Auckland Mayor Len Brown is about to hoist a parasitic private sector consortium onto the backs of Auckland ratepayers. Brown’s so-called “Skypath” project is a cycleway/pathway across Auckland Harbour Bridge which the Mayor says will enable people to bike or walk from Devonport to St Heliers. The concept is good, the implementation long overdue and Brown is right to say it will be a “game-changer” for cycling and pedestrian travel around Auckland.

But Brown is proposing it be built by a so-called public-private partnership or PPP and promoted the idea in a speech in February 2014 to the Greater East Tamaki Business Association. Brown’s speech was quoted as saying: "The SkyPath will be Auckland's first public private partnership (PPP) …This is a chance to cut our teeth on PPPs and show that we can deliver real value for money and better outcomes for ratepayers".

The last sentence is pure sophistry. The big majority of PPPs across the globe are deals that guarantee the profits of private sector investors while ensuring the risks are met by ratepayers or taxpayers. PPPs are a parasitic relationship where the private sector feeds off the public sector host. But Brown has caught a virulent strain of this vicious infection which has struck down ratepayers and taxpayers the world over. It ensures pain and suffering for citizens for many decades. It turns normal people (Brown was once considered to be normal) into corporate zombies who act unquestioningly in the interests of the corporate sector.

Auckland Has A Job To Do

We should have no illusion that Brown’s Council will be able to negotiate a deal which gives “real value for money and better outcomes for ratepayers” with a legion of corporate lawyers. The fact the corporate sector love PPPs is the very reason we should reject them out of hand. If this one goes ahead it will be a millstone around ratepayers’ necks for decades to come. The Council can borrow, build and run such a cycleway more cheaply than the private sector.

But the cost should not be met by borrowing anyway. The money should come from the billions of capital spent each year on new tarseal highways traversing Auckland – roads we won’t need if we develop integrated, free public transport on buses, trains and ferries across the city. The rest of Brown’s speech promoted the usual business mantra for Auckland – aiming for growth of 5 to 6%; shifting to an export focussed economy; greater migration to promote growth and the need to attract more international investment and talent. We’ve heard it all before.

On the other hand his speech said nothing about the living wage. He has given up this fight before it’s started. Big Business doesn’t want it so Brown will oblige by stifling it with silence as it applies to Auckland City employees. The most interesting thing about Brown is that he is referred to as a Centre-Left Mayor but where’s the evidence? Instead he’s taking on a David-Lange-type role – a smiling, cheerful, Labourish persona which acts as the public face for a deeply Rightwing policy prescription. And like David Lange, Len Brown is tolerated by Rightwing businesspeople, not because they like him but because he is eminently malleable to their demands. This infection can be beaten however with public action the best antibiotic. Enough of that and the infection can be wiped out although constant vigilance is needed to defeat any repeats. Auckland has a job to do.