Opening of Council Chambers

Wednesday 30 March 2005

It is no accident that this new Council chamber is closer to the main door and easy to see into. This is where the public, the political and the managers all meet. Just who gets to play lion and who gets to play lamb varies from meeting to meeting. Such is democracy. Democracy is wonderful jewel that transcends price.

While I am no fan of President Bush I must admit it is absolutely amazing to look at the people of Afghanistan and Iraq queuing despite the threat of violence to exercise the right to vote for the first time. Democracy is a jewel that excites strong passions.

Since the door to change was opened we have been trying to polish local body democracy into something that reflects our changing needs and realities.

Councillors now meet weekly, not monthly. They have seminars to chew over ideas rather than have to make snap decisions on complex issues.

We are trialling the idea of portfolios rather than the old model of meetings and more meetings.

Tonight I want to make the point I am now pushing for every one of these new events to open their doors to the public and the media. It would be thrilling if we have indeed been working in secrecy with something to be secret about in recent months. The reality has been a bit more boring and pedestrian.

While we have been trialling these ways of working it has not been pretty. For the old prisoners of process, the veterans of the old system, it has been incredibly hard.

At times the best of us have been like a group of oldies suddenly forced to take up break dancing. It has not been pretty. Nor at times overly constructive.

We have also been like people used to going to a restaurant and ordering off the menu suddenly being told that from now on we have to write the menu ourselves. Some of the resulting dishes have tasted a bit off.

Tonight I'd like to say that we have now learnt enough new dance steps and how to design the menu that we are ready to open the doors again.

From now on unless there are exceptional circumstances it is my wish that our seminars are open to the public.

With internal changes to the management of the Council and the massive changes to the political side of the equation, putting this new Council in place has been a demanding task for all of us. We are still a work in progress, but we can at least report that progress is what we are achieving.

Having opened the doors ajar on our structures and our executive the next door we need to open is the one leading to where our burning issues lie in wait.

At the risk of sounding very Irish indeed one of our biggest issues is defining and agreeing on just what are the issues facing us as a city. A key role for the Council is to plan far ahead, to set targets and to keep an eye on how we progress, or not, toward meeting those targets.

We do this in a framework pretty much covered by the Local Government Act of 2002. Like most Acts that do not have an immediate apparent impact on our lives this piece of legislation has not got the attention it deserves. Its impact is actually potentially profound.

In my view it is the most significant change in local body law since the abolition of the provincial governments back in the late 19th century.

It provides us with the tools to effect major changes to how we run our city if we collectively decide we want to. In a major change it also opens the door for us to do more about our environment than just make concerned noises.

Within Christchurch it calls on us to operate on a triple bottom line basis. That is to consider the environmental, social and economic impacts of our actions. It also calls on us to set this out coherently and specifically every three years.

The vehicle for that is the Long Term Council Community Plan. If you like alphabet soup, that’s an acronym called the LTCCP. The next of these is up for adaption in June next year. It will set our course as a city, and Council for the next three years.

Before we get there we all need to look at some of the big issues for Christchurch. For environment we need to look at what is really sustainable and how we get there.

We need to develop an energy strategy and ask how we can turn our rivers around to become places where the fish no longer just travel one way.

We need to look at the Ferrymead high rise issue and learn from it how to deal with this and all the other planning issues.

We need to look at our lack of resources for planning and work out how to fix it fast.

We need to stock-take on our infrastructure and make sure we can avoid “Auckland-ification” of our roads and streets.

In the central city we need to get back to work. We need a new, fresh central city Mayoral Forum, to get Turners and Growers site turned around fast, put a better traffic plan in place and freshen up tired old Cashel Mall.

A key part of our built environment is our home. The Council's home has had it. By year end I want a site chosen, plans designed and an accord reached about who does what.

For our community I want us to take a fresh look at what we do well in the community, and what we do not so well. Maybe we need to do less in some areas and more in others.

We need to thrash out a plan for how we relate with the rest of the world, with immigration, with trade and with growth as a city that will probably include new players like the Banks Peninsula community.

We also need to accept and expand on the idea that as a trading city we better be prepared to hustle for ourselves.

This year I will again be part of a travelling Christchurch road-show. The reality is that in many major markets a Mayor on the team provides a great door opener. We need to understand this and accept that part of our future prosperity will come from direct city to city trade ties. What we still need to define is which cities and where and when.

We have opened our doors here. The next set of challenges lie in opening the doors of our minds to keeping Christchurch up where it belongs. That is, leading the way - our way.