Speaker 1: Yea.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New.
Speaker 3: Zealand Herald.
Speaker 2: Regional Territorial Unitary Wards and Boards. Local government in New
Speaker 2: Zealand is made up of seventy eight different councils that
Speaker 2: make the decisions we encounter daily the Rhodes Air, rubbish
Speaker 2: waters environment. It's all local government. So why has central
Speaker 2: government announced a need for change and why has the
Speaker 2: Prime Minister himself implored councils to.
Speaker 3: Quote stop doing dumb stuff.
Speaker 2: Today On the front page of Victoria. University of Wellington,
Speaker 2: Associate Professor in Politics, Lara Grieves is with us to
Speaker 2: take us through what this all means and what the
Speaker 2: future could hold for our local councils. So Laura, let's
Speaker 2: talk first about the rates cap. So that's the annual
Speaker 2: rates increases would be limited to between two and four percent.
Speaker 2: Consultation has begun and they want the laws passed through
Speaker 2: the House by the start of twenty twenty seven in
Speaker 2: place by twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 3: Now, on one hand.
Speaker 2: Yay lower rates, right, the days of double digits would
Speaker 2: be over, whether permitting. Of course, there will be exemptions
Speaker 2: for things like natural disasters and things like that. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, there are concerns that the cuts
Speaker 2: will mean cuts to basic services. And I wanted to
Speaker 2: ask you, is it a myth that councils spend a
Speaker 2: lot of money on stupid stuff.
Speaker 3: That's a hard one, right, because on a day to
Speaker 3: day basis, everyone's filling the pinch, everyone's going to the supermarket,
Speaker 3: and it's so expensive and people are kind of like
Speaker 3: living their lives, trying to have a picture al rent
Speaker 3: and all of those bits and pieces. So if they
Speaker 3: are a homeowner and they get that rates bill and
Speaker 3: they hear about those rates increases, they kind of feel,
Speaker 3: I don't know, mixed feelings around, well, why can't the
Speaker 3: council manage money better? I have to manage my budget better.
Speaker 3: And that's a lot a lot of people are feeling
Speaker 3: on a day to day basis, And of course, if
Speaker 3: you own a house, you know there's an argument that
Speaker 3: you would pass those rates increases onto renters as well.
Speaker 3: So it affects kind of everyone, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people are quite concerned about. Yeah, there's double digit rates increases,
Speaker 3: like you said, However, on a day to day basis,
Speaker 3: the council does fund a lot of good things that
Speaker 3: kind of make our communities communities a lot of good
Speaker 3: things that we use a lot. I mean, as an academic,
Speaker 3: I use the libraries a lot. But that's one thing.
Speaker 3: But people go and give books to their kids. You know.
Speaker 3: There's the kind of rubbish delivery kind of pretty important.
Speaker 3: You know, if you've ever been to a country that
Speaker 3: doesn't have those sorts of services, very important something we need.
Speaker 3: There's also the things around the water infrastructure. Wellington's problems
Speaker 3: have really highlighted that, different things around transport and roading,
Speaker 3: and I'll just all sorts of bits and pieces there
Speaker 3: that we don't really think about on a day to
Speaker 3: day basis, just kind of take advannadov in living our lives.
Speaker 3: So this then becomes a bit of an ashure around. Okay,
Speaker 3: so if council has less money to be able to
Speaker 3: fund these things and they have to prioritize different bits
Speaker 3: and pieces, it may mean that we end up in
Speaker 3: more of say like a user pay system or something
Speaker 3: along those lines, which then that becomes a bit of
Speaker 3: a cultural issue for New Zealanders who are used to
Speaker 3: say free or cheap public pools or library services and
Speaker 3: bits and pieces like that. Ultimately, the majority at polling shows,
Speaker 3: and this was put it on the Herald, that seventy
Speaker 3: five percent of people support these rates caps increase caps.
Speaker 3: A lot of those questions comes down to how you
Speaker 3: ask the question though, that's what a lot of political
Speaker 3: science that should say. So if I say, do you
Speaker 3: want lower taxes or lower rates? People go yes. But
Speaker 3: then if I say, if that means that you have
Speaker 3: to pay every time you go to the library or
Speaker 3: have to pay for services through some other kind of
Speaker 3: levee or tax, would you want that? People go no.
