Dr Eric Crampton: Regional councils shake-up an opportunity for reinvention

When plans to abolish regional councils were first rumoured, I was more than mildly sceptical.

It isn’t that I’m a giant fan of regional councils; I couldn’t name more than a couple of my own regional councillors, and I bet most of you can’t either. It’s rather that if regional councils didn’t exist, local councils would have to at least partially re-create them.

Kerre Woodham: Regional councils need to be streamlined

Regional councils are being abolished – or are they?

Thomas Coughan writing in the Herald makes a very good point, it's not the councils that are being abolished, it's the council laws.

Ani O'Brien: Government axes Regional Councils in historic overhaul

A necessary reset for Local Government

The Government’s announcement yesterday that it will abolish regional councils and replace them with new Combined Territories Boards, which will be regional bodies made up of mayors, is the biggest shake-up of local government in decades. And it’s about time. Regional councils have been probably the most invisible and least accountable tier of government in the country.

Peter Williams: Replacing Regional Councillors with Mayors Isn’t Reform

It’s a Shortcut

The government’s sudden decision to replace elected regional councillors with panels of district and city mayors has been sold as a bold stroke toward streamlining local government. But bold is not the same as wise, and decisive is not the same as thoughtful. In its rush to simplify a system that undoubtedly needs reform, the government has swung the axe at the wrong trunk.

Rather than fixing the machinery of local government, it has removed the very people elected to oversee that machinery — and installed a group already burdened with full-time jobs of their own.

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.

Chris Lynch: Government moves to abolish regional councils in landmark local government overhaul

The Government has unveiled plans it says will simplify how cities and regions are run, with proposals that include abolishing elected regional councillors and replacing them with new boards made up of mayors.

Ministers Chris Bishop and Simon Watts said the changes have been designed to cut duplication, reduce costs, and make it easier to plan for growth.

Peter Dunne: Regional Councils Unnecessary Overlay?

In politics, things often turn full circle. National's current musings about the future of regional councils following New Zealand First’s call for their abolition is the latest example.

Regional councils were established following major reforms instituted by the fourth Labour Government in 1989. The aim of those reforms was to streamline what was then considered to be a cumbersome and inefficient structure with over 850 ad hoc boards and councils.

David Farrar: Yes we should scrap regional councils

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says he wants to explore the possibility of scrapping New Zealand’s regional councils as the Government reforms the Resource Management Act.

NZ First minister Shane Jones told a local government forum last week his party does not see a compelling case for maintaining regional government.