Palino Mayoralty. This assumes the IT cost blowout
we are now just learning about and other potential blowouts are
contained within existing budgets. We will only get to know the
real position once the accounts and budgets are open to public
scrutiny.
2. Immediate review of all council spending, with cost savings to
be passed on to ratepayers by way of a rate reduction or by way
of debt reduction if savings higher than 10% can be achieved.
3. Spend 25% of the Mayor's Office budget on reducing spending
on a permanent basis.
4. Issue a quarterly report to ratepayers showing how much my
administration has been able to save them.
22
5. The Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights

(ARBOR)
For many Aucklanders rates have risen by approximately 60%
since the Super City was formed. Yet Aucklanders feel they are
missing services their old council used to provide. Key services
have been cut, but rates have increased.
Our mayor came to power promising rates rises would be kept
to 2.5%. They were not. They increased dramatically as the
mayor and his fellow councillors expanded the council's staff
numbers and expanded the role of council into non-core areas.
They used the excuse that Auckland had historically
underinvested in infrastructure. This excuse allowed politicians
to weasel out of election promises, and allowed bureaucrats to
present budgets that massively increased rates. Pledges from
campaigns were swiftly forgotten as council demanded more
and more money from ratepayers to fund their pet projects.
Many of these projects duplicated work that was the
responsibility of central Government or the District Health
Boards. When a council has a policy on Education, there are
obviously massive amounts of waste that can be cut. Council
has no responsibility for education, and no business wasting
ratepayer's money on areas they have no responsibility for.
23
JOHN PALINO
This election gives ratepayers the chance to enforce fiscal
discipline on council. They can vote out the councillors who
increased rates. They can vote for candidates who promise to
get council spending under control and return council to its
core business.
Yet too many politicians make promises at election time that
they conveniently explain away when in office. This is why
Auckland needs a real documented solution to hold the Mayor
and Councillors to sensible spending limits.
Locking In Rates Controls The ARBOR

As Mayor, an early priority will be to establish an Auckland
Ratepayers Bill of Rights. This will help protect ratepayers and
all Aucklanders from future councils who choose to break
campaign pledges and increase spending way above the rate of
inflation.
Ideally a Ratepayers Bill of Rights should be encompassed in
government legislation and I would encourage Central
Government to act accordingly. However in the absence of
Central Government legislation, Auckland Council can adopt
its own Ratepayers Bill of Rights by way of Council Resolution.
Any subsequent Council wanting to repeal it could only do so
by way of a further Council Resolution, which would of course
be open to public scrutiny.
24
The ARBOR concept has been successfully demonstrated

elsewhere. For example voters in Colorado were upset at
politicians continually breaking election promises on spending,
so forced the adoption of a Taxpayers Bill of Rights. This forced
the Colorado State Government to act as a business, controlling
spending, prioritising what is important, cutting what is not
important and not just passing on the cost of additional state
spending to taxpayers.
The Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights

The Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights will do the following:
1.
Keep the total rate take to no more than the rate of

inflation (but taking into account the increase in the
rating base associated with population growth).
2.
Return any surplus of rates collected to ratepayers by

way of rate reduction or pay down debt rather than
spend on fringe pet projects.
3.
Require any proposed Rates Rises above the ARBOR

Inflation Limit to be approved by ratepayers in a
referendum held at the same time as local government
elections.
25
JOHN PALINO
4.
Make any major project with combined spending of

over one billion subject to a referendum held at the
same time as local government elections.
5.
Require all council charges other than rates to be used

on the services they are providing, rather than being
used for general spending. (See the Regulation
section for further discussion on this subject).
6.
Introduce a Citizens Decision Review Panel that will

allow Aucklanders to appeal against stupid decisions
made by Council staff.
For Auckland's politicians to be credible we need to be sure that

they will keep their campaign pledges. The ARBOR forces them
to keep their pledge on spending, or run for office on a platform
of increasing rates by including a rates rise referendum
question on the same ballot paper their name appears on.
The ARBOR is about returning trust to Auckland politics. Since
the Super City's formation we have had a mayor and a council
who have believed they can promise one thing at election time
and deliver another. The ARBOR will prevent this from
happening, as politicians will not be able to lie during an
election campaign, and find weasel words to escape their
election promises.
26
The ARBOR is necessary because our politicians have proved

they cannot be trusted. The rogue spending of the mayor and
his council has damaged Auckland. Council has assumed that it
operates with an unlimited budget of other people's money,
spending at will and passing the costs on to ratepayers.
John Palino's Pledges on the Auckland Ratepayers Bill of

Rights
1.
Introduce an Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights that

includes restricting rates rises to no more than the rate of
inflation but taking into account the increase in the rating
base associated with population growth.
2.
Present a budget that cuts rates by 10% in my first term as

Mayor.
3.
Spend one quarter of the mayor's office budget on constant

reviews of all council spending, challenging council staff to
control costs and drive down rates.
27
6. Spending Transparency
All politicians say they are for transparency. Yet few will ever
make real pledges that will result in transparency. Campaign
promises are easily forgotten as council staff explain why more
transparency is a bad idea.
As Mayor I will immediately move to put all council spending
online, so citizen auditors can review council spending.
There will be howls of outrage from those who want to cover
up council spending that looks ill judged, wasted or
unnecessary. Yet council has proven it needs scrutiny because it
has dramatically increased rates over the last five years. The
ratepayers of Auckland deserve to be able to see how their
money is being spent. They deserve the chance to evaluate
whether they agree with where their money is being spent, or
whether they think council is wasting their money.
Transparency on spending has very real benefits. It will keep
council honest, knowing that citizen auditors will be able to
pick through their spending and highlight spending that is
questionable, and especially spending that is outright stupid.
As a businessman who has run high foot traffic businesses
around our city I pick up many, many stories about wasteful
council spending. This wasteful or incompetent spending is
28
simply hidden away from public view as council does not

publish its spending in the detail necessary to make it truly
transparent.
I talk to hundreds of Aucklanders every week. A good number
of them tell me stories about the council that are almost beyond
comprehension.
One local Community Board member tells me they are not
allowed to use their local plumber and have to use council
approved plumbers that have to travel from one end of
Auckland to the other to do a minor job. The travel time greatly
inflates the cost, and the contractors appear to be able to charge
whatever they like. A minor job fixing a public toilet expected
to cost about $1500 ended up costing closer to $15000.
A park ranger talks about a gate at a public park that required
fixing. The gate itself was worth no more than $500, yet the
council received a bill for $18,000 for repairs.
Back in 1999 when I created the Big Christmas Tree for
Auckland City I was allocated a budget of $40,000. In that
budget I needed to find the tree that would look right, cut it
down, strap it, crane it and truck it to Aotea Square. I had to
purchase all the lights, erect the tree with engineering plans, rig
the lights, the stage and create the event for the lighting
ceremony.
29
While not in the budget, I wanted to also light all the 17 other
trees in the square with lights that would stay on those trees all
year round. A total of 27,000 lights. Lights are very expensive in
NZ so I sought prices from overseas suppliers.
By working with sponsors the event included many extra
features at no cost to the Council, such as a live stream for the
millennium event on the top of the Aotea building sponsored
by Cannon, prizes for children entering the competition
through the website created by Trade and Exchange and trips
on Air New Zealand sponsored by Air New Zealand.
Knowing what I had achieved for $40,000 I was shocked when I
was campaigning in Onehunga in 2013 when a local
Community Board member told me how much their Christmas
lights had cost. It had cost them $150,000 to light a single tree
that was already standing.
Purchasing, governance and control is a huge issue here in
Auckland. I have heard many, many stories that need further
investigation, including a businessman who was selling council
a particular product category that cost him $2000 being sold to
Council for $10,000. That kind of margin is ridiculous and
clearly demonstrates either a totally incompetent purchasing
regime or one that needs very close scrutiny.
30
Managers across the council have budgets they are granted

