Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick says Tāmaki Makaurau-based MPs should be encouraging their constituents to make submissions on Auckland Council's budget. Photo: Supplied / Benjamin Brooking
Auckland Central MP Chlöe Swarbrick says Aucklanders are facing the most significant city council budget in living memory.
Tāmaki Makaurau Mayor Wayne Brown wants to cancel 1000 buses per day and slash arts, culture and local board funding to reduce a fiscal hole of nearly $300 million.
Swarbrick told Morning Report she believed the super-city's MPs had a role to play in the local process.
She has written an open letter to her Parliamentary colleagues in Tāmaki Makaurau, asking them to meet next week to discuss what the budget would mean for their constituents.
"I'm sure somewhere, even amongst all our Parliamentary and political differences, that we could find some common ground."
The proposed date of the meeting was a day after the 28 March deadline for budget submissions, she noted.
Swarbrick said Auckland-based or electorate MPs spent a lot of time working with the council in their electorates and should be encouraging constituents to make submissions on the budget proposal.
"Part of this slash-and-burn is the intention to hand these costs back to central government," she said, "and that, again, is precisely the reason that we need to see Auckland or Tāmaki Makaurau-based MPs, not necessarily wading in themselves, but ensuring that communities are well aware of what's at stake here."
The scale of cut-backs proposed in the council's budget would make it "easily the most significant local government budget in living memory", she said.
"What we're looking at is hugely detrimental impacts on communities across Tāmaki Makaurau, in the environmental space, in the climate space, in the transport space, in the education space - across the board."
It seemed "next to insane that we have the proposal to cancel more than a thousand buses a day whilst also increasing fares, in the midst of what appears to be cross-Parliamentary consensus that what we're facing - or what we have faced - is a climate change-charged storm", Swarbrick said.
The job of Auckland-based MPs was to represent Aucklanders, she added.
"Right now, what Aucklanders are facing is the most significant Auckland Council budget that we have seen in living memory, cuts to services that will not be replaced if we lose them.
"It is critically important that we see the leadership from central government in the absence of it currently coming from those at the top at Auckland Council."
More than 10,000 residents have already submitted feedback on the draft budget, with those still wanting to have their say able to submit until 11pm on Tuesday, 28 March.
Auckland Council's chief financial officer Peter Gudsell said most of the feedback so far received was from Pākehā aged 40 and over, with Pasifika, Asian and Māori communities currently under-represented.
