After one of the best attended council meetings in years, the Christchurch City Council caved in and went big on the proposed stadium. While I’m disappointed, I’m not really surprised. The campaign from the right was well-organised, well timed, and high profile; councillors who discovered that they don’t really stand for anything buckled with one eye on their potential re-election just over 12 months away.
Perhaps I am being a bit optimistic, but part of me thinks that the right may have won the battle and lost the war. For one, I still just can’t believe that so much money would be spent on such a massive project in such an uncertain time. Pumping more and more money into it makes it much more of a liability. I don’t think this is the last hurdle for the stadium.
For those on the right, this completely undermines the stance that representatives of their persuasion have maintained since the dawn of time: that council needs to cut costs, needs to cut rates, needs to stop spending money on frivolous things and be run more like a business. Well, they can’t run that argument again, ever. When something that they back - despite the shakiest financial rationale possible - is up for debate, then it doesn’t matter about the money. Putting up rates by 1% for 30 years? No problem.
The rationale given by those on the right - from National and ACT in parliament, down to their proxies at council and on talkback radio - is that they are the sensible ones, who know how to balance the books and spend your money sensibly. It was always a myth, but one that has been stubbornly difficult to expose. Here, they have demonstrated that it was never about “balancing the books” or “spending sensibly”; it was about cutting money from things that benefit all ratepayers - pools, libraries, art galleries, cycleways - and funnelling it into assets that will be overwhelmingly used by people with the disposable income that many in this city can only ever dream of having.
There have been two really excellent pieces published since the decision that look at what is happening in other parts of the country. The first is David Williams for Newsroom, casting an eye over the finances of the Dunedin Stadium, a decade on. Though it cost half of what ours is budgeted at (yet seats more people), the burden of both construction and operation is still being borne by the ratepayers of the city, and manifesting in some very strange ways.
The second is from Jamie Wall, writing about the second Bledisloe Cup match at Eden Park - which was less than half full. While there are a number of factors that led to people staying away from the match, it shows that even the All Blacks can’t guarantee a full house any more. Even though rugby doesn’t have the cultural stranglehold over the population it once did, our politicians haven’t got the same message.