each year and if they don't spend it people ask what they were
doing and whether they will need that same amount again next
year. So in May and June the spending on consultants
skyrockets. There is no incentive to underspend if spending is
not required. The more you spend the better the chances are to
get a large budget next year.
There are enough stories that I have heard to suggest we need a
thorough investigation of Council purchasing and the
implementation of a robust and auditable purchasing policy.
Ratepayers need to know that they are getting a fair price when
council is buying on their behalf, and council staff involved in
purchasing need to respect ratepayers money as they would
respect their own.
An absolutist approach to transparency is necessary to ensure
there are no loopholes that council can hide dubious spending.
If council wants to spend ratepayer's money, that spending
should bear scrutiny, rather than being something that council
would prefer to hide from the ratepayers. Obviously details
related to an individual's right to privacy such as personal
remuneration would not be published although aggregate
expenditure in such a category would be.
Spending transparency needs to be at a sufficient level of detail
that Aucklanders can see exactly what their money is being
31
spent on and whether this is desirable and/or represents good

value.
Spending ratepayers' money wisely is a crucial role for council.
Ratepayers need to be able to trust council to spend their
money prudently. Unfortunately the massive rates rises in the
past five years has eroded that trust. It is only with complete
transparency that council will be able to regain the trust of
ratepayers.
John Palino's Pledge on Transparency

All council spending to be provided online by the month following
the spending in such detail as is necessary to provide
transparency of spending particularly on specific projects.
32
7. Council Responsibility
One of the most troubling and economically damaging law
changes in recent times was the Local Government Act of 2002.
This Act changed what Councils were responsible for by
changing their statutory responsibilities.
Prior to the Local Government Act of 2002 council's role was
tightly prescribed. Councils had their statutory obligations
defined in the statute, and there was very little wriggle room
for them to spend money on other areas.
The Local Government Act of 2002 completely changed the way
council's statutory responsibilities were defined. Prescription
was out and permission was in. There was no longer a tightly
defined role for councils, so councils had the ability to spend in
almost any areas that they saw fit to spend in. This was all
under the guise of what was termed the four well-beings.
Councils were given permission to take on responsibility for the
social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of their
area.
Different councils in NZ adopted different policies. Some
continued to operate largely within a core services only
strategy while others went overboard in the new areas they
were given permission to operate in.
33
The Auckland Super City has seen a significant expansion in

Auckland Council spending as the mayor and council moved
into new areas of spending and to some extent cut services in
their traditional and prescribed areas of responsibility. As a
consequence rates have risen dramatically, and often without
Council maintaining good core services first and foremost.
The ability to increase rates to whatever level they want means
that Auckland Council has been able to use ratepayers money
to fund councils pet projects.
Auckland Council has been one of the worst offenders
compared to other NZ councils. They have rapidly increased
spending, both on staff and on areas that would not have been
possible under the previous Act. The Local Government Act of
2002 and the four well-beings have been used by our mayor
and his council to justify spending on their pet projects.
As Mayor I will present budgets that cut rates by 10% in my
first term. This is possible by making efficiency gains with
associated costs savings and focusing on core activities.
Councils should provide exceptional services in the areas they
are responsible for providing services. They should not be
attempting to duplicate Central Government or DHB services,
and should not be using ratepayers to fund empire building by
Council departments.
34
John Palino's Pledge on Council Responsibilities

1.
I will present budgets that return Auckland Council to its

core responsibilities and fixes the key problems of traffic
congestion and unaffordable housing.
2.
I will present budgets that reduces spending on non-core

council responsibilities.
35
8. Economic Growth
Councils in New Zealand waste vast amounts of ratepayers'
money on Economic Development. They fund pet projects of
bureaucrats and often small but vocal lobby groups. The results
are rarely, if ever, measured, and it is clear that economic
growth programs are NOT based on the following:
1.
The understanding that council regulation and

processes can be a greater drag on economic growth
than council spending can increase economic growth.
2.
Proven methods to support economic growth.
3.
Peer reviewed research to ensure economic growth

policies are working.
4.
Metrics that accurately measure the results of council

spending.
Most councils concentrate on outside factors, rather than

internal factors. They would far rather run an economic
development agency that promotes business and picks winners,
than review and remove council created barriers to Economic
Growth.
36
Just about all councillors have a view on how to create

economic growth and it usually involves spending ratepayers'
money rather than creating a regulatory environment that
facilitates economic growth.
While some expenditure may be necessary for city promotion
purposes, it is well less than the current expenditure. Instead of
ratepayers money being spent on things such as an
ambassador located in London a Palino administration
would concentrate on removing council imposed barriers to
economic growth and introducing incentives that encourage
businesses to operate in business hubs that are easily
accessible to where people live and do not require massive
daily commutes that clog the cities motorways and roads. As
Mayor I want to lead a city where it is easy for business to do
business, and allow business people to get on with creating jobs
and economic growth.
I have lived in Auckland for over 20 years and during that time
have set up and run a number of businesses. I have a lot of
experience in dealing with Council. This experience has always
made me wonder why Council spends so much time and
money on attracting business from outside of Auckland while
at the same time, existing Auckland businesses often find it
hard to operate efficiently in Auckland due to Council policy
and regulations. Business is tough enough without the Council
getting in the way.
37
I speak from a position of knowledge and frustration. All too

often dealing with the Council is time consuming, difficult and
annoying. Silly bureaucratic rules get in the way of business
doing business. Incomprehensible and inefficient rules are a
burden to business people, a burden that slows business
growth and slows job creation.
The impression I get is that the Council front line staff that the
public deals with are terrified of making decisions. They are
under pressure to always refer back to various management
teams whose prime objective seems to be to demand more and
more reports, or suddenly introduce a new set of requirements
that have never previously been discussed. They seem
incapable of making objective decisions quickly. They also seem
to be constantly looking for ways to take more money by
charging unreasonable fees to the poor ratepayer or
businessman.
I had a friend who owned a single building, four apartment
complex near where I live. This person owns three of the four
apartments and wanted to extend the back of the two left
apartments an additional two metres. This would allow for a bit
more deck to be built for the other apartments.
The forth apartment owner was in full agreement with the
proposal.
38

What should have been a relatively simple process for an
activity that was permitted, ended up taking two years. The
owner had to obtain four building permits, even though they
owned three of the four apartments and the other owner was
supportive of the extension.
Not only did the extensions take two years to get the required
permits, each of the apartments had to receive separate
building inspection. So for a minor home improvement there
was the additional cost of four building permits and four
inspections, all for the same building.
Another friend of mine told me a story of a leaky home that
needed re-cladding. This was not a pleasant experience, but it
became even more unpleasant after the council inspected the
re-cladding. The building regulations had changed between
when the building was originally built and when it was re-clad.
The deck, which had been resurfaced in the re-cladding
process, was at the original height. The change in regulations
meant it no longer complied and had to be 2cm lower, so
council insisted that the deck be torn down and replaced.
This kind of illogical regulation and blind enforcement of
regulation is not only expensive and frustrating for
Aucklanders, it affects the credibility of the council, and means
people have a great deal of trouble trusting council. It impedes
Auckland's economic growth by costing far more than it should
39
to undertake relatively minor changes. It also prevents people

from being willing to undertake small modifications to their
homes because dealing with the council is such a painful and
expensive experience.
For Auckland to thrive we need sustained economic growth.
We need a council that understands that it is holding Auckland
back, and changes its culture to help Aucklanders comply,
rather than passing more and more often confusing or inflexible
regulations.
We also need a council that understands that slowing down
projects to prove a point to Central Government is
unacceptable. This is a story I hear often from developers who
are attempting to help increase the number of houses available
for Aucklanders. Seemingly senseless delays are also being
aggravated by a council desire to force Central Government to
fund infrastructure on the council's wish list.
A Practical Approach to Economic Growth

