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7:06 am, November 30th, 2025 - 19 comments
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The government on Tuesday announced plans to replace regional councillors with boards made up of mayors and maybe some minister-appointed representatives. It’s a mess.
I’m going to take it as read that people have at least a passing understanding of what regional councils actually do. If not, RNZ does a quick summary here.
New Zealand already has six local governments which have merged local and regional functions together: Auckland, Gisborne, Chatham Islands, Nelson, Marlborough, and Tasman. Merging into unitary forms is no guarantee of success. The Chatham Islands is essentially insolvent. On the other hand Auckland has had the most coherent government it’s ever had – for example its public transport system has massively improved and there’s no ability to pass the planning the buck – and has clearer and stronger interactions with government. Heroes of old like Bruce Jesson fought to make good of stupid and awkward structural arrangements, successfully. Post merger into a unitary Council, it was Len Brown that essentially blackmailed the Key government into the $6.8 billion City Rail Link which will for many decades be our largest ever infrastructure project, and he led the comprehensive rebuild of Auckland’s waterfront. So it can work.
The 1989 reform that started regional councils as environmental and spatial regulators was impressive, except that they did not design into the system any reason for central government to ever engage with them. The Auckland reforms started in 2006 also had no mechanism for Wellington to take any notice of Auckland – despite having 40% of its GDP, 40% of its tax income, its people, 35% of its MPs, and 40% of its social expenditure.
The previous government also went a long way to completely gutting councils by forcing the amalgamation of water, wastewater and stormwater from local councils and sidelining regional councils who have a core function of stormwater and river and lake management, into controversial regionalised water entities. It caused utter chaos and went a long way to losing them the election in 2023. We should disabuse ourselves from the notion that the left would necessarily do a better job of reorganising regional and local government.
It is also tempting to think that this is just a code for erasing resistance to development. Let’s not.
The primary enthusiasm for abolishing regional councils as a spatial and environmental regulator within the old RMA was given a deep cut by Labour’s Minister Parker who pushed the COVID 19 Recovery (Fast Track Consenting) Act 2020 through. Stabbed thus, National’s 2024 broader fast track consenting legislation has bled it out, killed it, buried it, and salted the earth on top of the old Resource Management Act.
Back in the day no developer would dare seek to expand a city limit until it had gone through years of expensive hearings with regional councils to determine whether a new water catchment area could be structured and managed appropriately to deal with a new large residential development, and enable a coherent and efficient city form. If anyone can recall a thing as quaint as a Metropolitan Urban Limit.
The political teaser held in front of this proposed new committee of mayors is the direct involvement of Ministers.
Currently there is only one, quite oblique, way to get a collected voice of councils into a central budgetary process that means a portfolio minister has to take notice: the Regional Land Transport Plan. Local council consultation is bundled into the transport priority list that regional councils then present into the NZTA system. This, together with the budget for state highways, does indeed become a common platform for how transport funds are allocated across New Zealand.
What a regionalised collection of mayors and a Minister does, is start to form what a small state really needs: common vertically integrated platforms where central government finally have to take notice of the regions and has to front up with them on a scheduled basis. Arguably, bundling mayors into a single committee would concentrate local voices in transport, water, electricity, industry sectors, and perhaps even justice and homelessness and poverty.
Now that would be an improvement.
We won’t ever see the regional government of the strength and agency of those abolished in the 1980s. But it is sure an improvement to what is occurring now and from the previous government, where government just consistently legislates what it wants and consults only when it starts to go wrong. In the last government this got so bad that Ardern was essentially bargaining with council leadership while the legislation for water reform was already in the House. It was a political grotesque.
New Zealand needs local government. I loved working in local government, with far more epic successes than failures. We mined social capital, and refined it into political capital, and ransomed that capital into public funding applications, which in turn bought major public projects. Forming makeshift coherence out of wilful central government departmental and Ministerial scorn was exhausting and so rewarding. We need it particularly because the state can never hope to have the regional responsiveness that accelerating climate change requires: fires, floods, and sea surges and shorelines retreating fast. If ever we need evidence of what local, regional and state entities can achieve when working together over years, go check out central Christchurch now.
We need it to run city-scale networks. Just occasionally there’s still the ability to run regional power networks and telco networks. Sometimes as in Dunedin they even run bits rail network. They are far better than the state ever could be at integrating all kinds of network into new urban developments, and make them attractive for actual people to want to live.