Speaker 3: So it's it's one of those kind of hardolitical issues
Speaker 3: that people have a gut reaction on, but when they
Speaker 3: look into it more, their opinion might change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I see that both Labor and the Greens oppose
Speaker 2: the rate's cap and that's despite that polling. Like you said,
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of kiwis support it. But again the
Speaker 2: questioning around that we'd have to look at that. But
Speaker 2: I imagine that this would be a move that will bode
Speaker 2: well for national calm election time, because they've not only
Speaker 2: now got your soft on crime, but they've got the
Speaker 2: you want people to pay more rates or something, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like, so, is this quite a
Speaker 2: clever tactic going into twenty twenty six?
Speaker 3: We have to think about what the big issues are
Speaker 3: for people, right, and so the cost of living or
Speaker 3: the economy or something around affordability day to day is
Speaker 3: a big issue for New Zealand. Isn't a big issue
Speaker 3: in polling, like, that's what they consistently say, So this
Speaker 3: kind of would on the surface look like it would
Speaker 3: help to alleviate that for people. So that might be
Speaker 3: a big tech for voters. Kind of overall, we don't
Speaker 3: see in a lot of the sort of voting data
Speaker 3: and a lot of the political science literature that people
Speaker 3: are local government voters like that's not a big issue
Speaker 3: high up on their thing. But it might be that
Speaker 3: this kind of makes it feel to people like that
Speaker 3: costs will come under control, So it gives them that
Speaker 3: greater sense of control and kind of hope for the
Speaker 3: future around this. Again, whether that's an actual you know,
Speaker 3: economic reality or fact or not, that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: will come out in the wash, so to speak. So
Speaker 3: that I guess part of that broader conversation of does
Speaker 3: it look like that, you know, national will be tough
Speaker 3: on spending like they're tough, say they're tough on crime.
Speaker 3: It's part of that broader package or package of ideas
Speaker 3: that they'll be going to the election on. And yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that that will contribute to that discourse and
Speaker 3: bits and pieces. We know that people generally, you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at the groups of society that people
Speaker 3: don't tend to support on a day to day basis,
Speaker 3: you know it's the council and other politicians and normally
Speaker 3: not high out the kind of trust ranking. So I
Speaker 3: think that local government and local government spending is a
Speaker 3: kind of sensible rhetorical, discursive, kind of target or group
Speaker 3: that you could talk about in negative ways that won't
Speaker 3: get a lot of pushback, but will help to kind
Speaker 3: of contribute to this overall package of policies or brand
Speaker 3: that as a party national will get tough on things
Speaker 3: like spending and waste for spending.
Speaker 1: Are you frustrated off the performance of your local council, Well,
Speaker 1: the good news is that changes come out and the
Speaker 1: government is acting. We think local government has lost its way,
Speaker 1: it's lost its social license.
Speaker 3: This is all about thripping cost out.
Speaker 1: Of the system, reducing duplication, making it more organizationally efficient
Speaker 1: and ultimately getting better value.
Speaker 3: For money for rate payers. But here's the take home point.
Speaker 1: Something's got to change because the status bob is not acceptable.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, at the same time, IRMA reform minister Chris
Speaker 2: Bishop has described potential changes to local authorities. He says
Speaker 2: it's the most significant changes potentially to local government since
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine. Tell me about these ideas. What ideas
Speaker 2: does he have for local government?
Speaker 3: Well, what we've seen over the years is that you know,
Speaker 3: local government was established and we've just kind of gone
Speaker 3: along long all through the eighties, nineties, two thousands and
Speaker 3: so on. So this kind of local government structure was created.
Speaker 3: It's evolved in little bits and pieces over time, but
Speaker 3: there haven't been that substantive structural change. I have to
Speaker 3: say over the past sort of fifteen years. My career
Speaker 3: in politics political science is that we often do wring
Speaker 3: our hands over local government and kind of go, oh,
Speaker 3: something needs to change. There was a local government review
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three that had a bunch of recommendations.
Speaker 3: Every time we have local government elections. I spent a
Speaker 3: lot of time talking about turnout being love and the
Speaker 3: issues around turnout. So we know that structurally there are
Speaker 3: some issues with local government. And one of the kind
Speaker 3: of debates in terms of local government is is it
Speaker 3: too big? Is it too complicated? Is it too bureaucratic?
