Roger Partridge: Have we Been Breaking Local Government by Trying to Fix it?

Local government is hard to defend. Rates are rising at more than three times inflation. Debt has doubled in less than a decade. Consents drag on while housing remains unaffordable.

Each generation of politicians has reached for the same fix for local government’s problems: bigger councils, fewer of them, and more decisions made in Wellington. The 1989 reorganisation cut local bodies from around 850 to 86. The 2010 Auckland reform put nearly 1.5 million people under a single council and twenty councillors.