We are two weeks away from Chris Bishop's deadline for councils to submit their amalgamation plans so that we end up with a few large councils instead of dozens of small ones. And, two weeks out, the wheels are starting to come off.
Upper Hutt City Council has changed its mind. It doesn't want to amalgamate with Wellington anymore. By the looks of things, it made that decision this week.
That's a little worrying because the Wellington amalgamation felt like the slam-dunk, easy one. It's been talked about for such a long time, the boundaries are obvious, there should just be one council and the carve-up of a small region into so many councils is unbelievably stupid.
But despite all that, there's a problem. It doesn't look like it's going to happen easily.
Wairoa is flat-out refusing to amalgamate with anyone and it makes a good case for why. As the ever-sensible Mayor of Wairoa, Craig Little, says, the efficiencies would flow to the centres, not the edges. Wairoa is on the edge and, to be honest, he's right, isn't he?
Nelson wants to go with Tasman. Tasman doesn't want to go with Nelson.
Canterbury has five different options for how it could do this but it doesn't know which one to choose. Hamilton also doesn't know how to do it. "Megatron" is apparently one option. Kaipara doesn't want to join up with the other Northland councils, although they're happy to join up with each other.
Of course, this was always going to go this way when you think about it. Of course it was always going to descend into a fight.
Auckland descended into a fight. It still is a fight for some people. There are still people who moan about the Super City in Auckland and it's been nearly 20 years.
Spare a thought for Chris Bishop on this one because he's the minister responsible for all of this. His life already sucks. He's already breaking promises about Roads of National Significance. Auckland has already given him a good spanking over the density rules. Christopher Luxon has already taken away some of his favourite jobs. He's got the RMA reforms coming at him fast and those are going to be contentious as well.
And now he's got this drama, which, in the next two weeks, is likely to blow up in his face.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and radio broadcaster who hosts Newstalk ZB's weekday Drive-Time Show – where this article was sourced.
4 comments:
Can u imagine being one of the people being asked to merge your barely functioning council with the disaster that is Wellington? Of course no one wants a bar of it!
And then there is the question of which group of council bureaucratic numpties and halfwits will be running your town…..at least your own halfwits and numpties tend to live locally- so in a small town they can’t screw up too much. Imagine the clowns who got Wellington into the mess they’re in running things in your town- because we all know it wasn’t just the councillors themselves who created that sh’tshow ! What is Chris thinking?!
The appalling voter turnout numbers at local body elections makes it clear the majority of the residents couldn't care less who runs their local council or where its boundaries are located. So let's just save the money wasted on elections and appoint commissioners to every local body that cannot muster a minimum of 50% turnout. The residents would never notice! Its only the local pollys who are protesting because they see their local influence being threated. A typical reaction of a big fish in a small pond.
Appointing Commissioners sounds great…until you ask yourself, who will do the appointing? And then it begins to look like all the rest of the rorts that this country is so familiar with. Now how about fixed terms, balloted, using very specific filters designed to get (wait for it) those best suited to the job? Good God no!
Local govt.was established so individual localities whose aspirations did not match those of the country wide govt. would not be buried in the general melee and lose their individuality. Amalgamation neatly buries them
and puts another nail in the coffin of democracy. We had a flourishing local set-up in Eastbourne once and voted to retain it but the numbers of the other localities were too great and we lost it. Our rates went skyward,
we lost our bus and ferry services to less efficient organisations, our streets and gutters were neglected and it was a sorry outcome.
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