The following is a list of policy initiatives I would introduce to
promote Auckland's economic growth:
1.
Provide an environment that makes it easy to grow

businesses by controlling spending and cutting
unnecessary regulation and processes.
40

2.
Change the approach of the regulatory functions within

council so staff are responsible for helping businesses and
citizens with sensible compliance issues rather than
holding up a business from getting on with its business
or a citizen from adding a new toilet.
3.
Focus Council's Auckland economic development budget

on speeding up compliance and introducing a cultural
change within council compliance functions.
4.
Make regulation and processes clear and easy to

understand and easy to comply with. Provide adequate
infrastructure to allow growth, understanding that
infrastructure must be focused on providing essential
services as first priority.
5.
Keep rate rises low, to allow businesses and citizens to

spend their own money, rather than having council spend
it on non-core activities and pet projects.
6. Promote Auckland on the basis that it is Open for

Business, and that the council will make it easy and cost
effective to do business in Auckland.
Councils should not be picking winners. They should be
providing an environment that it is easy for business to operate
in, and let business owners get on with running business.
Councillors who want to pick winners should do so with their
41
own money, not ratepayers' money. Bureaucrats who want to

pick winners should similarly leave the security of a
guaranteed council income and set up and run their own
business.
John Palino's Pledges on Economic Growth

1.
Concentrate council Economic Growth spending on internal

council compliance, aiming to make Auckland Council the easiest
council to deal with in New Zealand.
2.
Aim to have all consenting functions meeting half the statutory

time limit for a decision by the end of my first term.
3.
No unlimited holds put on consents by council.
4.
Reduce rates, and reduce wasteful council spending, making

Auckland a cost effective place to do business.
42
9. Housing Affordability
Housing affordability in Auckland is a very important issue. It
effects both economic growth and social outcomes. Auckland
house prices for new homes are some of the highest in the
world, when compared to household income. Demographia
rank Auckland as 4
th
most unaffordable city to purchase a
house in, with a median multiple income to house price of 9.7 3.

Unaffordable new housing puts huge pressure on Aucklanders,
particularly young families. Spending too much on housing
means Auckland families have to make sacrifices in other areas.
Money spent on repaying huge mortgages means it is not spent
in other areas and is therefore lost to the economy. From a
social perspective families either simply cannot afford a home
or are burdened with mortgage costs that impact on their
ability to pay for basic living costs.
Council town planning and regulations (including regulatory
processes) are the biggest driver of increased new housing
costs. The Metropolitan Urban Limit continues to drive land
prices up to ever more unaffordable levels. This has been
driven by an ideological desire to force Aucklanders to live in
high density dwellings and use public transport.
12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2016
43
JOHN PALINO
This ideological approach to housing has caused new house
prices to increase rapidly as demand outstrips supply. The
attempt to create an ideologically driven compact city has failed
for several reasons.
Practically, a compact city will not work as zoning existing
suburbs to higher density housing has not to date created the
kind of increase in supply required to lower housing prices.
Neither will it do so in the future, as buying existing dwellings,
demolishing them, and rebuilding denser housing, does not
provide the kind of returns developers need to undertake this
type of development and be able to sell their development
homes at affordable prices. Also adding another house
behind a house does not add much other than a home for an
average of three people yet putting two or three more cars on
the road in that area.
A compact suburb also means increasing pressure on already
strained infrastructure, particularly roads. There is minimal
room for necessary new schools and other amenities to serve
the increased population. The schools are over flowing while
emergency services are getting over loaded. Building this way
is unplanned and unmanageable. Without being able to grow
our population properly, council is unable to plan the future
and provide the services needed. Filling in existing suburbs
does nothing more than over load the streets and does little for
growth in education, emergency services and the amenities
needed for the future 500,000 new people predicted to move to
the city.
44
Increasing density also means existing property owners face

having their views and sunlight blocked by new multilevel
dwellings. Council's insistence on increased density in existing
non CBD areas affects the property rights of residents, without
any recompense for the loss of their views and sunlight.
Most of Auckland's problems with house prices has come from
poor town planning by council. According to the Productivity
Commission4, referencing a McKinsey Global Institute study:
Remarkably, in the world's least affordable cities (including
Auckland), unlocking land supply could help to reduce the cost of
5
housing by between 31% and 47% .

Auckland is a relatively small city on a relatively sparsely
populated land. New Zealand has a landmass approximately
20,000 square kilometres bigger than Britain, with
approximately a fifteenth of the population, so we do not have
a land supply problem. We have a planning and regulation
problem.
The Metropolitan Urban Limit (MUL) has restricted land
supply around Auckland, pushing up land prices for new
dwellings. There is no clear, practical path to making housing
affordable while the MUL remains. It simply will not happen.
4
Productivity Commission Using Land for Housing: 2015
Productivity Commission Using Land for Housing: 2015
45
JOHN PALINO
Similarly the regulations and requirements around developing
and building on raw land are too difficult and inflexible.
We should be asking the many experienced builders and
developers for their views on what can be done to significantly
increase the build rate for new and affordable housing. There
are a lot of good ideas out there that will not see the light of day
due to restrictive council planning and regulatory
requirements.
We need to start looking at real world housing issues for young
Aucklanders and working with builders and developers to
resolve these issues. This will require thinking outside the
square and allowing far more flexibility in how we regulate
for new housing.
For example it should be feasible to provide for modular
housing where one person or a couple can start off with a basic
housing module on a site containing one bedroom, a kitchen
and a small living area. Subsequent modules could be added
within a pre-planned and approved model as the family
expands. There would be no need for new resource consents
and building consents provided an architect or engineer signed
off the modular extensions as being within the original consent
requirements. The modules could also be prefabricated and
simply bolted on to the existing basic module.
46
We need to consider designs and construction methods that

may be outside the council's existing building code if those
designs and methods can meet the requirements of weather
tightness and longevity and can be produced more cheaply.
I do not have all the answers but I have spoken to many highly
qualified people who are absolutely convinced we can do a lot
better in terms of housing costs and number of new builds if
more flexibility were introduced and common sense rather than
the current rigid and one size fits all regulatory environment
is applied.
For too long we have listened to the ideological warriors
promoting a compact city while apparently having no
understanding that the cost of new housing under this model is
a massive drag on Auckland's growth and will not produce the
number of new houses required.
Auckland needs to expand, and it needs to quickly free up
much more land for housing. We need to seriously consider the
views of Urban Design lecturers Dushko Bogunovich &
Matthew Bradbury of Unitec6, who suggest viewing Auckland
as part of a bigger region. Creating land supply along the spine
of existing infrastructure means making the most of that
infrastructure at the same time as allowing greenfield
development along this spine in conjunction with satellite
CBDs.
6
http://goo.gl/whho3j
47
The International Management consultants, McKinsey and

