Hard News by Russell Brown

It was never likely that Len Brown would stand unopposed for the Auckland mayoralty this year. Indeed, he wouldn't want to: being a consensus candidate is all very well, but it's a lot easier to claim a mandate when you've actually beaten someone.

And Brown, as well-liked as he is, does need to demonstrate a mandate, not just to his city, but to central government, which seeks to confound much of what Brown and his council propose for Auckland's development -- without, as yet, proposing any coherent alternative.

John Minto entered the race last week as the Mana candidate. On his own -- and leaving Brown the vast territory to his right -- Minto couldn't do much more than keep Brown honest. The emergence of a candidate to the right of Brown might make for more of a squeeze.

One such candidate has now emerged. Restauranteur John Palino has declared his candidacy. I've met John a few times and I like him. He's a clever guy. But I don't think he has the networks or the experience for the mayoralty. How many councillors could he count on were he elected?

But, more importantly, I don't buy his platform, which rests on opposition to the Unitary Plan and the development of a second CBD in Manukau:

"The fact of the matter is that people are not happy with this plan. It's actually very scary and it's going to change people's way of life and we shouldn't do that and they're going to pay for with the road tax and petrol tax."

He says unlike the inner city rail loop proposed by Mayor Len Brown, building up Manukau is doable.

"That's an actual project that you can fund. You can go out there you can get Government borrowing, borrow from the public, Government bonds and you fund that through the fact that it's a business plan and you can say in the future this is what it's going to bring us. It could be 20 year, 30 year loans."

Really? Build it and they will come? That's a better business case than the exhaustively-researched City Rail Link? To be fair, Palino has been attending the public meetings around the Unitary Plan, and standing up and arguing strongly against its intensification elements. And as Campbell Live's very good report (really, watch it) showed, some suburban centres (sorry, "villages") are far less keen on the prospect of allowing eventual building-up than others are. Avondale says "bring it on" and Milford says "go away".

But the Plan can change. That's what the curent consulation process is about. What I don't think is viable is the assumption that you can address Auckland's housing capacity problems by telling people to go and live in a new development in Manukau. (It's worth noting that Auckland was founded on an intricate plan that was royally ignored. The city was supposed to develop in concentric circles around Waterloo Quadrant, and to spread east and west. People went and built the length of the north-south open sewer that eventually became Queen Street.)

Palino says he entered the race after growing tired of waiting for retiring Pakuranga MP Maurice Williamson to declare his hand. I'm not sure how much Williamson had really thought about standing for the mayoralty until Patrick Gower started touting the possibility (and then, being Paddy, demanding that Williamson immediately either rule it out or resign as an MP) but my guess is that he won't do it.

Williamson is well-liked in Parliament (he should have been made Speaker) and clearly has an excellent electorate organisation. But standing as a centre-right candidate for the Auckland mayoralty means encountering a good deal of hostility and grubby politics -- and that's just from your own side.

Interestingly, the centre-right's most prominent candidate, the irritating but tireless Cr Cameron Brewer, seems to have done the numbers some time ago and decided he can't win.

But competition of any kind should motivate Brown to do a better job of advocating for his own policies. It's all very well ranting merrily from the stage at Laneway, but the course set for Auckland needs communicating, and Brown hopelessy flubbed that task when he appeared in Campbell Live's report on the CRL. How on earth did he manage to come up with numbers that actively undersold a key policy? (Mind you, even Minto doesn't seem to understand exactly what the CRL would do.)

Anyway, I'll tell you one way not to go about it: via childish blog posts like the anonymous We Hate Nimby's (sic), which CR Michael Goudie described as "brilliant" and linked to from his Facebook page. The mayor's office is aggrieved that the Herald's Bernard Orsman has dubbed Goudie's link to this rant against anti-intensifiers the promotion of "hate speech", but I think that's the risk you run when you endorse a silly screed that repeatedly uses the word "hate" about people who elected you. If this is a communications strategy, it's fucking stupid one.