Speaker 3: And if you're of a party on the right, you're
Speaker 3: generally going to say yes. You know, the Taxpayers Union
Speaker 3: have been campaigning for the reduced rates, the less spending,
Speaker 3: a less bureaucratic structure. ACTS National tend to campaign on
Speaker 3: this as well and tend to kind of raise these ideas.
Speaker 3: It was the ACT party that amalgamated. They take credit
Speaker 3: for amalgamating the Auckland councils as well. I remember they're
Speaker 3: all the different kind of North Shore Council, all of those,
Speaker 3: but amalgamated and twenty ten as a result of some
Speaker 3: of their work. So this has been a long kind
Speaker 3: of running issue of can you kind of cut truck
Speaker 3: and change something in local government. The government has proposed
Speaker 3: removing the eleven regional councils and instead kind of creating
Speaker 3: these committees to oversee that work. A lot of the
Speaker 3: regional council workers around resource management like land news planning
Speaker 3: and environmental water type matters. All of those bits and pieces,
Speaker 3: so basically try to make changes to that system to
Speaker 3: remove that bureaucracy. What we have seen when local government
Speaker 3: has changed, for example around the supercity, is that you
Speaker 3: don't end up like there's still those roles still have
Speaker 3: to exist in some way. There's still often other people
Speaker 3: that come in to do the job. You couldn't drop
Speaker 3: a lot of those functions. And the other thing within
Speaker 3: that we're still to kind of stare is what happens
Speaker 3: around citivity and kapu and EWA and local government in
Speaker 3: that space. So yeah, it's really overall an argument of
Speaker 3: do you want to kind of maintain the current level
Speaker 3: of government in the structure or do you want to
Speaker 3: cut some of it away. And we've seen this government's
Speaker 3: general policy agenda has been to reduce bits and pieces
Speaker 3: in the sort of policy public sector governance structures, and
Speaker 3: so this kind of smaller government, reducing some of the
Speaker 3: levels of local council makes a lot of sense in
Speaker 3: terms of their overall direction as a government.
Speaker 2: Because a lot of people say what would be able
Speaker 2: to say the name of the mayor right where they live.
Speaker 2: A smaller group probably know their local counselor maybe because
Speaker 2: you know, forty percent turnout for local ellections. A few
Speaker 2: people out there must know their local counselors, but you'd
Speaker 2: be hard pressed to know who your regional counselor is,
Speaker 2: or who the CEO of your regional council is or something.
Speaker 2: For example, Hey, so there does seem to be too
Speaker 2: many cooks in the kitchen in that respect. But you're
Speaker 2: saying if somebody is looking after I don't know, like
Speaker 2: E can for example, Environment Canterbury. They look out for
Speaker 2: all of the wetlands and they've got, you know, these
Speaker 2: massive projects about natural resources and things like that that'll
Speaker 2: just have to be amalgamated into the christ Church City
Speaker 2: Council presumably.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that's kind of the broad direction of
Speaker 3: travel there. I think that you don't really think about
Speaker 3: local government until something goes wrong, you know, or like
Speaker 3: you need to think about local government. And I would
Speaker 3: say different stakeholder groups think about local government a lot more.
Speaker 3: Say you're in a sports clubs than you're on the
Speaker 3: committee of that sports club. We're doing some kind of
Speaker 3: volunteer work. I think that that's where you would think
Speaker 3: more about your local government and the functions there. Or Yeah,
Speaker 3: if they do something that really irks you, really annoys you.