Company, reviewed some 2400 cities worldwide and identified
the two biggest factors in affordable housing availability as
unlocking land supply and an industrial scale approach to
housing development.
The Auckland Council has failed in both these key areas. In the
first two years of the Auckland Plan for housing only 1500 new
dwellings were consented on average per annum. Note that
consented does not mean built. So actual built new
homes will be lower than the consented figures. These
numbers are well less than the over 10,000 new homes that we
ought to be building each year to keep pace with the numbers
of new arrivals into the Auckland area.
Proponents of the Compact City will always oppose more
greenfield development to make housing affordable. They hide
behind slogans like Sprawl Subsidy, without ever stopping to
think that the compact city has made new housing so
unaffordable that most Aucklanders would accept more so
called sprawl if it made housing significantly cheaper. I
believe sprawl has been turned into a dirty word by the
intensification ideologues. Expansion of the Municipal Urban
Limits is not a dirty word if planned carefully within a long
term, pragmatic and transparent strategy. By going out beyond
the existing MUL we are actually planning and controlling an
intensified type of build in those satellite CBD areas where it is
appropriate.
48
On the opposite side of the so called sprawl subsidy is the

actual retrofitting subsidy. It is generally cheaper to build
infrastructure in new greenfield sites than it is to retrofit
infrastructure in existing suburbs particularly when it comes to
roading congestion on suburban roads that high density will
inevitably result in. For further discussion on this issue see
chapter 11, Transport.
Opponents of the city expansion strategy need to come up with
an answer to the big question, If a compact city (region) was
going to work shouldn't it have worked by now?
The Compact City concept has been a driver of Auckland
planning for several decades. Aucklanders have seen how this
has worked, and suffered through it not working. This is due to
council's lack of understanding of where intensification is
actually required.
While Auckland's population continues to grow at current and
predicted levels the Compact City concept will not work. The
supporters of the Compact City should be able to factually
explain in detail how this policy will result in more affordable
new housing and reduce traffic congestion. I believe they will
not be able to.
We also need to ask the question as to whether historic
infrastructure requirements are even necessary given modern
technological developments.
49
Industrial scale building techniques, low cost and efficient solar

panels, energy efficient LED lighting, small scale sewage
treatment plants, lithium ion batteries, mobile phones and
freshwater collection and saving technologies have all radically
changed the requirement for traditional infrastructure and
building methods.
Let's bring together developers and technical experts who can
conceive and cost exciting alternatives that are outside the
existing regulatory environment but which could be affordable,
environmentally friendly, safe and provide a great place to live.
John Palino's Pledges on Housing Affordability
50
1.
Remove the Metropolitan Urban Limit to increase land

supply.
2.
Stop attempting to shoe horn Auckland into a single

compact super city.
3.
Stop future intensification of existing suburbs that require

expensive new infrastructure, change the character of a
suburb and affect existing owner's property rights.
4.
Speed up and streamline consenting requirements and

regulatory processes to make it cheaper and easier to build
houses.
5.
Change zoning to allow intensification of housing,

commercial and industrial greenfield sites near existing
major transport routes in order to support and develop
satellite CBDs. .
10. Regulation
Auckland Council has tied our city in knots with expensive,
obtuse and downright stupid regulation. This imposes huge
costs on our people and our city.
Regulation is the most regressive form of taxation, imposing
the highest costs on those who can least afford it. It is morally
wrong to force the low income families in Auckland to pay the
massive cost of regulation.
All too often politicians forget the cost of regulation, and forget
that this cost has a moral component. As Mayor, and as
someone who has struggled with regulation, I will always
remember the moral component of regulation, and how
regulation places an unfair burden on those who can least
afford it.
The Regulatory Process

Councils are empowered to make regulations pursuant to
various Acts of Parliament. For example the Resource
Management Act and the Local Government Act allow councils
to pass regulations that govern land use and the environment
together with various other functions within their jurisdiction.
51
These regulations must fit within the framework set out in the
particular Act of Parliament.
In terms of both the Resource Management Act and the Local
Government Act, a Council has very wide discretion as to what
regulations it passes and what those regulations cover.
Over the last twenty years we have seen a massive increase in
council regulations that have been promulgated under the
various Acts of Parliament that councils can regulate under.
The Auckland Super City and its predecessors have been some
of the worst offenders when it comes to increasing the
regulatory burden on its citizens and businesses.
This unfortunately is the nature of bureaucracies and the bigger
the bureaucracy the more regulations will be passed. The more
regulations that are passed, the more people are required to
monitor and enforce compliance and of course the higher the
cost and the more time delays creep in.
This regulatory framework can and indeed has become a
massive cost to the Auckland community. It needs to be
reversed and it will be under a Palino administration.
Examples of Flawed Regulation and Processes

Three yearly checks of swimming pool fences that are
already permitted and signed off.
52
Need for multiple consents required for each dwelling in

a block when the design requirements are all the same
and one consent could cover the whole project.
Consents required for what are minor alterations to a
property, which can safely and easily be signed off by a
suitably qualified professional or tradesperson.
Lack of clear regulations that result in different inspectors
holding different interpretations. Recruitment and
training of staff will also need to be addressed in this
regard.
Requiring Resource Consent applications to cover many
of the same requirements as Building Consent
applications.
Maori Consultation costs and delays.
Council contracts specifying contractors' vehicles must be
under three years old.
Confused or unclear wording of regulations such as
where developers have told me it has cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars to determine the difference between
adjacent and adjoining.
53
Speeding Up Council Processes

Regulation is necessary. Not all regulation is bad, and it plays
an important role in allowing Auckland to thrive. There are
many, many regulations that no sensible person would want to
completely remove, but we need to consider whether all the
regulations are necessary and whether they are well or poorly
drafted and/or implemented. We need to take into account the
time and cost it takes to comply with regulations and their
associated processes versus the benefit they are supposed to
achieve.
Slow and complicated council processes delay compliance.
Delayed compliance adds additional costs to home owners and
businesses, and these costs are proportionally higher for those
who can least afford them.
There needs to be a complete review of the Auckland Council
regulatory environment, which includes experts in applicable
areas from the private sector. I will make this a priority.
Council Fees
S150 (1) of the Local Government Act allows Councils to charge
fees for various services such as resource consents, inspections
etc.
54
Subsection 4 states:
The fees prescribed under subsection (1) must not provide for
the local authority to recover more than the reasonable costs
incurred by the local authority for the matter for which the fee
is charged.
The current Auckland Council fee structure commonly and
demonstrably breaches this legislation in terms of both cost and
reasonableness.
As Mayor I will adopt policies and processes that:
Council fee charges do not exceed the reasonable cost of
providing the service
Council staff will meet the statutory time limits on
regulatory determinations such as Resource Consents.
I will also institute a range of financial penalties on council in
the event it fails to meet its statutory obligations. These
penalties will go some way to reducing the cost of expensive
delays to those seeking to comply with council regulation.
Better still, delays that cost council will be transparent and will
clearly sharpen the minds of council staff, forcing them to seek
efficiencies and speeding up compliance.
55
Best Practice Regulation & Compliance

For Auckland to thrive we need to be sensible about
compliance and regulation. Auckland is not unique. There are
large numbers of cities around the world that deal with
compliance issues, and some of them appear to deal with them
far more effectively than Auckland does.
Auckland Council, with me as Mayor, will look carefully at
which cities have compliance & regulation models we can learn
from so that a best practise model can be adopted.
Making Regulation Reduction Real

All politicians claim they will reduce regulation, but as with
transparency few ever offer a real plan for reducing regulation.
As Mayor I will work with councillors, council staff, third party
experts and the staff of the Mayor's Office to reduce expensive
regulation.
Reducing regulation is so important to allowing Auckland to
thrive. I will be dedicating 25% of the Mayor's Office budget to
reducing the regulatory burden and speeding up regulatory
processes. I will be asking the council Chief Executive to report
monthly on regulation reduction and make regulation
reduction a KPI for all senior council staff.
I will be instructing my office to prepare a plan for measuring
regulation reduction, and to publicly report on regulation
reduction six monthly.
56
A Citizens Decision Review Panel

A complaint that I frequently hear is that some council front
line staff are totally inflexible and dogmatic and indeed often
do not understand the regulations they are policing or
interpreting. Their interpretations often change or are
completely contrary to what another staff member has stated.
The only redress a citizen has for a bad or wrong regulation
related decision/interpretation is court action which in the vast
majority of cases is not practical from either a cost or time
perspective.
Consequently I will establish a Citizens Decision Review
Panel comprising an experienced council officer and an
outside expert that will review unreasonable or wrong staff
decisions that are referred to it by affected citizens.
Initially I suspect this Panel could be rather busy but over time
I would expect that this process would impact positively on the
way council staff deal with citizens they are interfacing with
and the workload of the Panel would reduce.
57
John Palino's Pledges on Regulation

1.
Use 25% of the Mayor's Office's annual budget to remove

expensive and unnecessary regulation.
2.
Instruct the Council CEO to change the culture of council to

become an enabler of compliance, rather than compliance police.
3.
Report to Aucklanders six monthly on regulation reduction.
4.
Establish a Citizens Decision Review Panel.
58

11. Transport
Auckland Council has essentially tied itself in ideological knots
over transport. Cars are considered evil, and everyone should
be using public transport or riding bikes, no matter how
expensive or inconvenient it is to use public transport or ride to
work.
This ideological drive to get people out of cars and into public
transport means that the only really major transport project that
Auckland Council has considered since inception is the Central
Rail Loop. This is despite the CRL having a very poor business
case, as the assumptions and policies underlying the Unitary
Plan and the Compact City are flawed, which means that the
assumptions the CRL is based on are also flawed.
The premise that the CRL is based upon, that more and more
people will be going to the CBD for work, is flawed. It is
prohibitively expensive to force all Aucklanders into the CBD,
especially when there is little chance of rapidly increasing the
amount of housing available close to the CBD.
The process by which transport planning decisions are being
made by council is also flawed.
Essentially little if any weight is given to the private cost of
traffic congestion or to the cost of new housing and yet these
59
are two of the most important issues for Aucklanders.

