'Super' city, uber state: "Just say NO!" [updated]

There's nothing "super" about the proposed Auckland uber state.

It will be fascist.

Wretchedly profligate.

Woefully inefficient.

Racist.

Anti-choice.

Monopolistic.

Bureaucratic.

Governed by ego-driven noddies.

A boot camp for left-wing politicians.

It will take the 'local' out of local government.

Be expensive to integrate.

And be opposed to the way NZers most want to live.

One city, one neck, one noose.

Absolutism limited only by inefficiency.

We don't need council expanded, we urgently need it contained. We don't need more centralisation. more central planning: we urgently need less. We don't need to make it easier for uber-planners to 'plan' the city, we need much greater freedom so we can plan our own lives for ourselves.

Instead, you will face more co-ordinated attacks on your private property rights. More focussed regulation of your business. More council competion with your business. More, and slicker, propaganda. Even more demands on your pocket, and more meddling from the planners. All of this, and (under Nick Smith's RMA reforms) you get even less say.

You don't even get a say on whether you get to live in an uber state. The good people of W(h)anganui get a vote on whether or not their local council gets to add an 'h' to its name; but we the people of Auckland will have no say at all on whether we get to add a whole new level of bureaucracy to the city.

It's all just madness.

As Owen McShane concludes,

this Government would be ill-advised to burden itself with a remnant of the last Government which was so committed to central planning and interventionism.
The economy and our people are under considerable stress and should not be tempted by the false fruit of fascism.
It will lead us down the road to serfdom and to ruin.

There is no need, no need at all, to conform to the value judgements of the Clark Government, who set up the Royal Commission, or of the big-government worshippers who sat on it. The right thing to do is to reject the built-in presumptions of their inquiry, and to throw out the conclusions they've drawn.

What Rodney Hide should do is cap real rates, repeal the Local Government Act 2002, remove the power of general competence from councils, and so limit the power of planners and local bureaucrats to push us all around. Won't it be remarkable if Rodney Hide becomes responsible for establishing the first Fascist State in NZ instead.

UPDATE: The announcement is out, and you can find all the sordid details here at the Government's official "Making Auckland Greater" website (oh, the pun!). And it must be true, it must be "great," because it says so right here on the label.