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All in Opinion
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
As speculation mounts over who might be appointed to be Local Government Minister Simeon Brown’s Crown Observer on Wellington City Council, it’s worth considering why exactly the intervention has been made and what areas of expertise you’d need in order to be able to best investigate and assist the council with the areas of concern that triggered the intervention in the first place.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by everything that’s going on. It feels like there's an ever growing and seemingly endless list of things that you want to, or feel expected to, care about. It can be disheartening to see those in power often plow ahead with changes without any interest in listening, let alone compromising. Instead of disengaging, it's important to keep on trying to make a difference, as nothing will ever get fixed if we walk away from challenging issues and difficult times.
In the nearly 35 years since 850 local government entities were merged into 86, there has been some additional rationalisation, most notably with the formation of the single Auckland Council, but the system and its boundaries remain mostly the same. However, with water reforms progressing, city and regional deals on the horizon, and discussions about council amalgamations spreading, pressure for change is building.
Two pieces of media coverage from Radio New Zealand caught my eye this morning. First was an interesting explainer from Radio New Zealand’s Katie Kenny, “Missing mayor, record rates rises, and Tauranga's election: What's going on with councils?”. The second was RNZ’s The Detail podcast “A tale of two mayors” where Tom Kitchin spoke with The New Zealand Herald’s Simon Wilson and Georgina Campbell about their perspectives on the mayors of Auckland and Wellington respectively.
A process which began more than three years ago to much fanfare was extinguished in the blink of an eye on the evening of Friday 5 July as Local Government Minister Simeon Brown quietly put the Future for Local Government Review out of its misery via a Beehive press release. Now it looks like progressive iterations, rather than wholesale reformation, is on the cards for local government.
In the National-led Coalition’s third quarter action plan one item hasn’t received the attention it deserves - Cabinet deciding of the framework for National’s city and regional deals. So what might be on the cards for local government when negotiating these deals finally gets underway?
