A united Greater Auckland is indeed an oxymoron and, odds-on, the latest scheme to engineer it - the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance - will most likely follow in the path of its predecessors, or be so reduced from the concept of one aspirational "super city" and six local councils as to be unrecognisable.
Already, the offstage local government chorus is raising its protesting voice, notably in the Wellington region, and nervous Government ministers and Auckland members of Parliament are showing signs of preparing possible defensive lines of retreat.
The report raises many matters of immediate political interest, and about the longer term development of New Zealand.
It is in this regard that the South should take notice.
The conglomeration of about 1.3 million residents is now so totally out of proportion to the rest of the country as to constitute a city-state (the report uses the soothing "city-region").
Confirming that reality by legislative status will impinge on the lives and livelihoods of every New Zealander.
The scale of the governance problems facing Greater Auckland are a result of 60 years of profligate, indiscriminate growth, fostered by encouraging the greed of property developers and the effects of decades of subsidy-cushioned and tariff-protected industries built on uncontrolled, cheap labour migration.
It has all been at an enormous cost to the nation, symbolised for many here in the South by the means of electricity generation, but it has also been of enormous national economic benefit.
It is remarkable that, given Greater Auckland's near-unmanageable structure, the commission has decided that big is best, and that even bigger is better.
It is charitable to praise the report for its concept of a two-level arrangement, with an "Auckland Council" looking after regional issues and six local councils looking after local matters.
But the local councils would not have the power to set rates and would be funded by the superior authority, to which they could plead for local rates for special projects in their communities.
In an ideal world this might work, but it would put the local councils entirely at the mercy of the "super-council".
Quite rightly, early concerns are being raised about the gap that would develop between household ratepayers and the "super-council" based on the commission's city-state model.
The abolition of most community boards and the creation of local councils representing as many as 400,000 people would simply reinforce the difficulty.
We are a small country, and our people are insistent on and entitled to a direct relationship with their rulers.
What are now essentially local decisions would become, under the proposed arrangement, mere ticks for distant councillors to make in regional boxes.
The commission concluded that tinkering around the edges of Auckland's problems was not the answer.
"Bold change is required, and that is what the commission is recommending."
But its report enters fanciful realms when it speculates Auckland is "a unique world city in the Pacific, one that is able to compete successfully with Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane for people".
Really? For people - yet more people? In almost the same breath it talks of the need to recognise and do something about "the disconnect between Auckland and the rest of the country".
By this it really means the need for all of us outside Auckland to accept that Auckland and Auckland's size and growth means "Auckland's success and New Zealand's success go hand in hand".
But by what measure? Its unfettered growth? Its money prosperity? Its social disparities?
The state of its environment? Its cost of living? The state of its transport facilities?
The incidence of its crime? Its continuous demand on our national resources?
The supposed cost savings and efficiency improvements of between $76 million to $113 million a year without a doubt would still leave an organisational monolith, out of reach of the people it supposedly served.
After all, the "Auckland Council" would hold all council assets and employ all existing staff; there would be one long-term council community plan, one spatial plan, one district plan, one rating system, one rates bill, and much claimed "significant streamlining" to eliminate unnecessary duplication.
By the same token, direct connection with the government of the day would be strengthened and become greater than any other part of the country, for the commission wants a Minister for Auckland and a special Cabinet Committee for Auckland, whose role would be to set priorities for state spending in the city "and to decide and co-ordinate the allocation of discretionary funding".
Where, in all of this "aspirational" vision, is Mrs and Mrs Joe Bloggs ratepayer? Under such a charter "communities of interest" would become a notion as remote to them as living on Mars.
If the purpose of a decade of local government reform has been to decentralise control and increase community connection at its most intrinsic level, then the unaltered implementation of this plan will plainly deny the opportunity for people to make their voice heard where it should count.