Speaker 3: I think that that's where you think about local government,
Speaker 3: because they sure do have low levels of voted turnout,
Speaker 3: and generally there's a low level of awareness or knowledge about,
Speaker 3: you know, what they do on a day to day,
Speaker 3: week to week, month to month basis. So there's that
Speaker 3: that problem, and that that problem has been one that
Speaker 3: has been persisting for decades. Is what exactly to do
Speaker 3: structurally about local government to make sure it's a sufficient
Speaker 3: as possible and that it's actually fulfilling the needs of
Speaker 3: the community and the community cares enough to turn out
Speaker 3: to vote. Do these reforms kind of help help to
Speaker 3: fix some of that potentially? I mean, we will see
Speaker 3: what happens. I mean, if if it goes into gets
Speaker 3: gets in and gets put in place and time and
Speaker 3: with the election and puts and pieces there. But I mean,
Speaker 3: I think a big frustration to some of us who've
Speaker 3: kind of taught on these issues is, yeah, the layers
Speaker 3: of publication and the lack of kind of clarity of
Speaker 3: what it is that everyone does on a day to
Speaker 3: day basis, and it's still opaque for students who don't
Speaker 3: know that little alone you kind of go on the
Speaker 3: street kind of person, the average vita. So it's a
Speaker 3: big problem, and I'm not sure that the reforms that
Speaker 3: have been proposed will fix that big, broad structural problem.
Speaker 3: But it's like someone's doing something finally in local government,
Speaker 3: which hasn't always been the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like even the fact that we're starting to kind
Speaker 2: of talk about it again, I suppose, But do you
Speaker 2: reckon that those suggestions for reform are actually a bit light,
Speaker 2: Like could we see, for example, an amalgamation of councils
Speaker 2: into one.
Speaker 3: Like the Auckland super City.
Speaker 2: So I was looking at this map of all of
Speaker 2: the regional councils and you know, the district councils, the
Speaker 2: local boards, etc. Why Cato region has like ten district
Speaker 2: councils or something like that. And I remember we were
Speaker 2: down there speeding to the Waititomo mayor, and even he
Speaker 2: mentioned to us that maybe, you know, there could be
Speaker 2: some amalgamation of those smaller councils, especially as well, because
Speaker 2: though some of those councilors are only paid and I say,
Speaker 2: only paid twenty to fifty k a year compared to
Speaker 2: the bigger councils like Auckland, You've got over one hundred
Speaker 2: k year for some of those counselors.
Speaker 3: So is it time to have.
Speaker 2: A much bigger, harsher conversation than the one we're even
Speaker 2: having now?
Speaker 3: Well, what I would say is that there are various
Speaker 3: reviews that I've seen haven't necessarily proposed a structure. They've
Speaker 3: proposed principles or ideas or values, but not necessarily a
Speaker 3: structure of let's sort it out. This is where I
Speaker 3: would like to see something like some citizens assemblies or
Speaker 3: some deliberative democracy where you randomly select one hundred people
Speaker 3: from whatever town, bring them together and get them to
Speaker 3: discuss these issues and try to figure out what actually
Speaker 3: a good kind of system with a good mandate looks like.
Speaker 3: And local government, I mean a lot to do. Any
Speaker 3: of that would mean investing time, resources, reporting another review
Speaker 3: a bunch of experts, and it would just be another one,
Speaker 3: and then ultimately would that report just end up filed
Speaker 3: on some minister's desk. But I think that ultimately a
Speaker 3: lot of the local government structures were set up more
Speaker 3: than a century ago, you know the reality, Yeah, the
Speaker 3: way like I'm thinking back to the borough councils and
Speaker 3: all of those bits and pieces, And it's like governments,
Speaker 3: I think generally and not making those big structural changes
Speaker 3: in a lot of areas of our lives, right like
Speaker 3: you know, the economy, but and pieces. So I don't
Speaker 3: necessarily think that we can expectment some government to actually
Speaker 3: do it, actually sit down and go, how is this
Speaker 3: going to be organized? What is an efficient their way
Speaker 3: in the way that say, you know, electorates are organized
Speaker 3: where you have say seventy thousand people per electorate, and
Speaker 3: that's an electorate, that's a geographic area, and it's drawn
Speaker 3: a certain way. So I think ultimately it would be
Speaker 3: great if someone did just like go, okay, we're going
Speaker 3: to take a global view, We're going to sort this
Speaker 3: out once and sort this out with some kind of
Speaker 3: for US party mandate and get it sorted into the future.
Speaker 3: That would be ideal, But I can't see us doing
Speaker 3: that the way that our current politics are set out.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be a great service if labor
Speaker 3: and national will get together and sort it out for
Speaker 3: the decades to come, but instead we will have all
Speaker 3: of these kind of I'm sure it's kind of amusing
Speaker 3: spending decisions and these like local government situations in the future.