The recently completed Auckland Transport Alignment Project
identified that the current council Unitary Plan was NOT going
to solve traffic congestion in Auckland and in fact would make
it far, far worse.
If Auckland as a region expands along its existing transport
infrastructure, as it needs to in order to provide affordable new
housing and reduce traffic congestion, spending vast amounts
of money on the CRL will not be cost effective. Current
proposed council expenditure over the next 30 years will be
allocated 50% to public transport yet public transport will only
ever meet 10 per cent of travel needs. At the same time, money
that could have been spent cost effectively on infrastructure to
reduce congestion and provide more land for affordable
housing has been used up.
Forcing business into the CBD, and people to use public
transport to get there is prohibitively expensive and not cost
effective compared to alternatives. This is before taking into
account the technological changes that will alter work and
transport patterns in the not too distant future.
Rather than asking the question How do we move more
people to the CBD on public transport the Auckland Council
needs to answer the question Do we want to move more
people to the CBD? The answer to this question will alter the
60

direction Auckland takes as a city, and means that current
transport spending needs to be re-examined.
It needs to be examined on a factual rather than ideological
basis and the planning assumptions need to give far more
weighting to the issues of the private costs of traffic congestion
and affordable housing.
Essentially the Council's strategy is based on two premises:
That more people want or have to come and
work/play in the CBD.
That building the CRL will solve Auckland's traffic
congestion problem by taking cars off the road as
people switch to rail transport.
Both these premises are demonstrably wrong.
Less than 12% of the working population currently work in the
CBD. The vast majority of workers are commuting to and from
work outside the CBD, often from one side of the city to the
other. The CRL will not change this and it will certainly not
take one single truck or commercial vehicle off the roads.
Instead, the Unitary Plan will significantly increase traffic
congestion particularly on suburban and feeder roads. People
61
do not want to spend two to four hours a day commuting into

the CBD or travelling from one side of the city to the other.
They want to work as close as reasonably possible to where
they live. The time and cost savings are obvious.
The Council have conducted meaningless surveys in which
they ask self evident questions such as; Does Auckland's traffic
congestion need fixing?
You don't need to undertake a survey to know that the
overwhelming response will be a big YES. But that answer is
then dishonestly interpreted as overwhelming support for the
CRL.
Surely an honest approach to the traffic congestion is first to
determine what is causing it.
An honest survey would ask questions such as:
Where do you live and where do you work?
What times of day do you commute and is this from home to
work and back?
If you could find suitable work close to where you live would
you prefer this to your existing employment location?
62
Lest anyone think I am against public transport I can assure

you I am not against it.
I just don't believe that the current Council strategies are
spending your money in the right place or pursuant to a
sensible long term strategic plan and I don't believe you have
ever been given the opportunity to consider or vote on
alternatives.
The ideologues have shut down debate and pursued a nonevidence based strategy, which demonstrably will not work.
This debate needs to be had before it is too late and I will
urgently facilitate such debate.
Even within the existing strategy council are mismanaging
public transport.
Take the North Shore bus lane. This was an expensive but
justifiable facility because it can be part of a transport
backbone for the city. But it is significantly underutilised
because at every single stop point along the route there is
totally inadequate car parking.
The Council's apparent solution is for people to walk or bike to
the bus stop. This is simply not practical or convenient for the
vast majority of people.
63
JOHN PALINO
A sensible Auckland Council will fix basic issues such as this
and encourage development in other areas of Auckland where
transport infrastructure is already in place, or can be built
cheaply.
Actively encouraging and allowing intensification of satellite
CBDs close to the existing transport infrastructure is a sensible
long term strategy. It will support the establishment of new
work places that require infrastructure around them, which in
turn will provide more work opportunities close to where
people live. This will only occur if the CRL is not considered the
holy grail of Auckland Transport.
The Future of the Central Rail Loop

Spending vast sums of money on the Central Rail Loop will
come at a huge expense to ratepayers. They will not only pay
for the CRL, but they will also see other more important
infrastructure projects neglected for lack of funds.
There has been no substantive debate on alternative strategies,
with Auckland Council bulldozing ahead with the CRL even
when the Auditor General has questioned the financial
implications of this.
As Mayor I want Aucklanders to be engaged in such a massive
project. I want Aucklanders to have input into the viability of
64
this huge project by asking them essential questions about their

commuting requirements and their preferences about where
they would like to live and work.
We need to understand what is really causing Auckland's
traffic congestion and what long term strategies could be put in
place to minimise the problem based on real facts rather than
ideology.
The current Mayor and his council have not asked these
questions and established the real facts before committing
substantial funding to the CRL. It may be too late to stop the
CRL project due to contractual commitments already entered
into but if this is the case you can be assured I will be looking at
every opportunity to minimise costs.
As Mayor I will undertake a detailed review of the CRL. The
sort of questions I would want to see debated and answered
include:
What is the real cost likely to be?
How many vehicles will it take off the road and when?
For how many people will it reduce their work commute
time and by how much?
What will be the implications to business and the public
during the construction of this project through the heart of
the CBD?
65
JOHN PALINO
If the cost of the CRL was allocated to other
infrastructure projects what other projects could be
undertaken?
Would construction of those projects reduce peoples
work commute time more or less than the CRL and
what numbers of people would be benefitted as
opposed to the CRL option?
To what extent is justification of the CRL based on
Council's intensification policy of Auckland's suburbs
under the proposed Unitary Plan?
Do Aucklanders support intensification of their suburbs
under the proposed Unitary Plan?
What are the other planning options available to the
current Unitary Plan to support Auckland's forecast
growth and what are the costs/benefits of these
compared to the costs/benefits of the proposed Unitary
Plan?
How is the CRL proposed to be funded (real answers
required) and how much will this typically add to
individual's rates?
66
Congestion Charges
Phil Goff has stated he will attempt to impose congestion
charges on cars using existing infrastructure to fund public
transport. This is despite Council not having the ability to
implement congestion charges, and the Government saying it
will not permit them to be introduced.
As Mayor I will not support congestion charges on existing
roads. These roads have already been paid for by ratepayers
and taxpayers, and I cannot justify making people pay for them
again.
It is a new tax by any other name.
Toll Roads
Toll roads/tunnels/bridges have a place in our Transport
network. New transport infrastructure may be able to be built
quicker using a toll-based model, providing benefits to those
who will be paying to use them. Unlike congestion charges,
tolling new roads or tunnels is not charging road users for
something they have already paid for and clearly can work.
The northern motorway extension is but one example. People
do not have to use it but most choose to because in their mind
there is a cost/benefit in doing so.
67
Cycleways
As a small business owner I am acutely aware of how much
removing parking for cycleways can cost businesses and annoy
citizens. This is without even considering the very substantial
cost of building them. Cycleway proponents demand more and
more cycleways, without considering either the initial capital
cost or the on-going economic cost of removing parking and
slowing down vehicle traffic.
We need to be pragmatic about cycleways. They have a place,
but the rights of cyclists must be fairly balanced with the rights
of those who do not use cycles. We need to build cycle ways
right when we do build them. As mayor I will institute a review
of cycleways, and have an open mind, rather than an
ideological approach, to cycleways.
Adequate Parking for Park & Ride

