Super city appointment not without risk

I thought carefully before criticising the Government’s appointment of Doug McKay as the interim CEO of the new Auckland Council.  There is nothing wrong with people moving between the private and public sectors, and on the strength of media reports Mr McKay has considerable experience as a corporate CEO.

But given the widespread public concern about the Government’s  handing over of 75% of Council operations to council owned companies run by hand picked business appointees, I would have thought this was an opportunity to reassure Aucklanders that corporatisation wasn’t the game plan.

Mr McKay has no public sector, or local government experience, and said this morning that when he became CEO of Sealord it didn’t matter that he didn’t know anything about the fishing industry as the organisation was full of people with industry experience he would rely on. I am not convinced by this argument and if it is what persuaded the Government, that just illustrates the poverty of their approach to the super city.

This isn’t simply a big corporate restructuring job. The creation of the Auckland Council is making a constitutional change to our system of government. It is intensely political, and Aucklanders are understandably sensitive about the loss of their democratic rights under John Key’s hyper-centralised and corporatised set up.

The partnership between public servants and politicians is how we make the machinery of democracy work. The risk with Mr McKay’s appointment is that the chief public servant of Auckland comes to the job at a very delicate time with no experience of that tradition.