That old cliché ‘you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but can not fool all of the people all of the time’ certainly appears true when considering people’s expectations of the Auckland Supercity. A Herald of Sunday/Buzz Channel poll reported that almost two thirds of Aucklanders expect increased rates as a result of the restructuring changes in Auckland local government.

Despite central government and local politician rhetoric of improved decision-making and economies of scale, nowhere in the world has restructuring of any local government resulted in the expected savings.

The only real result is greater power in the hands of fewer individuals and less representation and democratic rights for voters. It is clear that the voters have more commonsense than those that purport to represent them.

Bigger does not automatically means things are more efficient or cheaper. In fact the opposite is more often the case than not. There is an inefficiency factor that all organisations suffer from and this gets larger as the organisation grows.

A good example of this is the current dreadful disaster in Haiti. Ten percent of the population homeless and literally hundreds of thousands dead and dying is not simply due to bad luck or and act of God. Its primary cause is poverty, poor government, and no decent infrastructure. A common factor in many developing countries and something the international community has been long on rhetoric but short on the will to resolve.

While politicians play political games and invest trillions on academic and questionable future problems such as climate change, insufficient effort goes into building the infrastructure and economies of developing nations.

Why were hospitals and other essential assets not constructed to withstand earthquakes in Haiti? When the dead are buried and the rubble cleared away is Haiti going to receive any real assistance to ensure this tragedy does not reoccur? History is against commonsense actually happening.

The United Nations remains a very important organisation to foster world relations but as the largest most bureaucratic government organisation it suffers severely from its inefficiency factor. It’s not scale or size that counts, it’s really about good governance.

Whether you are a small fragment of government like the Kaipara District Council, or a giant like the UN, the USA, or China, it’s always about good governance. Without it you simply create a mess and in the worst case scenario people die.