The recent Boston Marathon bombing and the events that followed it were a predictable, unpredictable news phenomenon. More people died in another soulcrushing purge in Syria and in the bewildering series of assasinations that were engulfing the Pakistani elections, but the bombing was a tragedy and a mystery and a new chapter in the America's megalithic, media-political post-2001 discussion about security. It took place at a major sporting event where both the media and the crowd had cameras and communications channels -- and it all played out to us in real time.

America's 24-hour news networks can be tawdry when there is no urgent news for them to chew on -- Fox News, especially, of course. (Check out this two-minute TPM compilation of Fox's idiocy last Friday.) But it turned out that the news team at Fox's Boston affiliate is a strong outfit -- for hours on end they supplanted Fox's idiot commentariat, to sometimes compelling effect.

Self-important photo-detectives at Reddit endangered the security of innocent people as they confidently picked out one "suspect" after another from the countless photographs of the scene. Appallingly, Murdoch's New York Post played the same game across the pages of an actual newspaper.

We could even play in New Zealand, and eavesdrop on the contextless, uncorrected noise of the police radio scanner being streamed to the internet. The spreading of noise went global. There were so many false reports that at times you'd have been net better-informed by simply knowing nothing.

And where there are unresolved noise, chaos and standing narratives, there will be conspiracy theories. So many conspiracy theories that the Boston bombing has the kind of file on Snopes that used to take months, even years, to ferment in the wild.

And, yes, I followed it all and sometimes joined in the frenzy. I retweeted stuff. I do, of course, have an excuse: it was for work.

But some Twitter reporters -- Wired's Seth Mnookin, caught up in the denouement at Watertown as he tried to get home -- were amazing to follow. He tweeted what he observed, sourced what he heard and corrected himself clearly and promptly if he discovered he was wrong. And the city paper, the Boston Globe, seems to have risen to the twin challenges of bringing big breaking news and addressing the wounded soul of the city. The sheer quantity of solid reporting archived on the paper's home page for the bombings is remarkable.

But do we need constant chatter? Couldn't we find something more useful to do than jonesing on a tragedy half a world away? Well, yes. But we don't need sport, porn or pop music either, and they're still all quite popular. (Again, it was for work.) Further, the collective viewing experience didn't start with the internet and it certainly wasn't ended by it.

The real-time news reporting environment spawned in 2001 has matured, if that's the right word. We're more guarded about the idea of "citizen journalism" now, but, equally, citizen reporters are a valuable part of the plan in every newsroom.

Including those closer to home. I noted the role of the "little pieces of a big picture" in writing about the September and February Christchurch earthquakes. We have even had our post-earthquake conspiracy theories. We're part of the picture, and the noise. Breaking news is broken and breaking news isn't broken.

On Media3 this week I'll be discussing these ideas with Tuanz chief executive and former editor Paul Brislen and Troy Rawhiti-Forbes, the social media editor at the New Zealand Herald. Matthew Dentith will also join me to run through the conspiracy theories.

If you'd like to join us for Tuesday evening's Media3 recording, come to the first floor of the Villa Dalmacija, 10 New North Road, Auckland, from 5.20pm for a 6pm recording. There will be intelligent company, food and congenially-priced beverages.

Statement of the obvious: New Zealand Music Month, May of every year,  plays no role at all in the current government's political branding. The New Zealand Music Commission is pretty much left to get on with it. Although Arts minister Chris Finlayson's press secretary knows his metal, the minister will not be requiring a +1 for the Beastwars gig.

And perhaps that's not such a bad thing. The month can content itself with celebration rather than making a point about cultural policy. As the Music Commission's backgrounder notes, the original focus on radioplay has given way to something a bit more rootsy and festive. No one need feel that cultural nationalism is compulsory. Perhaps it's also that there's now a more substantial heritage to work with.

Even longtime naysayer-in-May Gary Steel is getting into the swing of it by publishing something from his own considerable back catalogue every day of the month, begining with this 1980 interview with former Golden Harvest singer Karl Gordon. Peter McLennan (whose book of interviews with NZ artists is published on May 20), has also been reaching into the vaults, digitising an interesting interview with DJ DLT on the long-forgotten TV pop show, Frenzy.

