Nick Clark: Who decides, and how

Local government reform has turned into a numbers game. The government’s ‘Head Start’ asks how many councils we should have, and where the lines between their jurisdictions should be drawn. But a more important question is, what decisions should be made at each level of government?

My new research note, Head Start Done Right, argues that decisions should be made at the lowest level able to make them well. That approach is called subsidiarity.

Nick Clark: Head Start Done Right - A better way to reorganise local government

The Government wants to merge New Zealand’s councils into a smaller number of big councils. A new report from The New Zealand Initiative says this is the wrong fix.

In Head Start Done Right, Senior Fellow Nick Clark says the real problem is not that we have too many councils. It is that too much power has been taken away from local communities and moved to central government.

Nick Clark: The gumboot pilgrimage

Once a year, as the days shorten, a great migration begins. From the warm offices of Wellington and the cafes of central Auckland, the political class sets out for Mystery Creek, where the gates of Fieldays open and the country remembers that it has a countryside.

The suit is shed, the tie abandoned. In their place appears the sacred vestment of the season, the gumboot. Never mind that the wearer last touched mud at the previous election.

Nick Clark: Why 40 years of council mergers have failed to deliver

For forty years, New Zealanders have been told that fewer councils mean better government, and for forty years, the evidence has refused to oblige.

Until 1989, New Zealand had around 850 elected local government bodies. Councils sat alongside elected water catchment boards, pest destruction boards, harbour boards, drainage boards and electricity supply boards. The democratic granularity was sometimes confusing and occasionally inefficient. It was also the deepest civic infrastructure in the country.

Nick Clark: Bigger isn't better

Centralisation has been New Zealand's answer to local government's problems for decades. It has not worked.

Last week’s announcement by Ministers Simon Watts and Chris Bishop continues this approach. Councils will have three months to submit proposals to merge themselves or risk a government-led process that could impose mergers on them. The choice is framed as ‘flexibility’ but it is really Hobson’s choice – accept amalgamation or be forced into it. Either pathway would produce fewer, larger councils.

Nick Clark: The census that counts more by counting less

New Zealand has solved one of the great puzzles of modern government. A Bill currently before Parliament abolishes the census and declares its replacement to also be a census, only annual and therefore better.

Since the 1850s, this exercise required statisticians to ask every person in the country where they live, how many people they live with, what languages they speak, what faiths, if any, they observe, and much more. The results were invaluable but increasingly expensive.

The 2023 census cost $326 million, roughly $63 per person counted, assuming they were counted, which not all of them were.

Nick Clark: How to fix RMA Reform

New Zealand's resource management system is broken. Many attempts have been made over the past three decades to fix it. All have missed the mark.

Cue the latest attempt, the Planning Bill and Natural Environment Bill.

Nick Clark: Wellington knows best?

The central Government has a local government problem. Rates have been rising too fast, regional councils are seen as inefficient and unaccountable, and the public wants action. Fair enough. But the solutions on offer share a troubling assumption: that the best way to fix local government is to give Wellington more control.

Two recent consultations illustrate this starkly.

Nick Clark: The RMA reform we were promised is not the reform we got

New Zealand has been trying to fix its resource management system for the better part of three decades. The Resource Management Act has been amended virtually every year since 1991 and reviewed several times during that period. Yet reform has consistently failed.

The RMA has defeated its own purpose. It aimed to deliver sustainable management. Instead, it delivered a housing crisis, $1.3 billion a year in infrastructure consenting costs, 1,175 different zoning categories, and declines in freshwater quality and indigenous biodiversity - the environmental outcomes most directly within the planning system's control.

Nick Clark: Boring's blessings

The paint was still drying on the Auckland convention centre when Christopher Luxon delivered his State of the Nation speech on Monday. Some of the furniture had not arrived. The venue does not officially open until February.

Six hundred business leaders offered polite applause. Someone clapped at the mention of the India free trade deal, which seemed to startle the Prime Minister.

Nick Clark: Finally, RMA replacement worth the name

For over three decades, the Resource Management Act has been a significant hindrance to New Zealand's economic growth. It promised sustainable management but delivered housing crises, infrastructure delays, stifled productivity and environmental decline. Successive governments tinkered while the fundamental problems festered.

This week, the Government introduced legislation to finally address the disease.

Nick Clark: Fast-Tracking the Fast-Track Bill

On Monday morning, Eric Crampton and I appeared before the Environment Select Committee to present the Initiative’s submission on the Fast-Track Approvals Amendment Bill.

It is well known that the Bill, and the fast-track regime more generally, is controversial among environmentalists. Our concerns are more about process, but they are no less important.

Nick Clark: MMP After 30 Years - Time for Electoral Reform?

New Zealand's three-year parliamentary term is too short for effective government and the country needs more MPs to keep politicians accessible to voters.

“MMP has delivered fairer and more representative parliaments, but it’s time for an upgrade,” says Nick Clark, Senior Fellow at The New Zealand Initiative and author of our report examining 30 years of MMP in New Zealand.

Nick Clark: Elections boost the case for Localism

My stat of the week is 38 percent. This is the provisional voter turnout at the 2025 local elections.

Huge rates rises. Crumbling infrastructure. Worsening services. Dysfunction around council tables. Fractious relations between central and local government. New Zealanders have endured it all over the past term.

Nick Clark: Council chambers of the absurd

The Local Government Commission has been consulting on a draft Code of Conduct for Local Authorities.

The Code addresses what bureaucrats see as local government’s biggest crisis: councillors saying unpleasant things. Never mind that rates rose 12 percent last year and will rise another 9 percent this year. Never mind crumbling infrastructure. The real problem is hurt feelings.

Nick Clark: Electoral Amendment Bill - Fixing democracy's timing problem

Three weeks.

That is how long New Zealanders waited to know the outcome of the 2023 election. While coalition talks were delayed pending the declaration of results, most comparable democracies can declare theirs within hours or days and promptly begin to form their governments.

Nick Clark: Local government reform - curing the patient?

When council rates rise at five times the rate of inflation, while water pipes burst and potholes multiply, something has gone very wrong.

Council rates jumped 12% last year, the steepest increase in decades, and will on average increase 9% this year. Ratepayers are angry. No wonder there have been calls for the government to impose rates caps.

Nick Clark: Rate hikes and reforms force councils into tough decisions

New Zealand ratepayers are being mugged by reality.

After a 12 percent rates increase last year, dozens of councils are imposing another round of double-digit hikes. Yet the pipes still leak, the roads still crumble, and the bills keep climbing. Some councils are spending more and hiking rates just to stand still. The sector faces unprecedented fiscal pressure, and ratepayers are running out of patience.

This is not business as usual.

Nick Clark: Two months to ask if kids can feed lambs?

Woolly-headed regulations about farm kids feeding small animals, collecting eggs, and watering plants are up for review, but not before two months of chewing the cud.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment is holding a targeted consultation on agricultural health and safety, including whether little Johnny can safely help Mum with light chores on the farm.

Nick Clark: Towards a system that respects property rights - Tidy tweaks or real change?

After decades of planning gridlock, the government has promised to put property rights at the heart of New Zealand’s resource management system. But will its latest reforms deliver lasting change or just patch up the mess we already have?

The government is proposing sweeping changes across three packages covering infrastructure and development, the primary sector, and freshwater management. The direction is largely positive: streamlining infrastructure consenting, reducing housing barriers, easing regulatory burdens on farmers, and providing greater freshwater flexibility.