Mike's Minute: Does Wellington deserve it's reputation?

Wellington looks to me to be in rude health.

For a city down in the dumps, with a reputation problem and a previously shocking council, public service issues and any number of surveys talking about negativity, how come Wellington looks so busy?

I was down for dinner Saturday night. The drive from the airport around the Bays was packed. Jervois Quay was packed, bumper to bumper.

Michael Laws: Why The New Water Entities Are A Financial Disaster

Michael Laws talks about Why the new water entities are a financial disaster about to seriously impact your wallet, on The Platform

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Peter Bassett: From Sewage to Sovereignty: How a Tidy Idea Picks Up Extra Luggage

When Wellington’s pipes start bursting in public and sewage plants break down big-time, it’s only a matter of time before someone reaches for a constitutional solution.

One such suggestion, made recently by a former mayor turned regular commentator, is to take Wellington out of local government entirely and rehouse it as a national capital district — Canberra-style, Washington-style, with central government holding the reins.

Stephen Franks: Parliament trumps the lawyer/clerics – blow against ‘heritage blight’

What a delight to see Minister Chris Bishop using Parliamentary sovereignty to roll over the heritage numpties. Sound resource management law would have made it unnecessary. Those claiming benefit from the ‘heritage values’ in the Gordon Wilson Flats should have been forced to compensate the losers from planning paralysis in Wellington. Thousands of young people paying exhorbitant rents, and young families forced to commute from Upper Hutt. Just a serious possibility that the decision-makers would have to bear the costs of their decisions would have seen replacement of that building decades ago.

Sir Bob Jones: The dying Wellington myth

Sheer nonsense is being published about the capital dying.

House prices have not risen as fast as other cities, the government has sacked lots of (unnecessary) public servants, cafes and small businesses particularly retail, are failing, Council rates are soaring and so it goes with a seeming daily toll of publicised woes. A seriously dysfunctional Council adds to the negativity.

Now, here are the facts.

Peter Dunne: Wellington City Council in crisis

As the city of Tauranga prepares to elect a new Mayor and Council after three and a half years being run by government-appointed Commissioners, the case for replacing the Wellington City Council with Commissioners strengthens.

The Wellington City Council has been dysfunctional for years, long before the current Mayor took office. However, the situation has worsened significantly during her tenure to the extent it is now almost impossible to see the current crop of Councillors being able to resolve the massive issues confronting the capital city.

David Farrar: LGWM euthanised

Stuff reports:

Let's Get Wellington Moving will be dissolved, with ministers and local government announcing today they had agreed to end the initiative.

LGWM was one of those that sounded good in principle, but failed to work in practice. It had three masters – WCC, GWRC and NZTA but no real authority.

Alistair Boyce: NZ Political Economy - the greens agenda vs reality

As we enter the election campaign we are once again enduring unsubstantiated rhetoric and narrative, especially from the greens. Te pati Maori offer little more than divisive tribal economic naivety. Labour feeds us the sugary diet and ongoing delusion of smoke and mirror economic and social policy that can only extend NZ’s inflationary and cost of living predicament and further divide society. Polling makes it clear that the NZ electorate wants change, necessarily to the center-right.

Roger Childs: An appropriate name for the Transmission Gully Motorway?

The obsession with giving government departments, new buildings and now highways te reo names continues.

The latest to have a name “gifted” to it, is the long awaited but recently opened Transmission Gully motorway linking the Kapiti Coast with the Tawa Valley. But is anyone actually going to call it by the new Maori name?

Which way are you driving to Wellington?

I’ll save time if I go via Te Ara Nui o Te Rangihaeata.

What’s that?

Mike Hosking: A sobering week of reminders of how far we've fallen behind

Have a look at the new bridge in Turkey that opened this week. It's the world's longest suspension bridge and it's spectacular.

They claim it will generate twice what it cost in economic returns. It produced 118,000 jobs.

What stands out about it for me is not just the fact it's spectacular, but the fact that Turkey did it. They're not really one of the planet's great economic powerhouses.

And this week here, that dreadful report that reminds us yet again that when it comes to things like infrastructure, we are hopeless.

Karl du Fresne: Can Wellington rediscover its lost mojo

I spent a couple of hours wandering the streets of downtown Wellington this week. What a dismal experience.

Actually, it was worse than dismal. It was profoundly depressing. The city where I spent most of my working life looks as if it has lost the will to live.

John Key got into a lot of trouble in 2013 for saying Wellington was a dying city. It seemed a preposterous statement then, but if Key said it today, I could only agree.

Absolutely Positively Wellington? That was the city’s confident – you might say brash – slogan in the 1990s. Now it sounds like a black joke. Ditto the phrase “Coolest little capital in the world”, which is how Lonely Planet (not an authoritative guide, even at the best of times) dubbed the city in 2014.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: I'm swinging behind the Wellington businesses

 

This news has made my day, it is game on over transport issues in the capital.

And if you’re frustrated in your part of New Zealand, this might be the template for how to get action.

So what’s happened is a group of Wellington businesses and industry groups have taken out a full page ad in the dominion post, slamming the latest stupid roading idea in the capital.

This idea is to drop the speed limit, put in traffic lights and erect a raised pedestrian crossing on Cobham drive, the road to the airport.