MICHAEL BASSETT: CHRIS BISHOP AND SIMON WATTS ARE CORRECT

When I first heard of their plans to do away with regional councils and replace them with boards of mayors I thought the timing rather odd. After all, we have just had local elections, and telling the newly-elected they are redundant seemed needlessly insulting. But it quickly became clear that these were proposals, and not some sort of ministerial coup d’etat. Chris Bishop and Simon Watts seem to be proposing to use the next three years to fine-tune their ideas. The goal is laudable: to remove an expensive layer of authority from local government that is no longer necessary, thereby reducing costs for ratepayers.

All forms of government need to evolve over time as the population grows and settlements expand. Local government’s problem in the Twentieth Century was that for far too long local leaders blocked change. Melting the mayoral chains of office prevented long overdue amalgamations. As late as 1989, there were 817 local authorities in our small country. Unable, or unwilling to force the issue, successive governments instead created regional structures to lift some of the burden off cities, boroughs and counties. The process began with the formation of the Auckland Regional Authority in 1963 and in the mid 1970s all parts of the country got some form of regionalism. Issues like regional parks, sewerage, water supply, regional roads and transport spilled across territorial boundaries and for a time, regional councils proved reasonably adept at handling them.

With the major amalgamations that I pushed through in 1989 under the guidance of Sir Brian Elwood of the Local Government Commission, 817 small local authorities were reduced to 86 territorial and regional entities. Today there are 68 more soundly-based local territorial councils. The number of regional councils has already shrunk. The passage of time has seen territorial councils become sufficiently robust to be able to handle nearly all regional issues. The formation of Auckland’s super city in 2010 amalgamated the old Auckland Regional Council which previously had handled the port, sewerage and regional parks, with Watercare looking after fresh water. But even after 2010 there were some issues that overlapped the city’s boundaries like the need to acquire additional water from the Waikato River. Bishop and Watts recognise this with their proposals. Whether their suggested Board of Mayors is the answer is a question that needs teasing out over the next three years. Whatever, a new structure needs to be in place by the time of the next local elections in 2028.

While this process is worked through, every effort should be made to scrutinise staffing levels in both existing councils and any replacement regional entities. After 1989, one CEO, Auckland City’s head, Bruce Anderson, paid careful attention to the staff numbers he inherited from the smaller local authorities that were now part of the wider entity he was responsible for. Over a couple of years, he was able to reduce staff numbers substantially. Few other CEOs around the country were as inventive as Anderson, and after 2010 in Auckland no substantial effort was made to control staff numbers at the new super city which, after all, are any council’s major cost. By 2022 Auckland’s total staff numbered more than 12,000, and the current count seems mysterious. Weak, left-leaning leadership has meant that Auckland ratepayers have carried at least 1,000, probably nearer to 1,500 more staff than necessary over the years. Almost certainly, there are many other overstaffed councils around the country. Unions will shout and roar as numbers are pared back, but Chris Bishop and Simon Watts need to keep a careful eye on those numbers if they seriously mean to “reduce duplication and strengthen accountability” and “strip out bureaucracy and create a simpler system” as they promise. Nothing less is necessary.

What we all need now is to maintain level heads as the Bishop-Watts ideas progress. There will be endless moans and groans from anyone who perceives his or her role being in some way threatened. Since a general election is coming up before the new plans go into force, efforts will be made to play politics in much the same way as occurred throughout the Twentieth Century. Regional councils’ chairman’s chains of office might well prove nearly as difficult to melt as were the mayors’.

But that’s no reason to shirk reform when it’s necessary. Unnecessary costs to ratepayers are inexcusable. Chris Bishop and Simon Watts have done a good job by identifying a problem and opening up an area for debate about what might replace regional councils.