Is the Party Over for Local Government?

DARCY LAWREY (HE/HIM)

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At the Local Government New Zealand conference in August, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon informed a room full of mayors and city councillors that “the party is over.” “There is no magic money tree in Wellington”, he added. 

He says that central government focuses on “must-haves”, not “nice-to-haves”, and he expects local government to do the same. 

So, what does Luxon consider “nice-to-haves” to be? Apparently, the social, economic, environmental and cultural well-being of our local communities. Since 2018, councils around the motu have been required to focus on these four goals. Ending this focus on wellbeing aligns local government with National’s business-ey way of thinking.

Despite council’s being made up of elected members, who campaign to deliver on a wide variety of community-based needs, National wants to run councils like businesses, according to Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau. 

The same week of Luxon’s speech to LGNZ, Whanau made her opposition to National’s way of thinking clear in an opinion piece: “[…] we're not a business. We're a community of people who have community-related needs.”  

Whanau’s critique of National direction for local government was pretty damning: “more than just being offensive and wrong, what was signalled by the Government would be a huge overreach in local decision-making”.

She argues that Luxon is wrong to suggest that councils are not delivering what ratepayers want, characterising Wellington City Council as having “one of the most rigorous, open, and transparent decision-making systems”.  

At the end of the day, this fight comes down to whether our councils should function as infrastructure companies, or as democratic institutions which work to make our cities and towns healthier and happier places to live.

It can be easy to let local government fade into the background of politics, but the decisions made in the Wellington council chambers affect all of us just as much as those made at Parliament. With National’s final changes to how local government works coming later this year, now is a crucial time to be paying attention to our local councils.