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Prime Minister Chris Luxon fronted the Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) junket in Wellington with a message of hard truths.
LGNZ was originally an association for councillors across the country but morphed into a left-wing lobby, paid for by your rates, employing its own staff to manipulate members and working for Aotearoa, not New Zealand. It promotes the adoption of ‘Tiriti principles’ into every aspect of council work, despite the obvious fact that councils are not Crown organisations and never signed the Treaty. The evidence is in the name – Local Government. Councils are regional organisations. Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown understood this when he withdrew his council’s membership. His city is large enough to do its own lobbying.
Luxon wants councils to get back to basics. Councils are essentially large engineering companies. Two thirds of expenditure is on roads and waters. Fixing potholes and treating sewage is the core business, not fancy stadiums. Half the remainder is property management. This ranges from town planning, building consents, maintaining parks and building assets and infrastructure for construction growth. Rubbish collection and libraries are useful add-on public services, but the rest is just fluff.
Looking at the people around the council table: the lack of skills in the engineering and property areas explains the mess councils have got themselves into. We, the people, need to help Luxon and start electing candidates on the basis of competency. This also means that people with competency need to stand. This is my request to some of you reading this – the nation needs you to front up.
Luxon’s second focus was on council performance, specifically financial accountability. New Zealand’s infrastructure cost is four times the OECD average. We are paying far too much for our roads and water pipes. Having investigated this myself, it comes down to project mismanagement. A typical example is that consultants charge councils twice as much as private businesses because consultants need to do twice as much paperwork to get a decision out of a bureaucratic system which is designed to avoid any individual taking responsibility. The good news is that this can be easily fixed by bringing in external decision makers and cutting the staff overhead.
The third focus was on limiting ‘nice to have’ spending. National is interested in a revenue cap applied to non-core activities to control rates increases. With average rates rises across the country approaching 20 per cent (compounding to 100 per cent over five years), rates increases are not sustainable. It is clear that the council budget system, known as the Long Term Plan, sets rates income according to the projects that council wants to buy, which is the reverse of household budgets where you choose what to buy based on your income. A cap is a step in the right direction. Further steps are needed.
Lastly, Cabinet has agreed to review transparency rules. Luxon notes examples where elected councillors struggle to get information from staff. Clearly you can’t make good decisions without good information. I can attest to this from personal experience, and it raises the question of who is actually running councils. Lunatics and asylums spring to mind.
I am sharing my experiences and plans with groups across the country that are gearing up to take on their local councils in elections next year. I am happy to share with you as well. If you are unable to stand as a candidate, get behind competent people who will. They need support. Central government legislation only goes so far. How it is implemented ultimately determines the outcome. Elected councillors need to take control and deliver for the people.
Andrew Bydder
Hamilton City Councillor
