When we witnessed the enthusiasm of some Hawkes Bay amalgamites we thought they might know something we don’t about supercities.
The first argument they mounted, this week, shows they know next to nothing.
A Better Hawke’s Bay chairwoman Rebecca Turner resorted to junk accounting, claiming $1 million will be saved in salaries if the region’s councils were merged.
Just like the rent-a-VIP, cookie-cut Better Wellington / Hutt / Northland crowds, these people imagine local governance dream worlds rather the reality.
Bureaucrats running a council 5 times bigger, will seek salaries 5 times bigger.
The proof is in Auckland. Last year the number of staff earning more than $100,000 leapt from 1500 to 1780, an increase of nearly 20%.
In one single blow, that increase destroyed all the staff cost savings the Auckland supercity was projected to achieve (a projection based on exactly the same sort of simplistic shonky accounting Turner used for Hawke’s Bay).
What is it with Turner’s type that the sort of self-aggrandizement, narrow-minded, political-back-biting and salary taking they think disarms current regional politics, will magically disappear when you make it bigger.
Turn it off Turner, in a supercity, the same problems will get super sized.
