Latest news with #regionalcouncils
RNZ News
01-07-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Memo to Shane Jones: What if NZ needs more regional government, not less?
By Jeffrey McNeill of Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Analysis - If the headlines are anything to go by, New Zealand's regional councils are on life support. Regional Development Minister Shane Jones recently wondered whether "there's going to be a compelling case for regional government to continue to exist". And Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is open to exploring the possibility of scrapping the councils. This has all been driven by the realisation that the government's proposed resource management reforms would essentially gut local authorities of their basic planning and environmental management functions. Various mayors and other interested parties have agreed. While some are circumspect, there's broad agreement a review is needed. At present, each territorial council writes its own city or district plan. Regional councils write a series of thematic plans addressing different environmental issues. All the plans contain the councils' regulatory "rules" that determine what people can or cannot do. Under the coming reforms, the territorial and regional councils of each region would have only a single chapter each within a broader regional spatial plan. Their function would, for the main part, involve tweaking all-embracing national policies and standards. Further, all compliance and monitoring - now a predominantly regional council activity - is to be taken over by a national agency (possibly the Environment Protection Authority). This won't leave much for regional councils to do, compared with their broad remits now. In truth, regional councils have been targets since they were created as part of the Labour government's 1989 local government reform. Carried out in lockstep with the drafting of the Resource Management Act (passed in 1991), this established two levels of local government. City and district councils were to be responsible for infrastructure and the built environment. The new regional councils were more opaque, essentially multi-function, special-purpose authorities, recognising that some government actions are bigger than local but smaller than national. In the event, they became what in many countries would be thought of as environmental protection agencies. Their boundaries were drawn to capture river catchments, reflecting their catchment board antecedents, which looked after soil erosion and flood management. Other functions were drawn from other government departments. Air-quality management came from the old Department of Health. Coastal management was partly inherited from the Ministry of Transport, shared with the Department of Conservation. Public transport and civil defence were tacked on, given their cross-territorial scale and lack of anywhere else to put them. All their various functions have meant regional councils determine who gets to use the region's resources - and who misses out. And political decisions are a surefire way to make enemies. For example, the Resource Management Act applied the presumption that no one could discharge any contaminant into water unless expressly allowed by a rule or a resource consent. Regional councils therefore required their territorial councils to upgrade their rubbish dumps and sewage treatment systems. Similarly, farmers could no longer simply take water to irrigate or empty cowshed effluent straight into the nearest stream as of right. The necessary infrastructure upgrades were expensive. Ironically, these attempts to minimise the immediate impacts of such demands on water users saw urban voters and environmental groups criticise the councils and the government for being too soft on "dirty dairying" and other polluters. Parochialism also plays a part, as does the feeling in some rural communities that they're forgotten by their regions' cities, where most voters live. The perceived poor handling of events such as last year's Hawke's Bay flooding and the 2018 Wellington bus network failure have not helped. The government even replaced Environment Canterbury's elected council with appointed commissioners in 2010 over performance concerns, particularly in water management. Yet the regional council model has largely survived intact - with two exceptions. The Nelson-Marlborough Regional Council was replaced by the Nelson City and Marlborough and Tasman District unitary councils in 1992, as a token sacrifice to the conservative wing of the National government, which vehemently opposed the new regions. The genesis of the Auckland Council super-region can be traced to the 1999-2008 Labour government's frustration at getting a unified position from the city's seven councils on where to build a stadium for the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Not everyone is happy with the resulting metro-regional solution. If regional government is indeed put to rest, it will be another phase in this piecemeal evolutionary process. But the new model will still require central government to have a significant regional presence - and commensurate central government funding. But central government has had a regional-scale presence for a long time. Police, the fire service, economic development and social welfare agencies all have their own regional boundaries. Public health and tertiary training and education are also essentially regional. All these functions are inherently political. And in many other countries, they are are delivered by regional governments. Maybe, once the implications are looked at more closely, leaving regional councils intact will seem the easier and cheaper option. Indeed, there is a counter argument that we need more regional government, not less. The current impulse for local government change - including district council amalgamation - continues an ad hoc process going back more than 30 years. As I have argued previously, the form, function and funding of local government need to be considered together. The regional level of administration will not go away. But the overriding question remains: who should speak for and be accountable to their communities for what are ultimately still political decisions, whoever makes them?
