Regional councils have got to go.
It's not so much the elected councillors, right? I mean, obviously they have to go as well.
But we simply don't need that layer of bureaucracy with regional councils, when we already have city and district councils and we already have central Government. It's just far too much.
But scrapping the elected guys, that's only gonna save us a little bit of money. We're talking peanuts here.
The real money is going to be saved in the stuff that happens in the back office at the regional councils, the stuff that's done by the unelected officials and the consultants that they bring in.
And when I'm what I'm talking about here is the plans.
Now let me tell you about the plans - you probably don't realize it because this stuff is so boring it will put you to sleep - but regional councils around this country are blowing tens of millions of dollars and wasting years upon years on planning new rules.
The Waikato Regional Council's Healthy Rivers Plan Change 1, let's just call it PC1 for short - PC1 at last count has cost $23 million.
That was about 3 years ago. The plan is not even fully implemented yet, so you can add to that $23 million.
Now, that is just the plan for the rivers in the Waikato. It's not the plan for rivers anywhere else in the country, it's for nothing else in the Waikato, just the rivers in Waikato - and it's already cost $23 million.
Bear in mind every single region, and there are 11 of them, makes its own plans. So you could take that $23 million and just add to it. Around this country, we're just racking up the millions.
This stuff, as I said, takes years. The Waikato river plan, PC1, that was notified in 2016. A decade on, it's still not in full operation because of appeals and all kinds of wrangles around it.
And this is where huge amounts of the rates that you pay are wasted, right? So scrapping the regional councils is potentially a massive, massive saving for us.
The question is - what do the Nats replace it with?
If they then replace the regional councils with a system where maybe we have just one set of rules or four sets of rules or ten sets of rules that regions can choose from, pre-written rules that they can roll out that they don't have to plan themselves rather than designing their own, that may in fact be a better system.
Now the devil is in the details, but so far this has the potential to be some of the best news for this country.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show.
3 comments:
Heather, you don’t know what you are talking about. If you really want to simplify local govt abolish all the TAs. All those district councils have grown like mushrooms, as have their rate takes. Regional councils (14 I think) might be much cheaper to maintain than all the DCs. In fact I’m certain.
like so many, you have know understanding of the role and functions of Regional Councils.
The catchment functions alone are extremely important and farmers and rural people will suffer from this move.
Don't forget it has been Central Government that mucked around and allowed things like climate change and cultural aspects to creep in and add costs.
Far too important functions to give to a board and a Mayor who will be a dead loss in this area.
TLA's need a bomb under them. We will continue to see the same waste and high costs unless they are changed.
This is a disaster of a move.
On the face of it, this proposal leaves regional councils intact, but garrots the governance of them. What’s that going to save? R Cs were formed in 1989 as a result of growing environmental challenges and the fractured nature of the bodies that were responsible; catchment bds for soil conservation and water (flood protection, drainage, allocation), pest bds for animal pest control and district councils (formed out of county councils) for plant pest control. These responsibilities were wrapped up into R Cs, along with port ownership, harbour bds being abolished, and a few other functions, such as regional planning and promotion. By and large this has worked well and stood the test of time for 35 years.
So now governance will be by mayors, at least for now. These are busy people, and mostly be elected officers with a primary interest in social functions – being the responsibility of T As. So, if you have a problem of, say, water allocation for your crop, a dangerous weed infestation, deer, possum or wallaby infestation, etc., you take your case to the mayor.
The functions of both R Cs and T As are vital to the well-being and daily life of all citizenry. But they can be combined into one – a unitary authority, and work well, as has been shown in Gisborne, top of the South Island, and, more recently Auckland, and I think the way to go for the whole country. The real challenge is that expenditure on their essential responsibilities is carried out with greater efficiency, and my observations are that they most certainly can be. Whatever, accountability must be maintained, and representation accessible.
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