The smoke signals are plain to see – there will be significant reform of local government in the near future. Those within central government are now openly expressing their concerns and frustrations with a poor performing local government sector.
This recent exchange between Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee and Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker reached soprano pitch.
It seems the Mr Brownlee is frustrated that the Council is too occupied with having its hand out for central government aid, doing too little to help itself.
That exchange came in a background of ratepayer protest against the Council and calls for mid-term elections. All is not well in Christchurch civic circles, and change seems inevitable.
It is fair to say that all is not well in local government generally.
The new Minister of Local Government Nick Smith also has local councils in the firing line. He commented in Parliament that in the decade since 2002, the average annual rate increase was 6.8% (compared to the CPI index of 3%).
In the decade before 2002, the average increase was 3.9%.
He said that had there not been the sharp rate increases, ratepayers would be paying on an average, $500 a year less in rates and the total annual rate take for all councils would be $1 billion less than it is today.
“The government is working on a package of reforms for local governments to ensure that these large increases do not continue,” Mr Smith said.
Fundamental flaws
The figures released by him were condemning, and quantified the concerns expressed by many people for many years.
Year 2002 was critical because reform of the Local Government Act gave councils general powers and required them to express the outcome of their policies as cultural, social, environmental and economic well-beings.
How this “happiness is more important than money” notion arrived onto our shores and ended up as legislation is an interesting story in itself, but the concept is fundamentally flawed.
Combining general powers with politics, a general lack of competency, and a diminished regard for the importance of money would always result in failure, and the socialist architects of the Act were out of touch to think otherwise.
Having spent two terms on the local council, I have come to the view councils that are not already disaster zones are simply disaster zones in the waiting.
Accountability missing
The failure is basically that councillors are not competent and/or courageous enough to force their staff to do a better job; it seems council chief executives are virtually unaccountable for poor financial performance and poor service delivery.
This is in stark contrast to private sector where (generally) directors know their role is to establish the organisation’s objectives and to make sure they are achieved by those paid to do so.
If time reveals staff are not up to the task, it is the responsibility of the directors to replace them with those who can. That is the way it should be in everyone’s interest.
Besides not knowing their role, eager-to-please councillors are generally not astute and strong enough to counter the approaches of a very long queue of activists who have identified local governments as the soft underbelly of politics.
We have seen this locally in the GE campaign, which, having been rebuffed by the central government, turned its attention to local government (and our local councils in particular) as a gateway.
Selfish motives
Instead of redirecting the lobby group back to central government, local councillors (with a rare exception) have entertained the advances and sometimes sought to use it to enhance their own political standing.
There are countless other examples, reserved seats on council by Maori activists, so-called “smart growth” limiting urban boundaries by environmental activists, being others.
Although Mr Smith’s reforms would be welcome, applause should be withheld until the nature of the reform is more visible.
Unfortunately, politicians usually say that the “answer” involves making local councils bigger; more influence is after all their stock in trade!
Bigger councils simply create bigger problems that are more difficult to correct, with Auckland being the obvious example.
Bigger councils are more removed from the communities they claim to represent and they take on an authoritarian personality and totally contradict the notion of councils being local.
Frank Newman is the author of numerous books on investment. He has worked as a share broker, investment adviser and University lecturer. He was a member of the Whangarei District Council for six years. The above article, which appeared on the website of New Zealand Centre for Political Research, has been reproduced here with the permission of its director Dr Muriel Newman.