Labour and National need to start by taking the time to acknowledge that local government is necessary. Maybe even show gratitude. That would go a long way to reversing the resentment and cynicism that now infects how councils and their staff engage with the Department of Internal Affairs and NZTA and Kiwirail.
National is now on the same path as Labour: piss off nearly every mayor in the country and just ride it out. But this new reform version is being done on a more comprehensive and even less evidence-based approach to policy and structural adjustment then the previous lot.
National should pause on this foolish errand to eradicate regional councils and actually do the structural analysis of our governance strata that New Zealand really needs. And while doing so, actually say thankyou.
"National should pause on this foolish errand to eradicate regional councils and actually do the structural analysis of our governance strata that New Zealand really needs. And while doing so, actually say thankyou………"
Yeah right………….
Oh look ….. over there…..
Perhaps the real issue will be the contents of the new revised RMA. The contents will presented to us on the last Friday before Christmas. And the authors will be those who would benefit most from depleted conservation laws, and we will wish for a return of Regional Councils!
Yep: the structure matters less than the substance and the process. If the revised RMA is written behind closed doors, dropped late-December, and shaped by the biggest beneficiaries, communities won’t get real say no matter who’s in charge.
And without stable rules, councils (regional or not) can’t protect nature or plan properly. The issue is local environmental decisions being overridden from the centre, and constant goalpost-shifting.
Seems to me that what's being proposed is designed to foment amalgamation and so it is the local councils, not the regional ones that are planned to be abolished.
I live in Auckland so the suggestion that this will lead to efficiency and rates reduction made me laugh so much.
The advocates of a centralised hegemon in Wellington imagine all sort of magical results come from being united, somehow the government will become their fairy godmother.
Auckland got the government help because it was the migrant gateway (growth via population rather than productivity) and the largest electoral block.
I think that hides an even bigger fallacy; one rates-cap proponents lean on: that there’s some massive pool of “inefficiency” in local govt that can be magically wrung out if we just pick the right model or squeeze staff hard enough.
I’ve worked in local government for most of my 15-year career. Yep, we can always do better. But it’s not like councils are sitting around dreaming up ways to fleece ratepayers.
The deeper issue is the system isn’t set up for efficiency above all else. It’s set up for deliberative decision-making and democratic accountability. That’s slower and messier by design.
If you optimise only for “efficiency,” what you’re really cutting is local democracy.
They may well have chosen the unitary council approach to avoid being gathered into one regional body.
Wairarapa could do the same.
Kapiti has the escape northward option.
Porirua has long wanted to be a sub-territory servant of the capital’s will.
The Hutt City resistance is declining.
If NACT realises a diminishing of any layer of resistance to ministerial dictate, then the need to keep those fast track aficionados from ones local/regions doors will only grow.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/news/local-papers/the-wellingtonian/69245231/wellington-regional-amalgamation-put-on-hold
There has been a long antipathy in Marlborough to being 'controlled' by Nelson, dating back to 1859 when it became a separate province from Nelson, which was 'over the hill'. So, yes, there was opposition to a regional council even expressed by the local MP Doug Kidd. All a bit concerning when a province the size of Lebanon at some 10,000 sq km with a population of 50,000 is governed by one Council elected by a voter t urnout of 43.86% with 15,333 votes counted. Considering the large financial and environmental stakes involved, maybe a regional mayoral system would be more resistant to pressures from land, forestry, marine, agriculture, viticulture, horticulture interests.
If you look at this from a strictly apolitical point of view, you could probably argue fairly that local government is in need of reform.
There should be two, or three defacto types of local government:
Regional issues like water management should be run by a water-catchment board appointed in the same way as proposed, but include manu whenua input, and subject to legislated environmental minimums.
Interesting framework: but it’s not really apolitical.
It assumes (a) rates are “out of control” rather than reflecting real cost pressures, and (b) councils can be neatly sorted into three buckets with structural fixes that solve the problem.
The main driver of rates isn’t a hidden inefficiency jackpot. It’s the cost of building, maintaining, and renewing core infrastructure; water, roads, stormwater, waste. Plus insurance, construction inflation, growth costs, and decades of underinvestment coming due.