One of the biggest flaws of Auckland's transport policy in the
last decade has been the failure to build adequate parking at
park and ride stations. Far more people would be willing to use
our cost effective bus services if only adequate parking was
provided at park & ride stations.
68
John Palino's Pledge on Transport

1.
Free Auckland of a CBD focus and stop attempting to only

move people to and from the CBD.
2.
No congestion charges on existing roads.
3.
Toll Roads to be built where there is a sound business case

for building them.
4.
Review expenditure on cycleways.
5.
Review parking at Park & Ride stations within the first

three months of being elected, and provide a plan for
increasing parking within twelve months.
6.
Move forward on roading projects with good cost benefit

ratios and need to begin, such as the East West link and the
second harbour crossing.
7.
Integrate Transport in a growth plan that eliminates future

congestion by allowing the development of new intensive
suburbs along the transport spine, providing Aucklanders
the opportunity to live close to where they work, or have
affordable housing close to existing transport infrastructure.
69
12. The Unitary Plan

The current council's Unitary Plan has promoted an ideological
position that will do nothing to resolve Auckland's problems.
In general it will make them worse. It also tramples on
Aucklanders' property rights, and creates building density in
areas where retrofitting infrastructure will be expensive and
disruptive or indeed impossible.
Smart Growth proponents want to turn Auckland into a
compact city, growing it both up and reducing open spaces
between houses. This means fundamentally changing many of
Auckland's leafy and open suburbs to incorporate a big
increase in apartment blocks and infill housing, at the same
time taking away existing residents views and sunlight. One of
the great delights of living in Auckland is the openness of it.
We have seen what has happened to other communities that
have gone down the intensification route. They are not
attractive places to live, work and play.
It is not as if we have a land availability problem. We have
plenty of usable land in this country.
Auckland is forecast to grow by around 35,000 people per
annum for the next 10 years. That is 350,000 new people in 10
years. Do we want them all living in intense housing ghettos
in the existing suburbs and even if they did, where would they
work? Certainly not in the CBD for around 88% of them.
70
So housing intensification is only going to increase traffic

congestion in suburbs and will not solve it. If we follow Los
Angeles' example and intensify we will have Los Angeles' three
hours of congestion in morning and afternoon rush hours.
Los Angeles is a huge area of single and multi level homes and
apartments. The issue here is that people have to work every
where like Auckland. There is no major work hub, down town
LA does not employee many people so because of this
transport can not take people where they need to go.
Contrast this to New York, where Manhattan is a very small
island. It has 2.75 million people living there, and 2.5 million
people going to work there every day. If you fly over New York
City, New Jersey & Connecticut you will see ample green
spaces, with a series of intense suburbs built along the transport
spine.
Greenwich is a perfect example of this. There is a train line and
a highway from Manhattan to Greenwich, with green space
along the transport route. When you get to Greenwich you find
a small, vibrant city where people live and work in an area
close to the transport spine.
Further out from the transport spine there are far larger
properties. These are not sub dividable because they are
considered too far from the highway or the train.
71
Travel past Greenwich along the transport spine you will find
more vibrant, intensely built cities. This allows for easy
movement of people between where they live and work. The
intense, small scale cities along the spine provide the benefits of
intensification without the downsides of congestion.
As someone who has lived in both Los Angeles and New York I
know from experience that LA's intensification has caused huge
problems, while New York manages the same problems
effectively.
Simply adding trains will not solve Auckland's problems. It will
not. We need to be pragmatic in our thinking on Auckland's
growth, and I favour taking the approach New York uses,
rather than the chaos of Los Angeles.
A far more sensible approach is to drop the ideology, and revise
the Unitary Plan to make it something practical. Auckland
needs to grow, but it does not need to grow within its existing
artificially created boundaries. We need to get past the idea of a
single CBD being where everyone in Auckland works, because,
firstly, it is not true or practical and secondly because it creates
the need for expensive retrofitting of infrastructure and causes
massive congestion on suburban roads and motorways. It over
loads the schools, the playgrounds, the emergency services, the
police and more. None of this can be planned under the existing
unitary plan due to the complete uncertainty of what, when,
where and who will build.
72
Rather than spending vast amounts of money on retrofitting old

areas while eroding existing residents property rights we need
to consider a far more practical approach to managing
Auckland's growth.
We need to revise the Unitary Plan so it creates areas of high
density satellite CBDs near existing or easily extended transport
routes together with new low density suburbs. We need to
create areas with good transport routes for business to expand,
and expand upward as well as outward where appropriate to
do so, ie in the satellite CBDs.
We already have fledgling satellite CBDs in Manukau and
Henderson. There is clear potential in Albany and yet to be
developed areas north and south.
What we need is a comprehensive plan to open up more land
around these centres and actively encourage the businesses we
will need to employ those 400,000 500,000 new Aucklanders
to establish themselves in those areas. We must establish
business and housing at the same time or we will all be in
trouble ten years from now.
Pragmatic, Cost Effective Intensification

Rather than having intensification all over Auckland, Auckland
needs to be pragmatic about where it intensifies. Intensification
73
needs to occur where transport is already good, or where it is

cost effective to introduce, not in leafy suburbs.
Focusing all our attention on the current CBD is inefficient and
unproductive.
There are specious productivity arguments for a single CBD
advanced by advocates of intensification. These productivity
arguments do not take into account the cost of retrofitting
infrastructure, increased traffic congestion or the cost to
families of losing their views, sunlight, ease of transport or the
human value for families having open space we live with every
day. They also fail to take into account the huge drag on
productivity that is caused by attempting to move extra people
on already congested roads and motorways or the failure to
provide for affordable new housing.
Intensification Near Existing Transport Infrastructure

Auckland as a region does not actually have bad transport
infrastructure if viewed in terms of a long term growth plan
along the lines I have promoted. It does have bottlenecks,
which become very apparent during the commute rush hour.
While the system is not perfect, we have a reasonably good
motorway system, and a good rail line running north to south.
If we permit greenfield development near or in spur lines off
74
the existing transport infrastructure we can allow Auckland to

grow at the same time as getting new housing costs under
control.
This means abandoning the ideologically driven Compact
Super City. The current mayor and council's policies have not
been working and an objective analysis will demonstrate they
will not work in the future.
Retaining the Effective Parts of the Unitary Plan
Where the Unitary Plan harmonises rules across all of the old
council areas it has real value. Building consents, drainage and
other council processes are dealt with effectively in the Unitary
Plan and do not need significant change.
John Palino's Pledges on the Unitary Plan

1.
As Mayor I will revise the Unitary Plan to stop excessive

intensification of existing suburbs, protecting the existing
nature of Auckland's suburbs.
2.
As Mayor I will revise the Unitary Plan to free up land

supply to make housing affordable and reduce traffic
congestion.
75
3.
As Mayor I will revise the Unitary Plan to allow for

development across the Auckland Region, with
intensification only in small areas along existing or easily
extended transport routes. The purpose of this
intensification is to allow and encourage new businesses to
successfully establish or relocate to population areas that
will provide employees for those businesses.
4. As Mayor I will promote a Unitary Plan that is pragmatic,

not ideological, and offers real, immediate solutions to
Auckland's problems.
76
13. Asset Sales

