Government plan to scrap regional councils faces criticism

This from newly elected Waikato Regional Council member and former Federated Farmers provincial president Keith Holmes. He says unless government deals properly with the governance issue, any move forward will simply be a case of rearranging the deck chairs. He says what's come out in the past week is a Trump-like disruptive event and is based on the hope that something good will happen.

"But getting a better system of governance is at the heart of the problem," Holmes told Dairy News.

"The way we elect our governors/councillors is flawed because what happens is you get a mix of single-issue people and dreamers and few pragmatists there. The single-issue people and the dreamers have no understanding of the key ingredients of governance, which is taking a holistic and regional approach to decision making. A lot of people just don't have enough experience to do that," he says.

Holmes says the single most important thing that government must do is to get the governance of councils right.

The other problem he identifies is the staff of regional councils. He says many are out of control and that a totally risk-averse attitude has been built up in councils, whereby few senior staff take responsibility for their actions and bring in lawyers and consultants to cement this process. At the same time, Holmes believes this has led to a build-up in the bureaucracy and a rise in staff numbers.

"There is no ruthlessness and no incentive to trim costs in local government because they can just put up the rates. If I was chair of the regional council, I'd tell the staff to make the decision - no more consultants - no more peer reviews.

"Make one mistake, okay, we will live with that, but make two and you're gone, and suddenly you have changed the whole culture of local government behaviour because these people would own the decisions," he says.

Will Unitary Authorities Work?

Keith Holmes says everyone is touting the concept of unitary authorities (UA) as a replacement for regional councils. But he says such a move would need to be handled carefully to ensure that, in places such as the Waikato and Canterbury, the cities don't dominate the decision-making process if the voting rights are based on a population basis.

"For example, in the Waikato region, Hamilton City could absolutely dominate our region, yet these people have no idea of what's happening in Tokoroa or Waitomo or places like that. So, the structuring of unitary authorities must be done in a way as to give plenty of room for issues to be dealt with at a local level, in a sensible manner," he says.

Holmes says any splitting up of existing regional councils into UAs has to be done very carefully, sensibly and sensitively.

Finally, he questions whether handing oversight of regional council functions to district and city mayors will work.

"The poor mayors are already under pressure and haven't got the time or the ability to provide oversight on what is a regional requirement, as opposed to a local requirement, because each little community has enough of its own problems to deal with. Giving them this task is too big an ask," he says.