Well it's a big day for Auckland and hopefully a good day for the rest of the country.

Because today the Auckland Unitary Plan will be made public. Hopefully it has all the answers to Auckland's haphazard and ill-managed growth and hopefully the rest of the country will no longer have to hear constant debate about the Auckland problem.

After five years, 249 days of hearings and 1.5 million submission points later, Auckland's future has been delivered on a USB stick. And I'd like to take this opportunity to do something that you hardly ever hear. I'm going to congratulate the council.

The supercity is now nearly six years old and it has many critics but what they've achieved in those short six years is pretty impressive. In fact I'm going to say that more has been done in the past six years than in the 20 years beforehand. Friends who've been out of town for the past decade and then come home comment that the changes in Auckland are immense and for the good. I think the people that live there take those changes for granted.

For instance 10 years ago there four million train trips a year. These days there are 16 million. Imagine how the roads would be if these 12 million extra rail passengers were on them. The supercity has finally made the city rail link happen, an idea that's sat on the drawing boards for half a century. Buses are on the up, Auckland now has double deckers. The waterfront changes everyday. Apartments are popping up everywhere. Civic areas have been upgraded. Most of this under the new supercity.

The delivery of the Unitary Plan is quite a feat too. Normally a regional plan takes 10 years to draft. When the supercity replaced the nine authorities before it the government gave them three years to come up with a unified plan. It's taken five but they had to fight a population loathe to change but quick to moan. And the plan will silence a lot of critics. It opens up land equivalent to three Hamiltons. For five years they've been trying to create a city that goes both up and out and for five years many people have been trying to stop them. This is the fastest decision making on a regional plan in the country's history.

And that's the thing. Councils are whipping boys. Whipped by ratepayers and whipped by central government. Charged with administering the Building Act by the government who wrote it it's the council who gets it in the neck for upholding the law. Hopefully after today the government will stop whinging and start working on RMA reform which would be pretty helpful.

The supercity is not perfect but nor is it a dog and I still think Wellington missed a trick turning the concept down. The New Zealand Initiative this week released a report on supercities around the world and came to the conclusion they suck. I've waded through the 52 pages and I don't agree. The main supercity that they studied was Montreal, a city that has amalgamated and then de-amalgamated inside 10 years. Montreal's big problem is that the French speakers and the English speakers just don't get on and so one city to combine them all was always going to fail.

And that's the trick. If a community bands together it's administrative structure can work. Auckland will lose Len Brown next year. A man who's main crime appears to be that he dipped his pen in the company ink, but I could name dozens of politicians who have done that. His other problem is that he comes across as a goofball, but that's not a crime. So a new mayor and council will come in. I hope they recognise the supercity's successes and carry on making Auckland a world class city.

But most of all I hope the ratepayers open their eyes and realise change is good and your city does not suck.