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Speaker 1: Look, even people who think that councils do a fantastic

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Speaker 1: job generally must I now understand why the government is

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Speaker 1: going to have to pass laws to get them to

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Speaker 1: actually focus on doing their jobs. I mean, it has

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Speaker 1: been clear now for I would say at least four months,

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Speaker 1: if not longer, to councils that the government wants them

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Speaker 1: to drop the distractions and just get on with their work.

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Speaker 1: And yet councils just apparently can't help themselves, can they.

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Speaker 1: I mean last week, as recently as last week we

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Speaker 1: had totaling a city council voting to install unelected Mary

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Speaker 1: representatives on the council. That's not going to improve ratepayers'

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Speaker 1: lives one jot, but it's just going to cost them

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Speaker 1: more money, isn't it. Hasting's District Council did the same

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Speaker 1: thing three months ago with the youth councilors. Again, no

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Speaker 1: extra benefit to a rate payer, just extra cost to

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Speaker 1: a rate payer. Wellington City Council is today going to

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Speaker 1: debate whether they should submit their feels to the Government

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Speaker 1: on the Treaty Principal's Bill, which has nothing to do

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Speaker 1: with them, not their job at all. A bunch of

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Speaker 1: other councils have done this as well. This stuff is

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Speaker 1: still going on despite months now of the government saying

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Speaker 1: can you please just get back to doing your job

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Speaker 1: up and down the country, these guys show no sign

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Speaker 1: that they understand thus supposed to be cutting unnecessary spending

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Speaker 1: and focusing their minds on actually just running the council.

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Speaker 1: So it's come to this, right, So the government announced

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Speaker 1: yesterday it's going to pass legislation to force them to

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Speaker 1: do their jobs. And it's two parts to this. The

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Speaker 1: first is that the full wellbeing pillars that task counsels

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Speaker 1: with looking after economic wellbeing and social wellbeing and cultural

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Speaker 1: wellbeing and environmental well being, they're all going to be scrapped.

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Speaker 1: That was a bad idea from the last Labor government anyway.

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Speaker 1: It was so broad that it was meaningless, and so

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Speaker 1: therefore it gave counsels an excuse to basically expand their

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Speaker 1: meddling into pretty much anything, because pretty much anything is

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Speaker 1: a well being. And then the second thing is counsels

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Speaker 1: will be forced to report clearly and simply and publicly

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Speaker 1: what they're spending their money on and what they're charging

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Speaker 1: their rate payers, and hopefully as a result of this,

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Speaker 1: getting out the big stick. Hopefully it will mean that

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Speaker 1: the excuses are cut, the distractions are dropped, and these

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Speaker 1: guys focus their minds on doing more work for less

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Speaker 1: cost to rate payers as well, because hoping they get

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Speaker 1: the message and do it voluntarily clearly hasn't worked. For

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