ABC News
31-05-2025
- Business
- ABC News
Regional SA councils struggling to pay for roads call for fairer funding model
South Australian councils say the system for funding road upgrades and maintenance is unbalanced and unfair. Wakefield Regional Council is responsible for a 2,687-kilometre road network, which is longer than the distance between Adelaide and Perth. The council has a lower-than-average population of 6,780 people. It means the council has a lower annual revenue to fund road projects. "Three or four years ago we did a complete analysis of our road network and we worked out we had a $16 million backlog of road upgrades waiting for us," Mayor Rodney Reid said. He said the council created a program to address the backlog by allocating additional money every year for a 10-year period. "Even then, after 10 years, we won't get it back to zero, that's the level of difficulty a regional council like us faces," Mr Reid said. He said the funding demand for road upgrades and maintenance meant the council had to put off other projects. "We've got masterplans for various sporting precincts and we can't really do anything on it unless we get specific funding for it," he said. Councils receive money from the South Australian Grants Commission, which the state government funds. The federal government funds the state government. Mr Reid said he had written to the grants commission asking for a fairer system for regional councils. The commission said it was examining the distribution process to ensure it was fair. "The commission is currently looking at elements of this methodology, including the proposal put to it by the Wakefield Regional Council regarding the distribution of identified local road grants," a spokesperson said. A state government spokesperson said the commission was an independent body that made recommendations for the distribution of grants in accordance with Commonwealth legislation. South Australia receives 5.5 per cent of the identified local roads grants component of financial assistance grants. However, South Australia's population represents 7 per cent of the nation's total population. It has 11.7 per cent of the nation's local road network. The Mid Murray Council has a population of 9,160 people and the second largest road network in the state at 3,386km. Its chief executive, Simone Bailey, said regional councils did not receive enough funding from the federal government. "A lot of that money from the feds is going to councils in the metro area, who don't need funding," she said. A parliamentary inquiry is examining the sustainability of local governments, with an interim report from February highlighting a need for increased funding to Australia's 537 local governments. Wakefield Regional Council received $4.7 million over five years through the federal government's Roads to Recovery program, while Ms Bailey's Mid Murray received $5.8 million. The City of Onkaparinga in Adelaide's south, which received $20.9 million, is responsible for a smaller road network of 1,530km. Ms Bailey said her council's cost-cutting measures, such as closing the Mannum Pool last summer, had hit communities hard. "It was costing us $35,000, which, maybe to some other councils that's not much but for us, it's a lot," she said. "We're not like city councils where we can have huge parking stations or other forms of income. "It was one of the hottest, driest summers on record and the town of Mannum didn't have a pool." A total of 0.51 per cent — $3.45 billion — is allocated to local governments in this year's federal budget, with some council funding put up for tender as competitive grants. Southern Mallee Council Mayor Ron Valentine said a tender system favoured larger councils. "It's prejudicial against small councils like ours because the big players in town, big growth councils, have professional grant writers, directors and all the support teams to be able to come up with really great glossy tenders," he said. "Even if we wanted to put a tender in, it's problematic because we don't have all those assets to put to it. "And then, there's no guarantee you're going to get the money." Mr Valentine said he had raised his concerns with federal government representatives. He said the government already knew who needed funding. "What's not coming is enough money from the federal government to do it," he said. Federal Minister for Regional Development Kristy McBain said the government had initiated the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Financial Sustainability of Local Government, which was the first of its kind in two decades. "We look forward to receiving the final report of the inquiry," she said.
RNZ News
30-05-2025
- Business
- RNZ News
Councils plead for bipartisan Resource Management Act reform
RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop and Transport Minister Simeon Brown announce extensions for ports' permits at a press conference in Auckland's Parnell. Photo: RNZ/Marika Khabazi Regional councils want greater certainty and bipartisanship on regulations, as they gear up for an expected spate of rule changes when legislation replaces the Resource Management Act (RMA) next year . The government has announced sweeping changes to the rules governing councils' oversight of everything - from housing, to mining, to agriculture - under the RMA, and these have been released for public feedback. Speaking on behalf of Te Uru Kahika - Regional and Unitary Councils of Aotearoa, Greater Wellington chair Daran Ponter said when policy resets every three years, regulators scramble to deliver the new government's national direction. "As regional councils we have effectively seen these national instruments landing on our lap as regularly as every three years. The music just has to stop. "We need certainty, we need to be able to have the chance as regulators to actually bed in policies and rules and provide a greater certainty to people who want to do things - who want to build, who want to farm, who want to mine - because the bigger block on those things at the moment, at national and regional levels, is that we continue to change the rules." Ponter said bipartisanship on regulations was needed to provide certainty. "I don't want to be in the position in three or six years' time that all the rules are going to change again, because the pendulum has swung the other way." Daran Ponter. Photo: RNZ / Dom Thomas Ponter said in recent years there had been "more radical swings" in policy under successive governments. "At the moment, the meat in the sandwich of all this, is the regional councils, who get accused of not doing this, or being woke, of being overly sympathetic to the environment... when all we are doing is following the national guidance that is put in front of us." The government has released three discussion documents covering 12 national policy statements and and national environmental standards, with the aim of having 16 new or updated ones by the end of 2025, ahead of legislation replacing the RMA next year. The consultation covers three main topics: infrastructure and development, the primary sector and freshwater. It is open from 29 May to 27 July. Doug Leeder, chair of Bay of Plenty Regional Council, has governed through the implementation of four National Policy Statements for Freshwater Management. He said implementing national direction was a major undertaking that involved work with communities, industry and mana whenua. "Councils contend with the challenge also faced by iwi and hapū, industry, and communities that the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management has changed every three years since it has been introduced. "When policy resets every three years, it imposes significant costs on councils and communities, creates uncertainty for farmers and businesses, and makes it harder to achieve the long-term outcomes we all want. "We need to work towards something more enduring." Could bipartisanship on regulations work? "That's the challenge for the minister but also for the leaders of those opposition parties, as well," Ponter said. "Everybody is going to have to find a degree of compromise if something like that is going to work." But he said regional councils had worked constructively with successive governments and they were ready to do so again. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