The Herald's Entertainment video team is also reprising its greatest hits, alongside Coco Solid's new NZ On Air-backed web-cartoon-about-a-band, Hook Ups. Note that at 3pm today they'll be screening the excellent Home Brew Sundae Session in full.

Prime TV will be screening a new Exponents documentary to be accompanied by a re-release and reprise of the band's past work. And Audioculture, the "noisy library of New Zealand music", launches on the last day of the month.

Radio is still a significant part of the month, of course. Kiwi FM has built a great little rapid-recording project around Charlotte Ryan's afternoon show this year. Here's one of the first clips, from Pikachunes:

There's a lot more from the project on the KiwiFM YouTube and Soundcloud.

And BaseFM, Ponsonby's groove station, has launched a sophisticated promotion to point out that those outside the range of its low-power FM signal (ie: nearly everyone) can still listen to its 56 weekly shows and 80-plus DJs on Freeview Channel 71 or TelstraClear InHome Entertainment, or via the web stream or the TuneIn mobile app -- and even (this surprised me) on the DAB digital radio services being operated by by Kordia in Auckland and Wellington.

I popped along to the launch of their Digital Liberation campaign on Tuesday evening after the Media3 recording and you'll see the story we shot on next week's Media3. For now, here's the first of a series of web videos, starring heaps of beat people:

Note that there's also Turn It Up, a free double CD of local artists associated with the station.

Amidst it all, the original firestarter, 95bFM is still doing its thing. Last night was the annual b-Street promotion, offering a series of indie bills at K Road venues for free to anyone with a b-Card. In an inspired move, they co-promoted with First Thursdays, which saw all kinds of art, music and retail things happen earlier in the evening. K Road was a busy, buzzy place to be.

The bStreet bill didn't feature any big names this year, but that didn't hurt. I saw Las Tetas, Trick Mammoth (jangling really is back), Rackets and Raw Nerves and liked it all. The Corner music blog put together a nice guide to the artists they thought you should see, with links to their Bandcamps 'n' all.

Here are some pictures:

Lucy from Las Tetas.

Trick Mammoth at the Wine Cellar.

Outside Galatos.

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Meanwhile at TheAudience, this soulful thing has been turning heads:

Another tune from the Kapiti Coast's six-piece live hip hop outfit the No Problemos. I'd like to see these guys play:

This, by two young women who aren't giving away much about themselves, is dark and pretty interesting:

In a wholly different vein (and she's not exactly an emerging artist), Mel Parsons bills herself as "indie-folk" but this sounds more to me like country-pop. It's nice:

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My buddy Andy was really keen that I embed this Trick Mammoth track, which is part of a three-track EP available at a price of your choosing on Bandcamp:

The mighty Darkstation has The Skeptics playing A.F.F.C.O. live at The Gluepot in 1989. Wow:

A nice new remix of the ubiqutous Mt Eden hit:

And possibly the best press kit ever, created by Chris Knox for The Clean.

The Hard News Music Post is sponsored by:

Last week was both a bad week and a good week for 22 year-old Ben Uffindell, the founder of the fledgling (eight weeks old!) satirical website The Civilian.  It was bad because he was threatened with legal action by Conservative Party leader Colin Craig -- and good because the Streisand effect kicked in rather mightily.

Uffindell and his website got the kind of media coverage that money can't buy -- and Likes on his Facebook page, which seems to drive a good deal of his half a million page impressions a month in web traffic, roughly doubled to more than 8000.

David Fisher had an interview with Uffindell in Saturday's Herald -- and I'm delighted to say that Media3 is bringing the young satirist to Auckland to appear on this week's show. He will be joined on the panel by, er, senior satirist David Slack.

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Also on this week's programme: Annie Goldson and Jon Stephenson join me to discuss He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan, the documentary Annie has made with Kay Ellmers, which screened on Anzac Eve on Maori Television.