Asset sales are something of a bogeyman that some politicians
use to frighten ratepayers about their opponents.
My position is solely pragmatic. I am neither ideologically for
nor against asset sales.
It depends on the asset and the alternatives. For example it
makes absolutely no sense to sell an asset that is yielding a
return on investment at or above the long term borrowing cost
particularly if the capital value of that asset is likely to increase
in the long term.
Conversely a commercial asset that is not making a return on
investment of at least the borrowing cost and has no long term
capital gain prospects could and probably should be sold
instead of borrowing to fund an identified infrastructure
project.
The two obvious examples worth discussing are the Council's
Auckland Airport shares and its Ports of Auckland investment.
Given the positive outlook for NZ tourism and the obvious
positive impact on Auckland Airport revenues I would not be
an advocate for selling Auckland Airport shares.
77
At the time of writing the dividend yield it was 2.34%, which is

probably below the cost of long term debt. However the shares
have appreciated by around 47% from their low point for the
year. If Council had sold those shares at the low price I think
ratepayers would be feeling very unhappy. Also of course the
dividend yield based on the low price would have been around
3.44% at the time so it would not have made any sense to sell
the shares even without the benefit of hindsight.
Turning to Ports of Auckland we are looking at quite different
dynamics. There are two components to Ports of Auckland. The
business of running the Port and the land it occupies.
The land is prime waterfront land that I believe needs to be
retained by the people of Auckland. The business is a different
matter. I see no need for the Council to be running the Port and
I am not sure that it is a business with a huge capital gain
potential if it does not include the land.
I can envisage a deal with a major port operator whereby the
Ports of Auckland business is sold to that operator on the basis
that they would undertake to finance and build a new port
outside the Auckland harbour in say 10 15 years time, in the
interim leasing the current port land from the Council. At the
end of the lease period the land reverts to the Council who
could then develop it in the interests of the people of Auckland.
This would incorporate both commercial development and
public open spaces.
78
Whether this approach would be financially viable would

require further in depth analysis, but if it did, then I would not
be opposed to the sale of the operational component of the
Port.
Proponents of no asset sales at any cost have never been able to
make a sensible case for holding onto all assets in perpetuity.
Rather than looking at obtaining value from Auckland's assets
they insist on increasing rates, rather than considering other
options to fund Auckland's growth.
An ideological aversion to any asset sales is saying to the
people of Auckland I want to increase your rates to pay for
new infrastructure and/or increase the Council's debt burden,
rather than obtaining some value out of existing assets to fund
new infrastructure.
Auckland Council needs to be realistic. It cannot perpetually
increase rates at many times the rate of inflation. It cannot
increase debt beyond its debt covenants. Yet to grow and thrive
it needs new infrastructure. Some of this infrastructure can
come from realising some of the value from existing assets.
When ideologically driven people campaign against asset sales
please stop them and ask them the following question:
How are you going to fund Auckland's Growth?
79
Listen carefully. Listen to see if they have an actual plan or just

ideologically driven sound bites that will do nothing to build
the infrastructure Auckland needs.
Also ask them if they believe ratepayers should face increased
rates to fund Auckland's growth.
So what about non-commercial assets? These include; parks,
reserves, golf courses and other land/buildings.
Phil Goff has said he would sell the Remuera Golf course on the
basis that a large number of homes could be built there so there
is both a significant sum that could be realised from developers
from the land sale and a huge rate gain from the housing built
on the land.
The use of the land for housing would of course also fit in with
the intensification plans of the current Unitary Plan. And lest
we forget, the members of the Remuera Golf Club are not likely
to vote for Mr Goff anyway!!
There are two counter arguments to Mr Goff's strategy.
First the increase in rates is going to happen anyway because
the houses are going to be built somewhere else if the Golf
Course is not sold.
80
The second is that once that magnificent open space is gone, it's
gone forever. Should it remain a Golf Course in perpetuity is
perhaps another issue but I would not be advocating a sale of
this land as I do not believe it is necessary if my preferred
alternative to the current Unitary Plan is adopted.
There will however be some land and building assets that could
be sold to pay for new infrastructure where the public amenity
value of those assets is minimal.
John Palino's Pledges on Asset Sales

1.
No ideologically driven position either for or against asset

sales.
2.
Some assets could be sold to fund important and necessary

infrastructure.
81
14. Maori Representation & Issues

Maori play an important part in the life and future of
Auckland. I do not think there is much objection to Maori being
consulted on matters of cultural significance to them. However
the current procedures are little more than a very nice
compensation stream and the ability to hold up any
development without, in many cases, any real cultural
justification.
Aucklanders gained a Maori Statutory Board by the legislation
that set up the Super City. This unelected and undemocratic
Maori organisation is supposed to represent Maori interests in
Auckland. Members of the board sit on council committees,
and have some voting rights, despite not being elected by the
broader Maori community.
Infighting among Maori in Auckland means that it is hard to
know if the Maori Statutory Board actually represents Maori in
Auckland. By having appointed, rather than elected, Maori
representatives, Aucklanders cannot be sure that Maori
representation on Council is truly representative.
This whole structure and process needs to be reviewed so that
common sense prevails.
82
Culturally Significant Sites

The current Auckland Council has imposed huge costs on the
Auckland community by nominating thousands of culturally
significant sites. This has added a layer of cost to anyone
wanting to make changes to any of these sites, even though
there is little evidence that all these sites are actually culturally
significant.
The current approach has no cost to those who claim the site is
culturally significant. To ensure sites actually have cultural
significance, those claiming cultural significance should prove
that the sites have cultural significance. They should also pay at
least some of the cost that is required to designate a site
culturally significant. This will ensure that frivolous attempts to
protect sites of marginal cultural significance comes at a cost to
those claiming cultural significance.
Maori Consultancy Costs

One of the costs imposed by council on Aucklanders that needs
addressing is the cost of Maori consultation. Currently there is a
free for all where consultation fees are at the discretion of those
providing the consultation, with the cost of the consultation
often unknown.
The market for consultation fees needs to be regulated to
provide certainty for those wanting to undertake some
83
development activity on potentially culturally significant

sites. We need to have a prescribed level of consultation, and
the process also needs to be clearly and sensibly defined.
This will ensure that consultation is both fair and affordable,
rather than a never-ending revenue source for those selling
consultation services. It will also ensure that consultation is
with people who have a registered interest in a site, rather than
anyone who claims they have an interest in the site.
John Palino's Pledge on Maori Consultation

1.
A review of Maori consultation policies and procedures.
2.
Change the way culturally significant sites are designated.
3.
Set consultancy rules to provide certainty about

consultation costs and processes.
84

15. Unlocking Auckland's Potential
Auckland can be a great city. It can be great by adopting
sensible policies that deal directly with its problems.
Too much emphasis has been placed on planning and
regulation that fits a neat ideology, but is practically causing
Auckland to stagnate. Ideologues elected to council and
working for council have created policy settings that have held
Auckland back. Their policy settings, focussed on increased
housing intensification and poor transport infrastructure
decisions, are holding Auckland back and will inevitably make
the problems worse.
For Auckland to thrive we need to rapidly address the problem
of housing affordability. Housing affordability is largely
council's responsibility as council controls the supply of land.
Auckland's unaffordable housing is caused by artificially
restricted land supply. Freeing up more land for development
is crucial to allowing Auckland to grow to its full potential.
Reducing the cost of housing will reduce the cost of living for
Aucklanders. This will have positive benefits to our city by
reducing poverty, increasing disposable income and allowing
families to build the kind of asset base that allows them to save
for the future.
85
Over regulation and poor regulation have driven up new

housing prices. It has also imposed other costs on Aucklanders,
costs that are directly the responsibility of council. That is why I
will be allocating 25% of the Mayor's office budget to reducing
regulation.
I will also be working closely with the council chief executive to
change the culture of the council. Council should be helping
Aucklanders comply with regulation, rather than policing them
and punishing them for not complying.
This cultural change will include understanding that council
should be spending money on reducing regulation and
speeding up the consenting processes to help Auckland grow.
Money currently allocated for the kind of outward looking
chest beating Isn't Auckland Great will be redirected to
actually PROVING Auckland is great by having a council that
is exceptionally easy to deal with.
Auckland is New Zealand's most important city. Decisions
made by Auckland Council impact all New Zealanders, and
problems faced by Aucklanders have a flow on effect across all
of New Zealand. The first two terms of Auckland Council have
not been a success. Our rates have gone up many, many times
faster than the rate of inflation. Land supply has been restricted,
driving up new house prices. Ideologically driven planning has
failed to allow Auckland to grow, imposing huge costs of all
86
Aucklanders, and disproportionately large costs on those who

can least afford it.
The next Auckland Council needs to be factually honest and
open. It needs to make big decisions about big issues, and bring
real solutions to problems like rates rises and housing
affordability. The trade off between the ideologically driven
compact city and the city Aucklanders have demonstrated they
want needs to swing back in favour of what Aucklanders want.
87
16. My Regional Vision for Auckland

