Sharp rates increases are the latest target for the PM and Simeon Brown, explains The Bulletin’s Stewart Sowman-Lund.
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There are just eight days until Christmas (crazy) and less than a week until we wrap for the year (crazier). That means there was time to squeeze in one more post-cabinet press conference. And this week, reported The Post’s Thomas Manch, local councils were back in the spotlight with the prime minister and local government minister reiterating their intention to refocus councils on outcomes and delivery, and to ditch the so-called “white elephant” projects. “We want to make sure that councils also have a focus on outcomes, right? And I think they’ve lost focus,” Christopher Luxon told reporters last night. Of particular interest for the government was the sharp rise in rates across several councils, with a restated focus on essentials rather than “nice-to-haves”. That means fixing pipes, filling potholes, and delivering core local services – which does not include social housing.
As explained by the Herald’s Thomas Coughlan, the reforms will include the publication of new reports of council spending along with legislation that will include measures to force councils to keep rates low. Council performance will be benchmarked and the Department of Internal Affairs will report back on, among other things, council debt, budgets and road condition. The Local Government Act will be amended to remove the “four wellbeings” – social, economic, environmental and cultural – something that the two main parties (and New Zealand First) have been arguing over since 2002.
‘Luxon localism’
The opposition is unimpressed. Labour’s Chris Hipkins, reported RNZ, rejected the assertion that the four wellbeings had increased the scope of what councils were focusing on. And the Greens’ spokesperson for local government, Celia Wade Brown, said the prime minister was dictating down to councils, appearing to go against the National Party’s stated intention in opposition to advocate for localism – local approaches to local needs. “Wellbeing is not an abstract nice-to-have, community centres, libraries and sport fields are fundamental to the health of our communities,” Wade Brown said. “Councils are far closer to these everyday needs than the Luxons of this world who are ‘wealthy and sorted’.”
In the wake of the government’s first crackdown on councils in August, The Spinoff’s Joel MacManus argued that Luxon had officially abandoned efforts to promote localism. “The Luxonian version of localism isn’t devolution of power, it’s just delegating tasks,” wrote MacManus.
Wellington council to tidy up proposed budget
The government has routinely used Wellington Council as an example of out of control spending. A Crown observer was put in place last month to oversee the council’s efforts to get its books in order after efforts to sell shares in the capital’s airport failed. As RNZ’s Kate Green reported, Wellington mayor Tory Whanau is confident the council will be able to finalise its long-term plan this week ahead of public consultation in the new year. Parking fines will be on the agenda at today’s final council meeting along with proposed rates increases for the next financial year. And while Whanau said she was anticipating additional amendments to the long-term plan to be put forward by councillors, she expected there would be little difficulty getting the proposals over the line. “We’ve got a package ready, we just need to finalise it and put it out to consultation. But I think on the whole, I don’t think we’ll receive much difficulty at all.”
Action plan nearly completed
Meanwhile, the government won’t quite manage to tick off everything on its final quarterly action plan of the year due to rushed lawmaking, reported Newsroom Pro’s Marc Daalder (paywalled). A bill intended to repeal the 2018 ban on new offshore oil and gas exploration will no longer pass before the end of the year as promised after a drafting error was discovered. The error, which would have increased developers’ decommissioning liability instead of decreasing it, was only picked up after the proposed law was debated in parliament under urgency and sent off for a shortened consultation period. But the prime minister said he did not believe the rushed timeframe for drawing up and debating the bill had anything to do with the error, though legal experts have raised concern about an over-reliance on urgency. “Absolutely not,” Luxon said. “All this is about is making sure we get it right. We want to make sure, particularly the decommissioning of oil and gas fields, that we get that drafted correctly.”
The prime minister was also questioned yesterday on whether or not he intends to visit Waitangi for the annual commemoration in February, reported RNZ’s Lillian Hanly. February 6 will land amid public hearings on the doomed treaty principles bill, effectively ensuring that Luxon, as the face of the coalition, will receive a frostier than usual reception at the treaty grounds. Luxon said “a number of iwi invite me to their Waitangi Day celebrations”, but confirmed he would attend Rātana celebrations in late January.