OPINION: Confessions of a council hack | Auckland Opinion | Local Voices from Auckland, New Zealand

Most reporters dread being given rounds. That's when you're told, by some grumpy, cynical, quite possibly alcoholic chief reporter that you're going to be writing about "health" or "transport" from now until eternity.

Me, I never liked being a police reporter. Most coppers I met as a young reporter were either condescending jerks or incompetent paper-pushers. Either way, I got very little useful information and every time I wrote a half interesting story, the policeman quoted in my story never answered a call from me again - and that usually went for everyone in his station as well. Most cop shops left me waiting at the public counter while I could hear the PC Plods sharing milky cocoa and swapping reporter jokes.

Health stories confounded me with jargon-heavy language that, once translated into everyday words, never seemed interesting anymore. Constant restructuring of health boards and hospital departments led me though some of the most unsatisfying story hunts in my 25-year career. And health board meetings are less entertaining than tea and little blue pill time at your local retirement home.

Education rounds just go around and around in a repeating cycle of geek-of-the-week caption stories about high achievers, schools refusing to comment about bullying or inappropriate teacher behaviour or ERO reports that say absolutely nothing.

But council reporting. Ah, that's the juice for a current affairs junkie.

The first thing you need to learn is there are two distinct sides in any council story: the elected officials who believe they wield the power; and the council officers who actually wield the power.

The second thing you need to know is the elected officials will lie to you and council officers will conceal the facts. If you get close to the facts, councillors will form alliances, close ranks and tell you more lies. Officers will lose files, leak partial truths to other media and then inundate you with an avalanche of material from which the facts could never be recovered by a cadaver dog.

It really is fun.

There's also the constant feed of off-the-record confidences that flow into your ears like aural opiates.

Like the local government commissioner who told me on the steps of a council chambers: "I'll deny ever telling you this, but there's an air of corruption about this place." Delicious.

Or the community board member who arranged a series of confidential coffee chats to talk about brown paper bags of money changing hands to grease the wheels of a dodgy development. Gorgeous stuff.

Or the whispered account of a councillor who was picked up by mental health services while running amok in her neighbourhood at night, naked and screaming. Oh, my ears, my delighted ears.

Or the mayor who forgot his reading glasses and ad-libbed a speech announcing the first stage of a new sewerage plant was in fact the final part of the works - to the shock of the gathered chiefs from the firms who had multi-million contracts for more work. Hilarious.

Or the community board chair who talked trash about a newspaper until her home delivery of said "rag" mysteriously halted. Heh.

Or the ashen-faced chief executive who read in the local paper that he was leaving - before he'd even resigned.

Or the time I was given the keys to a mayoral lounge and entertained colleagues at the city's expense until the early hours of the morning. Oops, I wasn't supposed to tell you that bit.

As you may have gathered by now, most of what a council reporter hears can never be printed. In New Zealand, we have some of the most punitive defamation laws in the developed world. Even if a story is true, that may not protect the reporter and publication from a court action that would cripple a medium-sized Pacific Island nation.

So, for all the hazards, and maybe because of them, council reporting is an addiction. To have vote-hungry councillors fawning before you in the hopes of a positive write-up before the next election, only to be spitting bile about you to others who can't wait to pass it on, is a compelling way to make a paltry wage.

Sure, there's late night meetings where the subject matter can be as dry as tinder. But the longer the meetings drag out, the more likely some councillor will slip from under their sedated state of medication and begin ranting about the conspiracy against them. Or start snoring.

The second half of most meetings is closed to the media anyway. That's when commercial secrets are discussed "in confidential" and you just wait till someone rings you the next day to tell you about that stuff.

As Auckland moves into yet another mad campaign of major restructuring and an election thrown into one, the veins are already throbbing in expectation of more uncut fixes. If only some of these shots of bad juice can be made public.

Here's hoping, see you round.

- Edward Rooney is chief reporter at The Aucklander.