A longer version of their film will screen at this year's film festivals, but the TV cut is available for viewing here on the Maori Television website.

It's a tremendous account of why we were in Afghanistan for 10 years, the role of political spin in the domestic presentation of the war, why the work of journalists like Jon Stephenson is so important -- and why we should care. If you're at all interested in these issues, you should see it.

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And finally, Will Pollard will look at transmedia storytelling -- that is, stories that play out in parallel on the TV screen and the gaming screen -- with particular reference to the new US SyFy channel series/game Defiance. A member of our household helps out Will with some commentary.

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If you'd like to join us for tomorrow's Media3 recording, we'll need you to present yourself at the first floor of the Villa Dalmacija, 10 New North Road, Auckland, at 5.30pm. I can tell you that the potato salad got pretty nek-level last week.

One of the things I try to do when I blog is to know what I don't know. I don't always keep to that maxim, of course, and when I  do it tends to limit the scope of the blog. But I figure I'm more use to the reader on topics where I have some idea of what I'm on about.

In Saturday's Weekend Herald, senior columnist John Roughan has a column scorning the mayor's prediction that Auckland's North Shore would be served by rail one day. We don't need no steenkin' rail, says Roughan. Congestion and capacity issues on the roads could be fixed by simply synchronising traffic lights.

Roughan ventures that transport controllers don't apply this simple fix because they take delight in the frustration of the poor motorist.

And furthermore:

The busway, like the bridge, is fine.

The problem lies in roads closer to home. By car it can take as long to get on to the motorway as it takes for the rest of the journey. By bus it takes too long to get to a busway station. Once on the busway, you can be in the city in eight minutes.

In fact, the North Shore is probably better served by the busway than the rest of Auckland is by its railways, which also have to be reached by bus or car from most people's homes.

He's right, of course. The Northern Busway has been an undeniable success and its patronage helps keep the northern motorway viable for motorists. But if we travel back in time to 2007, as the busway was nearing launch, Roughan took a very, very different view.

The busway was, he said, a "monstrous" environmental insult; the folly of zealots with too much public money to play with:

The self-contained "busway" is practically complete now, with stations, car parks and access roads built and no expense spared to provide an enclosed overhead walkway to a tertiary campus for students who might use it.

It is a striking sign of the economy's new wealth that politicians dare make such an investment. Nobody would put their own money on the prospect that commuters will leave their cars at home, or at suburban terminals for the day, in sufficient numbers to make it pay.

Reportedly the parking lots are already filled most weekday mornings but it has made little difference to the motorway congestion. The public transport entrepreneurs intend that we forsake the car entirely and take a bus to the busway. I hope they are right but I really don't think so.

Still, when the whole crazy notion fell in on itself:

... it is a road and there is an economic use for it. It is self-contained, access is easily controlled. Eventually it could be a tollway for general traffic, the only reliable solution to congestion.

Now, we all make faulty predictions, and I almost admire Roughan's dedication to ending up on the wrong side of history. But when you've committed the kind of comprehensive about-face that Roughan has here, it's considered polite to say so to your readers.

Roughan, as attentive readers will know, is not a fan of public transport. I fancy that he was the author of the notorious (pre-website) Herald editorial that referred to public transport as a "scourge". In 2001, he confidently forecast that Aucklanders would "never use" a rehabilitated rail service. That column was an early example of what may indeed be Roughan's main theme: what do experts know, anyway?

Planners never learn. There are periods when they realise it is better to go with the flow of public behaviour, but they soon relapse. Their instinct is to refashion behaviour if they can.

They are wasting their time and our money. And they are neglecting - wilfully one suspects - the need for more and wider motorways.

Auckland is a car city and always will be. Its people much prefer their own cars to any form of public transport and, contrary to the claims of the rail lobby, there is plenty of room for more roading.

There should be no mystery about the appeal of the private car. With a car you are mobile and free. You may not use it all day, but you want it there. You want to know you can go where you want, when you want.

