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An exclusive investigation by Local Aotearoa shows that while 57 out of the country’s 78 councils, from our largest to our smallest, have opened up their previously secret workshops and briefings to the public, more than a fifth of the sector are still refusing to implement the Ombudsman’s recommendations from his October 2023 “Open for business” report, raising serious concerns over their commitment to transparency and accountability.

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown is under investigation by the Ombudsman. It follows the discovery by Local Aotearoa that his office had not only failed in an OIA response to disclose his attendance at a Wellington Mayoral Forum, but also that his recollection of what was discussed at that meeting differed substantially from what the mayors in attendance recorded as being discussed around local government amalgamation in the greater Wellington region.

With Local Water Done Well, Regional Deals, and another attempt at replacing the Resource Management Act in the works, sooner rather than later, the Coalition is going to have to grapple with the state of our local government system. Given they rejected the recommendations from the Future for Local Government review, any process to reform the sector is going to have to go back to square one. So what might that involve?

Despite being a passionate advocate for local government and its role in helping our communities to grow and thrive, there’s widespread acceptance that the current system is unsustainable and that something needs to change. However, there’s little agreement on what that change should actually be, and it all boils down to - you guessed it - politics.

If you feel like hardly a day goes by without there being another story about councils under financial stress, you wouldn’t be wrong. Despite years of warnings, the financial system underpinning local government is creaking more than ever before, yet there appears to be little political appetite to make meaningful changes.

One unspoken casualty of the appointment of a Crown Observer to Wellington City Council is the cause of regional amalgamation, with the politics of the situation likely too difficult for any locally-led initiative to overcome. However, all is not lost, with the Coalition’s Local Water Done Well reform likely to force central government to take action on the issue as councils around the country grapple with how to remain financially viable in a post-reform world.