Reynold Macpherson: Rotorua's Head Start Process Has Failed - The Minister Must Take Control

Rotorua Lakes Council’s handling of the Government’s Head Start reform process has a legitimacy problem that cannot be dismissed as the unavoidable consequence of a compressed timetable.

The deeper problem is that there was enough time for some people to be involved upstream.

Gary Moller: Wellington’s Water Bill - When the Money Tree Finally Runs Out

Introduction
From 1 July 2026, property owners throughout Wellington, Porirua and the Hutt Valley will receive a separate bill for drinking water, wastewater and stormwater from the new council-owned organisation, Tiaki Wai. Our's arrived today. These costs are presently collected through council rates, so the councils will remove the water component from their rates bills. However, this is not merely an accounting exercise in which the same amount of money moves from one invoice to another. The overall cost to households will rise, and for many homeowners the increase will be substantial.

William Foster: “Ripples never come back”: Why Political Motivations for Centralisation and Amalgamation ignore the subsequent economic and social costs.

Abstract: Centralisation/amalgamation can look administratively tidy while creating delayed democratic, fiscal and institutional costs. Yet centralisation repeatedly survives mixed empirical evidence because it aligns with the operating logic of hierarchical political systems themselves.

NZCPR Newsletter: Reform Update

The Coalition’s proposed shakeup of local government is well underway. Time is now running out for councils to decide on the shape of their mergers.

Gerry Eckhoff: A Dog’s breakfast

A dog’s breakfast has been placed on the menu for us all by a ministerial sous - chef and Minister of Local Government - Simon Watts. It is quite extraordinary that he thinks such far-reaching changes to local government require virtually no time being allocated for widespread consultation between councils and the people who employ them - the rate payer. Even more remarkable is the lack of published data that would help enable us all to make an informed judgment on all proposals.

What’s Wrong With Local Government

On The Platform Michael Laws chats about what’s wrong with local government, and why the government may make it worse, and his view on fixing it.

Click to view

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The amalgamation plans are descending into chaos

If you're a fan, like I am, of scrapping as many councils as possible because of how poorly the numpties on those councils are running the place, you're about to learn, as I am, that just because you and I like an idea doesn't mean everyone else does.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: There's already a good punishment for councillors who misbehave

All right - given the level of hostility we have at the moment towards local body councillors and councils, I suspect there'll be plenty of support for the idea I'm about to tell you about. But I would caution against getting too excited because it's a terrible idea.

Geoff Parker: Local Choice Cannot Override Democracy

Mariameno Kapa-Kingi argues that the Government's local government reforms represent an attack on local choice. But her argument contains a fundamental contradiction.

She claims that councils should be free to appoint iwi representatives as voting members because local communities may support those arrangements. Yet the very essence of democracy is that those who exercise voting power over public decisions should themselves be elected by the public.

Ryan Bridge: Wellington's endless spending on pen-pushers and reviews

You can't escape bureaucrats in Wellington; it's an occupational hazard.

Despite the bad press they get, they're not all useless.

But it depends on how you use them, and how often.

Take the Golden Mile disaster in Wellington, as just one example.

Centrist: Co-governance comes roaring back to life

Speaking to Duncan Garner, Steve Gibson, the Hastings councillor described the region’s new water structure as “Three Waters in drag” and said the core problem is not Māori, but unelected influence.

“Nothing to do with Māori, it’s to do with the unelected officials running the show,” he said. His warning is that power is being shifted away from elected councillors and towards people the public cannot remove.

Peter Bassett: From Sewage to Sovereignty: How a Tidy Idea Picks Up Extra Luggage

When Wellington’s pipes start bursting in public and sewage plants break down big-time, it’s only a matter of time before someone reaches for a constitutional solution.

One such suggestion, made recently by a former mayor turned regular commentator, is to take Wellington out of local government entirely and rehouse it as a national capital district — Canberra-style, Washington-style, with central government holding the reins.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Regional councils have got to go

The Government has announced this afternoon that it is scrapping regional councils - and I reckon you need to put this on your list of some of the best news that you have heard in a long time for turning this country around.

Regional councils have got to go.

Ryan Bridge: Will rate caps actually work?

This rates cap, how's it actually going to work.

I had Luxon on my Herald show yesterday, an announcement's coming in the next few weeks.

But ask any Mayor, not the ones who like disco toilets and golden miles, but the ones who already to the basic stuff and little else. They're cutting their cloth.

Ryan Bridge: My thoughts on rates caps

A rates cap is one of those policies that immediately sounds appealing.

Look no further than yesterday’s CPI number. It’s one of your top three inflation feeders.

So, throw a cap on them. Tie their hands behind their backs. Reign 'em in!

David Farrar: Throw it out

The Local Government Commission has published a draft code of conduct for local authority members. The idea is to have a standard one as best practice, but what truely have come up with is so terrible it should be scrapped.

Clive Bibby: Coverups and Culpability

No doubt this article will bring howls of indignant defence from those who should be held to account for the destruction that has taken place during the most recent Marlborough and the North Island East Coast floods in January of 2023.

Some will say it is easy to point the finger at those who had responsibilities for public safety after the event and they are right to do so but, unless we learn from the mistakes that could and should have been avoided, we will not be better prepared for the next one and our losses from these and similar events will just be compounded in the future.

Matua Kahurangi: The great co-governance swindle

The tribal takeover of local government

In modern New Zealand, a quiet revolution is underway. It’s not fought with placards or parliamentary votes, but in boardrooms and council chambers, behind closed doors, away from the people who actually pay the bills. This is the era of co-governance - a creeping transfer of power from elected officials to unelected tribal elites, rubber-stamped by faceless bureaucrats and backed by the silence of a spineless media. If you think this is some wild conspiracy, look no further than the growing list of councils now inking secret agreements with iwi groups without public consultation or oversight.

Zoran Rakovic - Selwyn’s 634 Pages of Silence: The Theatre of Democratic Surrender

Selwyn councillors received a 634-page agenda just 3 days before voting. Why did no one protest? A searing critique of silence, theatre, and complicity.

Let us begin not with outrage but with a shrug—the shrug that echoes from the silence of elected councillors handed a 634-page agenda with three working days to digest, interrogate, and resolve it. This is not merely a matter of poor administrative timing or clerical overload. No, the real scandal is not in the bureaucratic gesture itself but in the cynical normalisation of such acts, and more terrifyingly, in the docile submission by those elected to resist them. There is a quiet apocalypse taking place in local democracy, and its soundtrack is the passive assent of councillors who have, perhaps unconsciously, chosen comfort over conflict, posture over principle.

NZCPR Newsletter: Reversing the Cultural Takeover

All around New Zealand there’s a growing concern that a cultural takeover of our country is underway. It’s a problem that’s being exacerbated by the weaponisation of “Te Tiriti o Waitangi”, and the domination of the Maori language.