Most people are prepared to pay a high price for that in the form of congestion, although they shouldn't have to.

For those who really prefer public transport, or cannot drive, Auckland has a perfectly adequate bus service. One of the little ironies of the rail scheme is that it will largely draw passengers from the few profitable bus routes, rendering the whole system less economic.

The day after Roughan's latest column, a breathless Rodney Hide also revelled, in the Herald on Sunday, in  assumed common sense -- or, in his case, intuition:

It's not obvious to me that a heavy train having to stop and start and be confined to tracks is the best way to ferry people around Auckland. Buses along roads strike me intuitively as a cheaper and more flexible form of public transport.

Hide has discovered a critic of the controversial (largely amongst the non-Auckland political right) CBD Rail Link proposal. Wellingtonian Tony Randle claims to have discovered critical defects in the 2010 Rail Business Case produced by Auckland Transport -- which recommends rail as the most cost-effective option for long-term public transport expansion.

At this point, my "know what you don't know" rule is in full effect. So I'll turn to Auckland Transport Blog, which is pretty much a definitive expert blog. Yes, its authors, like Roughan and Hide come from a philosophical position -- they regard public transport as basically a good thing -- but they're eminently capable of showing their reasoning, without recourse to either common sense or intuition.

And they considered the shocking new analysis touted by Hide (and John Boscawen and any number of other fellow travellers on Twitter on Sunday) two years ago when it was released.

Josh Arbury, who wrote that post, isn't dismissive of Randle's work. He acknowledges its detail and recommends that people read the analysis. He notes that Randle has identified a genuine problem with the business case. But he concludes that Randle has fundamentally misunderstood some elements of the argument, and concludes:

While Mr Randle’s assessment points out a flaw in the project’s business case, that it says we’re going to have nearly 20,000 more bus passengers into the CBD without highlighting how we’re going to deal with those passengers, I think ultimately his analysis falls into the same trap as the Ministry of Transport’s review of the project – they assume that bus numbers can and will increase without constraints. The Ministry of Transport preferred the surface bus option, without realising that the city’s streets don’t actually have unlimited capacity to cope with buses (or to question whether we might want 1000 buses an hour grinding along Fanshawe, Albert & Symonds Street). Mr Randle’s point is a little smarter, but once again misses the point (though so did the original business case) that the number of people on buses isn’t just a natural outcome, but something we can influence. If we want to cap the number of buses entering the city centre at peak times then we can, shifting more to feeder buses.

Ultimately a bus tunnel isn’t a sensible option because it puts more traffic onto our roads, particularly those arterials to the south of the tunnel, rather than the rail tunnel which eases pressure on the roads. A rail tunnel can unlock latent capacity throughout the entire network, enabling all that existing infrastructure to be used much more efficiently – rather than something which requires us to duplicate huge chunks of our rapid transit system.

Another Auckland Transport blogger, Matt L, responded to Hide's column within hours of its publication, noting that:

What Rodney either fails to realise, or at least fails to explain is that it wasn’t just Auckland Transport who worked on the CCFAS but also the Ministry of Transport, NZTA and Treasury.

There is, however, one issue on which I completely agree with Hide. Randle had to go to the Ombudsman to get access to the analysis behind the rail business -- and Hide has had similar problems getting access to the spreadsheets underpinning the 2012 City Centre Future Access Study. Even if he pays the $3850 demanded by Auckland Transport, their position is that they will only send him the printed output. If I ask the question "What would Keith Ng do?" the answer is: complain very loudly.

It's not good enough. Even if Auckland Transport officials feel that their provision of the data in this form would only lead to faulty analysis, they should provide it on reasonable terms. It's pretty basic democracy.

But there's another point here -- one which I feel warrants both full capitalisation and bold text:

THE INDIVIDUAL ON EARTH MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CULTURE, PRACTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY OF AUCKLAND TRANSPORT AND OTHER COUNCIL-CONTROLLED ORGANISATIONS IS RODNEY HIDE.

Really.