1986: Tamaki City Council

January 28, 2023

By AHNZ

Today in New Zealand history, 28 January, 1987, Tamaki City came into being. By the jungle law of Municiple Darwinism both boroughs of Otahuhu and Mt Wellington could feel Auckland City sizing them up to be killed and eaten so the two smaller communities resolved to team up and fight to survive. All the same, Tamaki City would last only 196 weeks 1 day before being added to the mass grave of dead civic institutions on 1 November, 1989; The Great Amalgamation.

Tamaki City continued the crest of Otahuhu Borough which featured a Maori canoe paddling over the water. In the background is a mountain, Mount Richmond. The territory is about 3km wide between the Manukau Harbor and Tamaki River and was used by the old Maoris to haul their canoes overland in order to cross between the east and west coasts of New Zealand. The straight line of the path taken remains today as Portage Road and was marked in the 1950s with memorial plaques at either end.

Tamaki City, as it was called during this brief time, was the only thing joining New Zealand to Auckland and the rest of the country. It’s the only land keeping everything north of Auckland Airport from being a huge island of its own separated from the North Island. In Maoriland and New Zealand this patch has been the central nexus of transport and trade. No wonder the community did not want to be absorbed!

They had their own assets, their own rules about alcohol, their own revenue stream, their own community infrastructure. It made Tamaki City a prize worth taking by a bigger fish.

In the late 1980s Auckland had 27 mayors, not just 1. Harry Bean was the first and last mayor of Tamaki City and is probably standing on the sewer pipe (Hobson Bay?) alongside the others in this 1989 picture (right.) Ref. 2010: Supercity, AHNZ

No, the plan did not work. However it was probably the bravest and best attempt of all the endangered local governments that resisted the executioners axe of Local Government Minister Michael Bassett and Chair of the Local Government Comission Brian Elwood. The history of the resistance to the 1989 coup is greatly unknown since The State writes the history books and only wants tales to validate consolodation and centralisation. Another great story of the Resistance is of the Republic of Whangamomona who continue to this day to insist that the Great Amalgamation did not apply to them. Ref. 1989: The Republic of Whangamomona, AHNZ.

“On 19 October 1986 Mount Wellington and Otahuhu boroughs amalgamated under the provisions of the Local Government Act 1974 to form Tamaki Borough Council (later Tamaki City Council).” – Auckland Council Archives website agency description for Mt Wellington Borough Council, Timespanner, Facebook (2021)

“Best little Traffic Dept this country ever saw!” – Chris Harmer Memories from Tamaki City Traffic Dept, Old Friends, Wayback Machine

“Great Times, Jeremy Griffiths” – ibid

“Tamaki City Council and Mount Wellington Works Depot workers playing pool during a lunch break; a record player, reel-to-reel tape recorder, darts board and a 1987 Rugby World Cup poster in background.” – Stuart Page photo, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

“On 8 October 1986 Otahuhu and Mt Wellington Boroughs amalgamated to form Tamaki Borough; this became Tamaki City on 28 January 1987; Tamaki City was amalgamated with Auckland City on 1 November 1989.” – Tamaki City Council, 1986 – 1989, Footprints Colletion, Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections

“He was mayor of Tamaki City from 1986-9. The combination of the Mt Wellington and Otahuhu boroughs had a combined population of just over 20,000 which qualified Tamaki to apply to be called a city.”

“There is little doubt most of the citizens found their council a reliable and acceptable face of traditional labour values. And there was a profitable Mt Wellington Licensing Trust for a time, so the council was able to build things like community and sports facilities and the Swim-o-rama by the Panmure Lagoon.”- Obituary, Harry Bean. NZ Herald (2005)

‘Long ago the country bore the country-town and nourished it with her best blood. Now the giant city sucks the country dry…’- Spengler

We have a pretty good map for how Libertarian New Zealand could work: The past. The further back in time we go the less and less our country is controlled from the 9th Floor of the Beehive in Wellington. Where there were communities there are now networks. Where we had learning we now have teaching. Where we had health we now have medical treatment (and waiting lists.) Where we had community life we now have social work. Where we had safety we have police protection (or Police PR.) New Zeanders used to run their own communities for themselves by themselves, democratically. Now we have Democracy Theater and that was the explicit and deliberate plan of the architect Brian Elwood as he later speechified to the Club of Rome and others. Ref. 1989: Brian’s Revolution, AHNZ

A New Zealand ‘devolved’ to its earlier social organsation is a more Anarchist New Zealand. We could get back to the glorious Tiebout Competition where civic life is vested in ourselves not provided as habitat enrichment for captive tax slaves at our own expense by our keepers. Thanks to the lack of homeland attachment on the part of the Baby Boomer Generation all Anglo-Zelandians have a reputation for not connecting to their land whereas Maori-Zealandians are supposed to have a special connection. In reality all Kiwis want homes, not just houses, and communities, not just location location locations. The Boomers broke the continuity partly because they did not value attachment to land and partly as a defiant protest to get back at their parents by hurting them the worst way they could. Future New Zealanders could rediscover the love of country and wind back the State.

We could re-establish our old cities and borough councils the same way our ancestors initially formed them out of the amorphous blobs within the old provinces. We could choose to break up all the power that has become centralised by again establishing the provinces and again restoring North Island and South Island independence. Parliament could be cut back to its proper level of power rather than be under the control of political parties the way it is now. The Upper House that was “temporarily” abolished in 1951 could be restored. The Privy Council access we discontinued in 2004 could be re-established.

If such an independent and diverse country is not to be our future, as it was our past, what is the alternative? We slide further and further into central control until everything simply comes down to rulership from the Prime Minister and his army of PR Special Assistants. Then, in turn, that office will be further centralised to an office in Sydney or United Nations Headquarters in New York or Beijing, China. The more consolodated and centralised New Zealand becomes the easier and more accelerated the process becomes. On the other hand, if New Zealand were made up of hundreds of little municipal communities we would be ungovernable and a nightmare for anyone to attempt to conquer. As it is, we are an undefended sitting duck for would-be invaders. God Defend New Zealand because we are certainly not now!

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Image ref. Tamaki Borough Traffic Department & Tamaki City Traffic Department, Brent’s Police Patches and Badges

Image ref. Onehunga Borough Council’s epitaph, AHNZ Archives

Ref. 1989: Brian’s Revolution, AHNZ

Ref. 1989: The Great Amalgamation, AHNZ

The locality today is famous for the Sylvia Park megamall and for the horrible ICI Fire of 1984. Ref. 1984: The ICI Fire, AHNZ

The localist spirit of this captured community clearly lives on in the Respect Mount Richmond Otahuhu group who continue to fight against big government controlling their landscape today. Ref. “Local outrage – not at the revegetation plan itself, but the lack of any local consultation, and the speed of the planned felling – quickly coalesced into an ‘Honour the Maunga’ group that lined up on that Monday to block access to the tree-felling contractors.” – Newshub (2022)

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