Local government shake-up explained: Rate caps, mayors board and services

And that's a lot a lot of people are feeling on a day to day basis, And of course, if you own a house, you know there's an argument that you would pass those rates increases onto renters as well. So it affects kind of everyone, and a lot of people are quite concerned about. Yeah, there's double digit rates increases, like you said, However, on a day to day basis, the council does fund a lot of good things that kind of make our communities communities a lot of good

things that we use a lot. I mean, as an academic, I use the libraries a lot. But that's one thing. But people go and give books to their kids. You know. There's the kind of rubbish delivery kind of pretty important. You know, if you've ever been to a country that doesn't have those sorts of services, very important something we need.

There's also the things around the water infrastructure. Wellington's problems have really highlighted that, different things around transport and roading, and I'll just all sorts of bits and pieces there that we don't really think about on a day to day basis, just kind of take advannadov in living our lives.

So this then becomes a bit of an ashure around. Okay, so if council has less money to be able to fund these things and they have to prioritize different bits and pieces, it may mean that we end up in more of say like a user pay system or something along those lines, which then that becomes a bit of a cultural issue for New Zealanders who are used to say free or cheap public pools or library services and

bits and pieces like that. Ultimately, the majority at polling shows, and this was put it on the Herald, that seventy five percent of people support these rates caps increase caps. A lot of those questions comes down to how you ask the question though, that's what a lot of political science that should say. So if I say, do you

want lower taxes or lower rates? People go yes. But then if I say, if that means that you have to pay every time you go to the library or have to pay for services through some other kind of levee or tax, would you want that? People go no. So it's it's one of those kind of hardolitical issues that people have a gut reaction on, but when they look into it more, their opinion might change.

know what I mean? Like, so, is this quite a clever tactic going into twenty twenty six?

a big tech for voters. Kind of overall, we don't see in a lot of the sort of voting data and a lot of the political science literature that people are local government voters like that's not a big issue high up on their thing. But it might be that this kind of makes it feel to people like that costs will come under control, So it gives them that greater sense of control and kind of hope for the

future around this. Again, whether that's an actual you know, economic reality or fact or not, that's that's kind of will come out in the wash, so to speak. So that I guess part of that broader conversation of does it look like that, you know, national will be tough on spending like they're tough, say they're tough on crime. It's part of that broader package or package of ideas that they'll be going to the election on. And yeah, I think that that will contribute to that discourse and

bits and pieces. We know that people generally, you know, if you look at the groups of society that people don't tend to support on a day to day basis, you know it's the council and other politicians and normally

not high out the kind of trust ranking. So I think that local government and local government spending is a kind of sensible rhetorical, discursive, kind of target or group that you could talk about in negative ways that won't get a lot of pushback, but will help to kind of contribute to this overall package of policies or brand that as a party national will get tough on things like spending and waste for spending.

say over the past sort of fifteen years. My career in politics political science is that we often do wring our hands over local government and kind of go, oh, something needs to change. There was a local government review in twenty twenty three that had a bunch of recommendations. Every time we have local government elections. I spent a lot of time talking about turnout being love and the issues around turnout. So we know that structurally there are

some issues with local government. And one of the kind of debates in terms of local government is is it too big? Is it too complicated? Is it too bureaucratic? And if you're of a party on the right, you're generally going to say yes. You know, the Taxpayers Union have been campaigning for the reduced rates, the less spending, a less bureaucratic structure. ACTS National tend to campaign on this as well and tend to kind of raise these ideas. It was the ACT party that amalgamated. They take credit

for amalgamating the Auckland councils as well. I remember they're all the different kind of North Shore Council, all of those, but amalgamated and twenty ten as a result of some of their work. So this has been a long kind of running issue of can you kind of cut truck and change something in local government. The government has proposed removing the eleven regional councils and instead kind of creating

these committees to oversee that work. A lot of the regional council workers around resource management like land news planning and environmental water type matters. All of those bits and pieces, so basically try to make changes to that system to remove that bureaucracy. What we have seen when local government has changed, for example around the supercity, is that you don't end up like there's still those roles still have to exist in some way. There's still often other people

that come in to do the job. You couldn't drop a lot of those functions. And the other thing within that we're still to kind of stare is what happens around citivity and kapu and EWA and local government in that space. So yeah, it's really overall an argument of do you want to kind of maintain the current level of government in the structure or do you want to

cut some of it away. And we've seen this government's general policy agenda has been to reduce bits and pieces in the sort of policy public sector governance structures, and so this kind of smaller government, reducing some of the levels of local council makes a lot of sense in terms of their overall direction as a government.

