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By trying to infer a link between the inclusion of the wellbeing framework in local government legislation and higher rates increases, you could be forgiven for thinking that Local Government Minister Simeon Brown was warming up to join the Welsh at the Battle of Agincourt such is the desperation of the longbow he’s drawn.
Despite overwhelming evidence that water meters are objectively one of the most cost effective ways for communities to promote more efficient water use, quickly identify and prevent water wastage, lower costs of delivering water, and buy precious time to bring new water supplies and infrastructure online, few issues make politicians duck for cover like water metering.
Just as the previous Labour Government was forced to resort to compulsion as councils tried to go against the flow of its Three Waters reforms, now the National-led Coalition is starting to be swept down the same river as councils navigate the fraught political currents around water reform, resulting in many wanting to divert course away from the Coalition’s preferred joint water CCO approach.
Vision for Wellington, the allegedly apolitical advocacy group that’s meant to be campaigning for a brighter future for Wellington City, has been caught yet again in another controversy that further erodes what little credibility the group had left and leaves lingering questions over the sincerity, and ultimately competence, of those involved.
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has finally gotten his overhaul of Auckland Transport over-the-line with Local Government and Transport Minister Simeon Brown, marking a significant win for the mayor who promised as a candidate to get rid of council-controlled organisations “as quickly as possible.”
There’s a gap in perceptions of local government between community expectations of what they think their elected representatives can do, and how much power and influence our collaborative governance model actually gives them. The executive mayoralty is often advanced as a solution, not least because it seems to address those expectations and mitigates concerns around the power of council chief executives, but is it really the answer?
In a bizarre post across his social media channels, ACT Party leader David Seymour has taken aim at Porirua City Councillor Kathleen Filo (Ngāti Toa Rangitira) for getting her council organised to oppose his Treaty Principles Bill and encouraging other councils to do likewise. But we have bad news for Seymour - local government politicians are allowed to disagree with you.
With local government it’s easy to write stories about issues in the sector, especially when it comes to problems with transparency. It’s why Wellington City Council’s award winning and transparency enhancing tool Mātai Manapori - TrackDem is such a welcome breath of fresh air, highlighting the exciting innovation that often takes place in local government but seldom gets acknowledged more broadly.
Following on from our exclusive investigation that revealed 17 councils are refusing to open up their secret workshops and briefings, Local Aotearoa has written to the Chief Ombudsman calling on him to chase up and call out those councils which have rejected his recommendations to lift trust in local government through improving its openness and transparency.
One of the common points of reference when discussions arise about whether New Zealand has too many, too few, or just enough councils is the hyper-local approach taken in much of Western Europe. This begs the question - why do some European countries have so many local government entities while New Zealand has comparatively few?
Local Government Minister Simeon Brown has reversed course on plans for proposals for Regional Deals to be by “invitation only” and has now invited all councils to work together with their regional colleagues to submit proposals with the region’s top five priorities and projects. The first deal is expected to be finalised by December 2025, with three deals anticipated to be in place just in time for the 2026 General Election.
The Department of Internal Affairs’ Local Government branch is meant to provide policy advice and an element of system stewardship for the local government sector, but their advice to Local Government Minister Simeon Brown on intervening in Wellington City Council contained an absolute howler of an error that should have been picked up.
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.
A letter writer to The Post appeared to be confused about the powers of a Crown Observer, listing out a number of “jobs” they wanted to see Wellington City’s observer attend to such as stopping all capital projects and halting the recruitment of a new Chief Executive. So Local Aotearoa decided to clear up the confusion over what a Crown Observer can and can’t do.
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.
Veteran Newstalk ZB journalist and now frequent opinion columnist Barry Soper has wrongly claimed that Tory Whanau only won Wellington’s 2022 mayoral election because of the city’s Single Transferrable Vote system. Because Soper evidently has no idea what the election results actually were, Local Aotearoa is setting the record straight.
