What’s good for Auckland is good for you...

I see the new Government has had a re-think on the regional petrol levy issue. Just as well given the current economic situation! With the economy in the shape it’s currently in the last thing we need is an increase in the price of petrol to pay for new roads around here when we’re finding it so much more expensive to fill up the car already. But just a moment... it seems that now instead of paying a regional petrol levy to fix the roads around here we’re all going to pay a national petrol levy to pay for new roads in Auckland. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of MPs actually come from Auckland (including Prime Minister John Key and Transport Minister Steven Joyce) apparently this is simply a more efficient way of doing things and after all, as we are often told, what’s good for Auckland is good for the rest of us.

Now Auckland’s got its problems for sure. Every night I sit down at 6pm in front of the TV to watch the Auckland News and to catch up with all that’s happening north of the Bombay Hills. We see the same stock footage of motorists sitting in their cars in Auckland going nowhere. We hear about the traffic congestion, the infrastructure woes, the crime. I’m surprised that criminals can still use getaway cars in Auckland. If the congestion on the roads there is so bad wouldn’t it be faster to walk or take the bike?

Whenever anybody cries foul about the rest of the country bailing Auckland out yet again we always get the same reply. “Auckland is the Engine Room of the New Zealand Economy”, we hear. “What's good for Auckland is good for you!” Well, they have a point. It’s certainly a lot quieter in the rest of the country now that Auckland’s taken most of the industry, most of the corporates, most of the banks, most of the insurance companies, most of the population and a sizeable proportion of the criminal fraternity, which we actually don’t mind them keeping.

In the face the resulting national hostility Aucklanders very seldom venture out of Auckland. Many of them become severely disoriented once they venture south of the Bombays and very few make it much further than Taupo apart from during the skiing season. Although a surprising number of Aucklanders do, in fact, own holiday properties on the Coromandel Peninsula which is comfortably close enough to Auckland to get a decent break away in their Remuera Tractors. The National Roads people are fixing the highway and replacing the old Kopu Bridge to make it easier for Aucklanders to get to the Coromandel. As a matter of fact they’re also fixing the highway between Auckland and Hamilton, the idea being that if enough Aucklanders decide to live between Auckland and Hamilton pretty soon they’ll be able to annex Hamilton and make Auckland even bigger.

It’s not much better north of Auckland either. They’ve just built a flash new highway to take traffic from Orewa (quite a way north of Auckland) to Warkworth (even further north of Auckland) so that Aucklanders would find it easier to head north for a break which seems to be the preferred destination. The weekend they opened it there were major traffic jams and it was as if the drivers had never even left Auckland. In fact they still don't have it all sorted and the general view seems to be that it now needs to be extended further north to circumvent the congestion issues.

Auckland has long been called called ‘Sydney for Beginners’ and in fact the average Aucklander would quite like the rest of the country to regard Auckland as a world-class city in the same league as Sydney. The average Aucklander likes to think that the average Sydneysider looks back at Auckland with the same regard but the simple fact is the average Sydneysider is far more interested in Los Angeles.