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Speaker 1: So the government's making moves to refocus local councils on

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Speaker 1: core services and to improve their accountability for ratepayers. Councils

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Speaker 1: will be focused on delivering basic services without paying attention

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Speaker 1: to the four well beings, which is social, environmental, economic

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Speaker 1: and cultural. I will also be required to do a

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Speaker 1: yearly report so people can compare rate increases, council spending

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Speaker 1: and debt to other councils. A leaderboard, if you will.

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Speaker 1: The Mayor of Queenstown is Glenn Lewis, who joins me

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Speaker 1: right now. Glynn, Hello Martin, do you focus on the

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Speaker 1: basics or not?

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Speaker 2: We hesty given our large proportion of the visitor population

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Speaker 2: to our district.

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Speaker 1: So hearing all this yesterday, how did you feel?

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Speaker 2: Look, this was well signposted earlier in the year by

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Speaker 2: the Minister and the Prime Minister at the Local government conference,

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Speaker 2: so it came to me as no surprise.

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Speaker 1: Sure, but how do you feel?

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Speaker 2: Look? I think some of the stuff asking for it's

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Speaker 2: all publicly available information now, so they're just going to

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Speaker 2: collate it and put a edible doesn't make men to

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Speaker 2: my feelings about it. It's the information's there, they're just

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Speaker 2: going to publish it in a different format.

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Speaker 1: This is absolutely true. The media used to do that

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Speaker 1: when we have more reporters. That's true. And of course

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Speaker 1: the question is our council's less transparent than central government?

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Speaker 1: And I would actually argue that councils are more transparent

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Speaker 1: than central government. I mean, how often do you get

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Speaker 1: to see the debate about what the finance minister is

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Speaker 1: doing with the budget?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? Look, all our workshops and decision making is all

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Speaker 2: open to the public. We don't have closed corse every Monday,

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Speaker 2: so and governments don't have to produce ten year budgets

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Speaker 2: or have asset management plans for all the assets they own.

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Speaker 2: So I think local government, certainly, let's say, has better

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Speaker 2: methodologies and looking after the assets they own on behalf

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Speaker 2: of the rate payers.

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Speaker 1: But the point being the government has got into a

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Speaker 1: vibe that councilors need to do better. So will these

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Speaker 1: measures make councilors do things better?

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Speaker 2: No, they'll just make them them the same as they've

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Speaker 2: always done them in the last teen fifteen years. Because

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Speaker 2: all the like I said, all the accountability measures as

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Speaker 2: they call them, we're doing anyway, and they're just going

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Speaker 2: to report them differently. And the whole problem earns that

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Speaker 2: no one reads those documents anyway. And I'm telling now

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Speaker 2: my rate pays don't get into the detail of my

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Speaker 2: lot to implan or the annual plan or the annual report.

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Speaker 2: I don't know how another document is going to solve it.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you are accountable. It's called the vote, Glenn lewis

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Speaker 1: Well said, thank you very much. Glenn is the mayor

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Speaker 1: of Queenstown.

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Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live

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Speaker 2: to News Talks it be from five am weekdays, or

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