Speaker 3: And I imagine that in ten years time we'll probably
Speaker 3: be sitting here having the same conversation.
Speaker 4: You know, stop doing dumb stuff. You know, did you
Speaker 4: need to spend two million dollars here in Wellington on a.
Speaker 3: Public toilet block?
Speaker 4: No money on Joda bars and you know, rather than
Speaker 4: actually fixing roads. So I mean, this is going to
Speaker 4: force you know, when you've got scarcity, you know, as
Speaker 4: we find the central government having inherited the mess we
Speaker 4: got from the labor government. You know, when you're actually
Speaker 4: paying a nine billion dollar interest bill and that's four
Speaker 4: or five teen hospitals you can't all each and every
Speaker 4: year because of that in trust bill.
Speaker 3: Thank you later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And even the rhetoric between central government and local
Speaker 2: government as well is pretty harsh. Hey, Like you've got
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister out here saying, you know, councils need
Speaker 2: to stop doing dumb stuff. It's like, well, that doesn't
Speaker 2: instill too much hope and too much pride in our
Speaker 2: local government, does it. And I mean, and you've also
Speaker 2: got situations around the country as well where the government
Speaker 2: has had to step in and bring in the Commissioner, etc.
Speaker 2: But I kind of guess like if we fixed quote
Speaker 2: unquote the situation as a whole. You would have better
Speaker 2: people coming forward to become a local counselor, you'd have
Speaker 2: better ideas around the table, and more transparency and the
Speaker 2: public actually.
Speaker 3: Knowing what all of these people do. Thus, more people.
Speaker 2: Are going out to vote because people probably don't realize
Speaker 2: as soon as you step outside of your door, you've
Speaker 2: encountered probably like five things that local government has done
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, generally this is a big issue, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking forward to seeing what changes, you know, the changes
Speaker 3: to the NCAA and the Civics and citizenship type curriculum changes.
Speaker 3: Hopefully that builds in some kind of local government educational
Speaker 3: knowledge into that. The other thing, of course, is that
Speaker 3: for local government, a lot of the people aren't particularly
Speaker 3: well paid. It's like a part time job for them.
Speaker 3: And of course we've seen that broader context of like
Speaker 3: violent freaks towards women running in local government. So if
Speaker 3: you kind of combine all of these contexts together, you
Speaker 3: can see why someone wouldn't want to stand for local government.
Speaker 3: You know, the first that like not knowledge about what
Speaker 3: they do, feeling undervalued by central government, and then this
Speaker 3: kind of context and bits and pieces that we're hearing,
Speaker 3: and yeah, people not even turning up to vote. So
Speaker 3: I mean, if you if you set up a system
Speaker 3: like that, who are you going to get that's going
Speaker 3: to run and who are you going to get around
Speaker 3: those decision making governance tables. So I think it's just
Speaker 3: one of those things where we keep wringing our hands
Speaker 3: thinking on what could it look like, what could a
Speaker 3: good future model be. We'd also need to figure out
Speaker 3: what to do with Malori representation because one of the
Speaker 3: big things on the last year that's been in the
Speaker 3: media around local government, of course, has been the Mali
Speaker 3: Woods referendums. So there's a few issues to sort out there.
Speaker 3: But again it's like I feel like we spend so
Speaker 3: much of our time kind of going, well, what's wrong
Speaker 3: with local government? And there's actually some real positive things
Speaker 3: and some great things that they do in the community,
Speaker 3: and things that like, if you are someone who loves
Speaker 3: your community and wants to get involved, the old hope
Speaker 3: people would go forward and yeah, really see change. I
Speaker 3: think a lot of the local government politicists I've heard
Speaker 3: from find it rewarding, find it rewarding to see things
Speaker 3: on the ground actually change in their communities, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a really kind of positive thing where like local
Speaker 3: people make local decisions. But yeah, set against the this
Speaker 3: kind of negativity and the turnout and the Prime minister's comments.
Speaker 3: So it's again, it's probably one of those what we
Speaker 3: would call wicked problems of like local government that we
Speaker 3: have to continually move back towards trying to figure out
Speaker 3: something to do with it. And yeah, hopefully someone will
Speaker 3: sort it at some point. Thanks for joining us, Lara Sulda.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page
Speaker 2: on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
Speaker 2: in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.