The Local Government Commission released the draft ward and community board structure for the new Auckland Super City last week. What it shows is that the new super structure could eventually become an albatross around the Government's neck.

From looking at a report on the www.nzherald.co.nz website, it appears that the commission has proposed  for the new city 12 wards and 19 local boards. The Herald pointed out that some of the board cover areas bigger than the cities of  Hamilton, Tauranga and Dunedin. Looking at the proposed ward boundaries (which closely follow parliamentary electoral boundaries), I can only imagine that all of the new city councillors will need to work full time on council business. As any MP will tell you, tending to the needs of 100,000 constituents can be a tiring job.

And this is where the problems will start flowing. The need to have full time councillors may mean the need to  pay them parliamentary pay rates. In a time when many ratepayers are doing it tough financially, this will be looked upon as an extravagance.

Local democracy could suffer too. The number of councillors and boards is small for a city the size of Auckland. That's why the diversity of the Auckland community will not be reflected at the council table. Issues that impact local communities will not be able to be tackled at the local level either. With the powers of community boards yet to be determined, there is the understandable fear that many decisions about, say, sewage in Manukau will have to be made at the new council's offices in central Auckland.

While some form of Auckland unitary authority was long overdue, it has always been my contention that any structure should have been imposed only with the consent of the region's voters. This hasn't happened and if anything goes wrong during the transition phase, then the Government will wear the blame. So could Act leader Rodney Hide who may rue the day that he decided to become Minister of Local Government.  Any problems with the Super City could in fact dwarf those caused by his recent perkbusting overseas jaunt.

That's why I feel fortunate to live in a city like Dunedin. While our local council has turned in a less than perfect performance recently, the upshot is that many Dunedinites know who their local councillors are. In fact (due to being reasonably well known in Dunedin) the mayor and some councillors know me by my first name. I don't think you could say that about Auckland! Besides, we have six community boards and 14 councillors and all for a city comprising 120,000 people. Yes, we underwent our own 'super city' amalgamation back in 1989. Since then, there have been positives as well as negatives. The positives are that services, for example libraries and refuse disposal, are seamlessly delivered irrespective of whether a person lives at Wakouaiti (a northern coastal township) or in South Dunedin. However, as the recent decisionmaking around our new stadium illustrated, councillors can become unresponsive to majority community opinion which, at best, was sceptical about ploughing $135 million of ratepayer money into the project. And also don't believe the hype about super cities lowering rates - they still go up regardless!

That's why when comparing the situations of both Dunedin and Auckland, I can only see trouble ahead for the latter. Auckland rates may in fact rise due to the need to service debts and other infrastructural costs. Merging the existing six councils into one will produce this fiscal crunch. Stemming from this will be the inevitable pressure from business interests to lower debt through privatisation of essential services like water and refuse. After that, you can bet your bottom dollar that right-wing councillors (if they are in the majority after October 2010) will not give a stuff about poorer communities. The right could in fact obtain a majority on the new Auckland council because it will take thousands of dollars for any prospective councillor to mount an effective, let alone successful, campaign. Therefore, if you're rich and right-wing, the system will favour you and if you're left wing, middle class or poor, well, take your chances anyway but expect to lose.

Thus, a city with an unrepresentative council structure and one that is hell bent on privatising assets and raising rates across the board will not be a popular one. That's why National and Act will have to watch that the new Auckland Super City doesn't become the albatross that helps sink them, if not in 2011, then definitely in 2014.