Local Government NZ is supposed to be involved in promoting localism, but they got sidetracked with their Three Waters campaign that would have removed local ownership of water infrastructure. Left-wing racial activism took precedence over campaigning for more delegated power over core local services.
Christopher Luxon grew a spine and took a sledgehammer to the egos of the councillors, useless bureaucrats, and leftist activists at the Local Government NZ conference this week. Leftist journalists were quick to accuse him of abandoning the National Party's commitment to more localism in New Zealand.
His response was simple and good: localism involves duties and responsibilities. This is a very different application to what the left would like from localism. Their idea involves activists doing whatever they want and claiming a mandate from "the community" with a blank cheque of devolved power from central government. All the power, with none of the responsibilities. Even more importantly, they want no consequences for failure to deliver services in the national interest. Perhaps the voters ought to have a greater rule in making these judgments, but local elections seem to have little effect and the bureaucracies often have more power than our councillors.
Subsidiarity is about setting appropriate levels and spheres for decision making and responsibility to deliver services. There is also the levying and spending of taxes which should correspond as much as possible to paying for these services. Subsidiarity will place most of the schooling in the hands of local parents, which is something that charter schools aim to deliver. Subsidiarity keeps the ownership of water infrastructure with local councils. I'm sure our friends on the left agree with these foundational outcomes of localism.
No, the leftist plan for localism is simply to insulate themselves from responsibility. They'll spend all your money on promoting moral degeneracy and their vanity projects while infrastructure delivery takes a back seat. They want localism to mean that the central government can't force them to deliver the very responsibilities that have been delegated to the local level.
Mayor Wayne Brown has challenged the government to give him direct control over "council controlled organisations" like Auckland Transport. This would be more genuine localism in action, giving Aucklanders proper control and responsibility over their transport network through the directly elected mayor. A quandary remains to be solved: if the central government is the funding backstop then we can never have proper control and responsibility.
Delineating better powers for local government would be a big step forward for New Zealand, but first the crazy people currently running local governments need to be reigned in. It needs to be made illegal for them to engage in political activism that is not under their localist remit. We the people at the local level also need to get better at organising campaigns to clear out the degenerates currently infesting and crippling our councils.
Many countries have three-tiered governments, which would be preferable in New Zealand also: local, provincial, and national. The "supercity" problem would also be solved with a proper layer of regional government, tailored to the needs of each province, that had clearly defined responsibilities separate to the local councils. However, before we dream of what a focus on greater localism can do for us, we must first ensure that the current system of local government is able to live up to its responsibilities. It seems we have a long way to go.
Dieuwe is the editor of Right Minds NZ. - where this article was sourced. In addition to conservative politics and reactionary thought, he likes books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.
His response was simple and good: localism involves duties and responsibilities. This is a very different application to what the left would like from localism. Their idea involves activists doing whatever they want and claiming a mandate from "the community" with a blank cheque of devolved power from central government. All the power, with none of the responsibilities. Even more importantly, they want no consequences for failure to deliver services in the national interest. Perhaps the voters ought to have a greater rule in making these judgments, but local elections seem to have little effect and the bureaucracies often have more power than our councillors.
Subsidiarity is about setting appropriate levels and spheres for decision making and responsibility to deliver services. There is also the levying and spending of taxes which should correspond as much as possible to paying for these services. Subsidiarity will place most of the schooling in the hands of local parents, which is something that charter schools aim to deliver. Subsidiarity keeps the ownership of water infrastructure with local councils. I'm sure our friends on the left agree with these foundational outcomes of localism.
No, the leftist plan for localism is simply to insulate themselves from responsibility. They'll spend all your money on promoting moral degeneracy and their vanity projects while infrastructure delivery takes a back seat. They want localism to mean that the central government can't force them to deliver the very responsibilities that have been delegated to the local level.
Mayor Wayne Brown has challenged the government to give him direct control over "council controlled organisations" like Auckland Transport. This would be more genuine localism in action, giving Aucklanders proper control and responsibility over their transport network through the directly elected mayor. A quandary remains to be solved: if the central government is the funding backstop then we can never have proper control and responsibility.
Delineating better powers for local government would be a big step forward for New Zealand, but first the crazy people currently running local governments need to be reigned in. It needs to be made illegal for them to engage in political activism that is not under their localist remit. We the people at the local level also need to get better at organising campaigns to clear out the degenerates currently infesting and crippling our councils.
Many countries have three-tiered governments, which would be preferable in New Zealand also: local, provincial, and national. The "supercity" problem would also be solved with a proper layer of regional government, tailored to the needs of each province, that had clearly defined responsibilities separate to the local councils. However, before we dream of what a focus on greater localism can do for us, we must first ensure that the current system of local government is able to live up to its responsibilities. It seems we have a long way to go.
Dieuwe is the editor of Right Minds NZ. - where this article was sourced. In addition to conservative politics and reactionary thought, he likes books, gardening, biking, tech, reformed theology, beauty, and tradition.
1 comment:
We use to have "localism" with real practical unpaid councilors who got the job done without all the State sanctioned red tape groveling that we have today. This was prior to the 1986 State Owned Enterprise Act, an act that made every trading department of the State into a "for profit corporation", including councils, police, IRD, hospitals ect.
This is because the State itself became a for profit corporation in 1986 when they replaced our 1852 Constitution Act with the 1986 Constitution Act.
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