The compact city has failed. The next Mayor of Auckland must
have a new vision for how the city and region will
accommodate half a million more residents. I have that vision
and the plan to achieve it.
My vision is for an Auckland of choice. I want the Auckland of
the future to be a place where you can choose where you live,
where you work, what you do and how you get around.
These values have been compromised by an elite minority
inside the Town Hall who honestly believe they know better
than the individuals, families, communities and businesses that
make up Auckland. They have, over the last six years, fought to
influence our choices, our opportunities and what we do with
our money. If they are not stopped now, the damage they do to
personal freedom of choice and the natural functioning of the
Auckland economy will not be reversed.
My Plan for Auckland

To promote my vision for a region of choice, I will remove the
restrictions on development which do not infringe on existing
property rights and I will prioritise council spending on
developments which provide the most homes and jobs.
88
It is essential for an efficient, lower cost city to allow people to

choose where and how they live based on the actual cost of that
choice. Forcing intensification inflates land values, leads to
smaller homes than people desire and requires incredibly
expensive infrastructure in built-up areas.
Greenfield land is the cheapest place to build new homes and to
build them quickly. I will remove metropolitan boundaries to
allow development where land is available and where
developers can see an opportunity. I will retain restrictions on
development within suburbs and loosen restrictions in the
central city. I will support development areas with council
spending to speed the delivery of new homes and I will
prioritise investment where we get the most homes and most
jobs for our dollar.
Removal of metropolitan limits will lift the barriers to large new
housing and employment development areas. Greenfield
development is cheaper, less intrusive and allows developers
and the council to plan. I will allow both high and low density
development in new greenfields so that employment can be
located close to homes. This is not only good for people and the
economy, it lessens the need for long distance travel and trips
to the city. It is therefore a vital part of my transport plan.
To pay for new greenfield development, I will reprioritise
expensive, low value spending in suburbs to support major
89
JOHN PALINO
new developments in the north, south and north-west. I will
change regulations to allow tens of thousands of homes per
year to be built so the cost of new water and transport can be
spread out across a large number of residents. I will work with
government to identify the benefit to income, company and
sales taxes to get them to open their wallet, at the same time as
I become a lot less loose with Auckland's.
Restrictions on already developed suburban areas will protect
the property rights of existing residents. Providing the
transport, water, schools and community services to support
intensification in areas designed for suburban living is
unaffordable. Our narrow Auckland roads cannot handle more
traffic and we cannot get public transport into the majority of
areas at the cost residents are willing to pay. Our schools are
overcrowded and reducing opportunities for our children.
Digging up quiet city streets for more pipes, more power cables
and more people is detrimental to existing residents. Suburban
and central areas cannot support the tens of thousands of
homes we need right now. I will protect Auckland's suburbs.
I will allow and encourage density in those areas where density
is appropriate the central city. The central city has the
infrastructure, jobs and services needed to accommodate
growth without reducing the amenity of existing residents. I
will loosen the council's overbearing requirements on new
buildings and new building heights in our CBD. The council
90
should not be telling developers how their multi-million dollar

investment should look, feel and fit in to the preferences of city
planners. Aucklanders who want high density city living must
be able to have access to that living at the price it costs not the
cost of regulation.
Auckland's growth challenge provides an amazing
opportunity. Why do we only want to retrofit and rebuild what
has for many decades been the strength of our region? Let's get
today moving quickly and make the future a great one for
everybody.
Let's open the metropolitan limits and build the best new cities
and suburbs we can. Imagine new cities with the newest
technologies, with efficiencies in energy, transport and the
environment. Imagine a garden city, with backyards for kids,
designed around apartments for those who want to live closer
to employment, restaurants, theatres and nightlife. We can
have it all when we can build from a clean slate. We risk losing
it all by redeveloping our precious suburbs.
Let's grow Auckland in a way where everyone plays their role
to the best of their ability council, government, residents and
businesses and let's acknowledge where that role starts and
stops. Let's take advantage of growth and create the best new
city in the world.
91
JOHN PALINO
A Final Thought
Having read this book do you agree with most of my proposed
policies?
If you do, do you think there is any prospect that Phil Goff will
make them happen?
92
Supporting John's Campaign

If you share John's vision for an Auckland where rates rises are
under control, housing is affordable and our city is growing
based on pragmatic policy rather than flawed ideology, please
contribute to John's campaign.
You can make a donation to John's campaign account, or

contact John and meet with him to discuss donating.
ASB
Name: Palino for Mayor
Account Number: 12-3073-0040947-00
Every dollar makes a difference.
Copyright John Palino, Auckland, 2016

ISBN Number 978-0-473-35732-0
This book and its component parts may be reproduced.
Authorised by John Palino,
163 Airfield Road Takanini, Auckland
To contact John or to contribute to his campaign
please email info@palinoformayor.co.nz or
visit www.palinoformayor.co.nz
93

A Vision For Auckland From John Palino

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

A Vision For Auckland From John Palino

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

A Vision for Auckland

Copyright John Palino, Auckland, 2016

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A Vision for Auckland outlines my approach to fixing the

What Auckland Needs from its Mayor and Council

Auckland in the Future

The Issues that Matter

A Ten Percent Rates Reduction

Auckland Rate Payers Bill of Rights

12. Unitary Plan

13. Asset Sales

14. Maori Representation & Issues

15. Unlocking Auckland's Potential

16. My Regional Vision for Auckland

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

I welcome your feedback to these policies and strategies. Please

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

making Auckland the fourth least affordable city in the world.

12th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2016

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

Efficiencies promised from the amalgamation

If elected I will institute a full review of council spending with

5. The Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights

Locking In Rates Controls The ARBOR

The ARBOR concept has been successfully demonstrated

The Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights

Keep the total rate take to no more than the rate of

Return any surplus of rates collected to ratepayers by

Require any proposed Rates Rises above the ARBOR

Make any major project with combined spending of

Require all council charges other than rates to be used

Introduce a Citizens Decision Review Panel that will

For Auckland's politicians to be credible we need to be sure that

The ARBOR is necessary because our politicians have proved

John Palino's Pledges on the Auckland Ratepayers Bill of

Introduce an Auckland Ratepayers Bill of Rights that

Present a budget that cuts rates by 10% in my first term as

Spend one quarter of the mayor's office budget on constant

simply hidden away from public view as council does not

Managers across the council have budgets they are granted

spent on and whether this is desirable and/or represents good

John Palino's Pledge on Transparency

The Auckland Super City has seen a significant expansion in

John Palino's Pledge on Council Responsibilities

I will present budgets that return Auckland Council to its

I will present budgets that reduces spending on non-core

The understanding that council regulation and

Proven methods to support economic growth.

Peer reviewed research to ensure economic growth

Metrics that accurately measure the results of council

Most councils concentrate on outside factors, rather than

Just about all councillors have a view on how to create

I speak from a position of knowledge and frustration. All too

A VISION FOR AUCKLAND

to undertake relatively minor changes. It also prevents people

A Practical Approach to Economic Growth