Everyone who has been subjected to bullying by the Auckland City Council can regard the the new crumbling, weak-kneed logo as a triumph for democracy. 

The Council arrogance in telling everyone else how to live their lives has resulted over time in them deciding that they were not just a Council at all. They were in fact Auckland City. 

The citizens may have felt disempowered but the Government took the Council to task. Subsection (2) of Clause 23 of the Local Government Act 2002 makes the situation abosultely clear. "A territorial authority that is a city council must be described as the [name of city] City Council." 

When the Act came into force on 1 July 2003 it rendered all the permitting, planning, resource management, and other Council activities illegal in every situation where the City Council pretended that it was Auckland City. 

A million dollars should be seen as a bureaucratic bargain to avert the possibility of citizens refusing to pay up and comply with the demands of an illegal organisation. 

Tony Watkins

Karaka Bay

Published in the New Zealand Herald 31 October 2007