There is a simple reason why the Government has initiated the reform.
In 2016, Havelock North's drinking water was contaminated by campylobacter poisoning 5000 people and causing five deaths. The independent inquiry that followed painted a damning picture of massive nationwide failures in compliance, with the health of 100,000 people affected by poor drinking water, wastewater systems operating without consents, affordability and capability challenges across the whole sector resulting in billions of dollars of underfunding, up to $570m needed to upgrade drinking water plants to meet new standards and up to $4 billion to meet consent standards for wastewater plants.
For a so-called developed country the inquiry exposed a disgraceful third-world underbelly.
The two-pronged reform sees the creation of a national regulator expected to be fully operational by July next year. This will be the compliance and enforcement body. The second prong is aimed at reducing the separate services delivered by most of the country's 70-odd councils into three or four centralised entities aggregating economies of scale.
To entice councils into this staged reform, the Government has plonked $700m in operational and capital grants for councils to invest in shovel ready projects to upgrade drinking and wastewater services.
On this first stage, councils will have to sign up to an MOU but with no legal obligation to go on to the next stage. Kapiti is eligible for a $6.2m grant.
The subsequent stages will make councils eligible for more grants but will legally bind them into aggregating into larger bodies. Councils who think they can take the free money offered in the first stage and then bunk-off have to think twice. My understanding is that the compliance regime imposed by the proposed national regulator will be so demanding in resources that councils may wish to voluntarily surrender their assets by committing to the next stage.
Some facts on the reality for Kāpiti. Our asset value: water supply ($120m), wastewater ($141.6m), and stormwater ($65.1m). At a total of $326m that's a hefty 36 per cent of councils total assets. In terms of rates related operational expenditure the total is $20.7m or 29 per cent of council's total operational expenditure. The surrender or alienation of our 3 waters assets and services would mean a loss of $21m in rates and a potential reduction of 42 directly impacted staff. This poses a significant challenge to how councils manage the financial underpinnings of our Long Term Plans or the knock-on effects on the ability of councils to deliver our other services. A clear message from this reform is the impacts will be so great that smaller councils will fold up and be absorbed into bigger neighbouring councils.
If this looming reality is still not clear, consider the blunt statement from Tony Randerson, the chair of the Resource Management Review Panel.
In his introduction to the panel's 531-page report released recently, he noted: "It has become clear to us that the resource management system would be much more effective if local government were to be reformed. The existence of 78 local authorities in a nation of just five million people is difficult to justify. Much could be achieved by rationalisation among regional lines, particularly in improving efficiencies, pooling resources, and promoting the co-ordination of activities and processes. Reform of local government is an issue warranting early attention."
That's not dog whistling.