That’s why the “trim the fat” stuff (CEO pay, Christmas lunches, offices etc.) is mostly noise. Even if you wiped it out entirely, it barely dents the rates curve.
So yes, reform might be needed .But unless it tackles infrastructure funding and long-term liabilities, changing the org chart won’t change what people see on their bills.
What we need isn’t less local government. We need clear, stable national direction, real investment to catch up and keep up, and funding tools that match the job.
Because the system is unsustainable as it is. Just not for the reasons people usually claim. Central government keeps dumping politically driven obligations on councils, outsourcing both the regulatory grunt work and the political risk, then blaming councils when the bill arrives.
Besides building and infrastructure costs increasing, the other driver of rates increases is governments putting more and more costs on to councils without increasing their funding. National are particularly adept at doing this. Then they do a 180 and criticise the councils for rate rises higher than inflation. Duh. Having to do a costly vote for Maori wards at the last local election is a perfect example of this.
We also have an infrastructure deficit in many parts of NZ, which is often exacerbated by increasing population pressures. While increasing population solves a governments need to increase GDP and avoid recessions, the infrastructure needed to support population increases is underfunded and so is another driver for rates increases.
Fixed a typo. There were no regional councils in the 1890s (provinces were somewhat different). There were regional councils in the 1980s.
Debt to revenue
Brown is forecasting 225% for Auckland
https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/360905156/browns-budget-79-rates-increase-50m-hole-and-crl-opening-date
PS note the typo “$17.2B”
Comparisons
AI Q
What is the debt to revenue ratio for Wellington City?
AI A
Local comparison
Upper Hutt's debt to revenue ratio is projected to decrease, with a forecast of approximately of 225% operating revenue by fiscal 2028
AI A
Significance
Amalgamations and the governments rates capping policy
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/360904216/rates-capping-government-announce-policy-today
AI
There are no comparable public figures for Porirua, but generally has higher debt than the Valley, thus the lack of objection to amalgamation with Wellington City.
The new caps policy allow Ministers to intervene from 2027 – during the third year of the current councils. That would seem to converge with the year regional councils end and Ministers get more directly involved in regulatory management (ECAN, protecting the interests of the farming lobby).
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/12/01/govt-proposes-to-limit-council-rates-rises-to-4-in-new-system/
It's from 1 January 2027.
And its a one size fits all regime, so regardless of how low rates are now, it will have the same impost.
Councils with future spending plans should increase rates first in 2026 and borrow later to avoid the impact of this – or hope the government's simple-minded housekeeping economics is defeated at the 2026 polls.
It is a fundamental attack on councils providing for their communities.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/580529/watch-christopher-luxon-faces-questions-amid-speculation-over-rates-cap-policy
Cool, and when the costs of providing infrastructure go up 6 or 7 percent annually, what then?
I think the intent isn't to cap rates, but kneecap local government.
Less democracy only helps the rich, the corporates and powerful.
When the left is next on office I don't want labour (or indeed the opposition) saying "we can't do x because we didn't campaign on it, only have a simple majority and not a mandate, or this goes against convention"
This government, which only has a simple majority with three wildly different parties running on wildly different policies never campaigned on such massive changes to nz's governing structure, in fact ran against labours tweaks and changes to nz's governing structure (despite the left having 77 seats, around 60% of support)
This government has set a precedent that governments with simple majorities no longer need to campaign on massive reforms and spits in the face of convention, public consent and mandates
If they can do it, we can do it. I don't want a weak moderate neolib labour cabinet saying something can't be done because they never consulted the electorate.
Ultimately, this sort of stuff is why NZ desperately needs a written formal constitution and can no longer rely on Westminster statues and convention, a formal constitution should have been passed prior to the introduction of MMP!
I've long believed NZ needs a formal constitution, an elected upper house the amount of bad, rushed laws passed by governments in the last 3.5 years is proof positive MMP and select committees are not capable of doing the job of an upper house.
I also believe we need some form of provincial governance akin to states to slow down and push back against power grabs and bad laws.
Also while I'm on the subject of increased democracy, the law stating the south island can only have 16 mp's needs to go, Metro Christchurch alone has ballooned by around 150,000 in twenty years, but not a single new electorate has been added, electorates are important.
Our national population has grown by 1.6 million and we still have the same amount of mp's as when we had a population of 3.7 million in 1996.
More democracy not less.