The government is turning up the heat on regional councils and hoping they won’t notice they’re being cooked, argues Fergus Campbell.
The government is turning up the heat on regional councils and hoping they won’t notice they’re being cooked. The problem is councils are less likely to behave like a processed and packaged turkey and more likely to see the oven and start flapping around the kitchen, knocking over pots and yelling. So, strap in: local government reform is going to be loud and, surely, the turkey ain’t, ultimately, going to vote for Christmas.
The government’s two-stage proposal, announced on Tuesday, would see regional councils replaced with combined territories boards (CTBs) consisting of city and district council mayors. CTBs would then be tasked with developing a regional reorganisation plan to assess how councils within a region would deliver the regional council’s functions.
In practice, this could mean the largest council in a region, like, say, Napier City, taking on the Hawke’s Bay Region’s bus network, while Hastings District could be the home of river management for the region. But, what’s really interesting is that all of the seemingly innocuous decisions, like where a bus goes, will be removed from a more placid governance model to one that’s a little more spicy.
That’s because regional councils are quite different from the councils led by your Phil Maugers and your Andrew Littles.
There are currently 11 regional councils (turkeys) that complement the 67 district and unitary authorities that make up our local democracy (just for fun, let’s think of them as potatoes). Regional councils were established by 1989 local government reforms. Regional councillors are elected in geographic or Māori constituencies, or some are elected at large.
But forget elected mayors (like Mauger and Little), regional councils have chairs. Elected regional councillors are all eligible to be chair and they must decide between themselves who to nominate and then who gets the role. So, from a political incentives perspective, chairs depend on a group of councillors not only to be appointed, but to stay in power, while mayors just need a single, convincing public campaign to get a three-year run.
Part of the reason why I’ve always found the chair model more appealing than the mayoral one is that it better fits with how New Zealanders experience democracy. I don’t think the rigid winner-takes-all mayoral model has really worked for us: high-profile candidates beat low-profile opponents and there’s no flexibility even in the face of scandal or sheer incompetence.
As a country, we’ve had the option of flipping regional leaders mid-term, and we expect (maybe hope?), that our local politicians will compromise, work together, and make good decisions rather than purely political ones.
Bringing CTBs in could remove that negotiation and compromise inside the council chamber and incentivise the election of more populist mayors. For the first time (outside of Auckland), mayors are likely to fill a position requiring more executive decision making and if it doesn’t go well, it will be much harder to dislodge them between elections than it currently is to move on from a regional council chair.
Of course, it’s worth noting all of this is only a proposal, which means the government has outsourced the debate. This is quite clever because until February, the discussion document pits regional councillors against the mayors who will now inherit their function on the CTBs.
Regional councillors are less likely to be known political brawlers (unless you’re on the west coast) or famous political faces. And while most people regard local government reform to be a topic as dry as, well, roast turkey, the decisions that will be made through this legislative reform are consequential.
The 11 regional councils cover a population of more than 3 million New Zealanders – and aside from Auckland (which is a unitary), they cover most of our biggest cities and provincial towns.
Between them, regional councils hold assets worth billions, and not just boring old pipes either. Several regional councils own slices of ports and stadiums as well as investment funds and commercial property.
This is where the second wave of public debate will start. If the CTBs model gets the green light, each region will produce a regional reorganisation plan. Then, Mayors will start rifling through the pockets of regional government and fighting over the scraps. Those arguments will be loud, as communities like Tauranga City and Whakatane District argue over how to divide the wealthy Bay of Plenty Regional coffers (propped up by a $2.7 billion investment fund).
I like the regional council model compared with the district/unitary model and if it’s to be lost to CTBs, I worry that local governance becomes more about noise than nuance, more about message than method, and more about absolutes than compromise.
That’s not to say that mayors are all operating noisily or without method now, but the incentives will have changed. Still, right now it’s only a discussion document. There’s an opportunity here to think and plan and parties, councils, academics and all New Zealanders should take a look at a range of recipes and then cook a really awesome Christmas dinner.
Fergus Campbell has worked in both a regional council and central government. He is on his OE in London and very much hopes potential future employers don’t mind being called turkeys or potatoes.