many cooks in the kitchen in that respect. But you're saying if somebody is looking after I don't know, like E can for example, Environment Canterbury. They look out for all of the wetlands and they've got, you know, these massive projects about natural resources and things like that that'll just have to be amalgamated into the christ Church City Council presumably.

more about your local government and the functions there. Or Yeah, if they do something that really irks you, really annoys you. I think that that's where you think about local government, because they sure do have low levels of voted turnout, and generally there's a low level of awareness or knowledge about, you know, what they do on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis. So there's that that problem, and that that problem has been one that

has been persisting for decades. Is what exactly to do structurally about local government to make sure it's a sufficient as possible and that it's actually fulfilling the needs of the community and the community cares enough to turn out to vote. Do these reforms kind of help help to fix some of that potentially? I mean, we will see what happens. I mean, if if it goes into gets gets in and gets put in place and time and

with the election and puts and pieces there. But I mean, I think a big frustration to some of us who've kind of taught on these issues is, yeah, the layers of publication and the lack of kind of clarity of what it is that everyone does on a day to day basis, and it's still opaque for students who don't know that little alone you kind of go on the

street kind of person, the average vita. So it's a big problem, and I'm not sure that the reforms that have been proposed will fix that big, broad structural problem. But it's like someone's doing something finally in local government, which hasn't always been the case.

councils or something like that. And I remember we were down there speeding to the Waititomo mayor, and even he mentioned to us that maybe, you know, there could be some amalgamation of those smaller councils, especially as well, because though some of those councilors are only paid and I say, only paid twenty to fifty k a year compared to the bigger councils like Auckland, You've got over one hundred k year for some of those counselors.

structure of let's sort it out. This is where I would like to see something like some citizens assemblies or some deliberative democracy where you randomly select one hundred people from whatever town, bring them together and get them to discuss these issues and try to figure out what actually a good kind of system with a good mandate looks like.

And local government, I mean a lot to do. Any of that would mean investing time, resources, reporting another review a bunch of experts, and it would just be another one, and then ultimately would that report just end up filed

on some minister's desk. But I think that ultimately a lot of the local government structures were set up more than a century ago, you know the reality, Yeah, the way like I'm thinking back to the borough councils and all of those bits and pieces, And it's like governments, I think generally and not making those big structural changes in a lot of areas of our lives, right like

you know, the economy, but and pieces. So I don't necessarily think that we can expectment some government to actually do it, actually sit down and go, how is this going to be organized? What is an efficient their way in the way that say, you know, electorates are organized where you have say seventy thousand people per electorate, and that's an electorate, that's a geographic area, and it's drawn

a certain way. So I think ultimately it would be great if someone did just like go, okay, we're going to take a global view, We're going to sort this out once and sort this out with some kind of for US party mandate and get it sorted into the future. That would be ideal, But I can't see us doing that the way that our current politics are set out.

I mean, it would be a great service if labor and national will get together and sort it out for the decades to come, but instead we will have all of these kind of I'm sure it's kind of amusing spending decisions and these like local government situations in the future. And I imagine that in ten years time we'll probably be sitting here having the same conversation.

local government, does it. And I mean, and you've also got situations around the country as well where the government has had to step in and bring in the Commissioner, etc. But I kind of guess like if we fixed quote unquote the situation as a whole. You would have better people coming forward to become a local counselor, you'd have better ideas around the table, and more transparency and the public actually.

violent freaks towards women running in local government. So if you kind of combine all of these contexts together, you can see why someone wouldn't want to stand for local government. You know, the first that like not knowledge about what they do, feeling undervalued by central government, and then this kind of context and bits and pieces that we're hearing,

and yeah, people not even turning up to vote. So I mean, if you if you set up a system like that, who are you going to get that's going to run and who are you going to get around those decision making governance tables. So I think it's just one of those things where we keep wringing our hands thinking on what could it look like, what could a

good future model be. We'd also need to figure out what to do with Malori representation because one of the big things on the last year that's been in the media around local government, of course, has been the Mali Woods referendums. So there's a few issues to sort out there. But again it's like I feel like we spend so much of our time kind of going, well, what's wrong

with local government? And there's actually some real positive things and some great things that they do in the community, and things that like, if you are someone who loves your community and wants to get involved, the old hope

people would go forward and yeah, really see change. I think a lot of the local government politicists I've heard from find it rewarding, find it rewarding to see things on the ground actually change in their communities, and yeah, it's a really kind of positive thing where like local people make local decisions. But yeah, set against the this kind of negativity and the turnout and the Prime minister's comments.

So it's again, it's probably one of those what we would call wicked problems of like local government that we have to continually move back towards trying to figure out something to do with it. And yeah, hopefully someone will sort it at some point. Thanks for joining us, Lara Sulda. Thank you.