So why is the Government hell bent on taking the chance of that strategic position away from not just local councils, but us, the communities of the provinces?
The first reason is that they can apparently only think in the industrialised mega-corporate commodity economy. They don't understand the importance of ownership and social capital like trust, hope and community participation in building a high value and continually creative economy.
They talk with the big boys who come along for a free office gin and can only talk in dollars, not small and medium local firms who tend not to wear suits, and who talk with some soul.
By their obvious agenda to open New Zealand up to GM food production, they demonstrate a lack of the vision of what New Zealand could be: a producer of premium produce, with local ownership and the inspired and motivated communities that just keep creating and contributing, and who value the places within which they live.
Low value, high volume, large continuous throughput industrial factories are how the big boys think. As well as cheap or free access to resources of course - people included, water especially. Socialised costs - the right to pollute our streams (they're just "drains").
The logic of a spreadsheet where we and our landscapes are measured in dollars rather than all those apparently meaningless things like beauty, joy, belonging and potential.
This is simply dumb economics. It flows through to worse social and environmental outcomes as well - which destroys local potential and leads to a spiral downwards to some version of a corporate Mordor.
And Orcs don't innovate and create value because they are too busy obeying with their heads down to develop a passion or a hope.
GM food is part of that dystopia.
But more than that lack of economic vision is a disturbing trend since 1984 of centralising policy decisions away from the people to the technocrats who live in Wellington or large office buildings, whose poor links to the real world are increasingly distant. They are not wise, because wisdom comes from connecting beyond the myopia of technocratic boxes viewed from within windowless cubicles.
Since 1984 and the rise of privatisations and a mega-corporate view of people (mere "units", "resources") and communities (society doesn't exist in a market model of the world) we have lost many locally-elected boards and representation. Democracy doesn't necessarily equate with short-term profit maximisation for big business.
Democracy might stymie the pollution of waterways in pursuit of more industrialisation of land through irrigation and continuing outside corporate ownership, etc. We can't have that. So let's have less democracy and argue that it means a better economy. Which it doesn't.
Disturbingly unethical, and economic nonsense. All the evidence is there of the better economy and civic society we get when we have adaptable and small businesses that care, as contrasted with absentee mega-corporates that don't.
It is a distinction that needs to be made more of. Local ownership matters. Local democracy matters.
We saw the loss of the democratic rights of Cantabrians to their own elected regional council. There have been hints and threats heard in the halls and back rooms of the wheeler dealers to do the same to Hawke's Bay Regional Council - we might replace you with a government-selected commission if you don't tow the line and push for the Ruataniwha Dam.
We have to ask ourselves - is this continued degradation of our democracy, and the associated rise in centralised mega-corporate thinking, in the interests of our provinces, our economies, our communities, our lands and water, or our ideals of building our rights of self-determination?
Killing local democracy is not just an appalling affront to freedom, it is also dumb economics, bad social policy, and appalling environmental policy.
But it suits some mega-corporates, and the industrialised version of land, people and our environment - as "resources" to exploit, not potentials to realise.
So who is this Government working for? Us?
Chris Perley is the Green party candidate for the Tukituki seat in the upcoming general elections.
