“I’m not seeing local government being deemed important to central government. I don’t see a willingness to really and truly work together – in fact, they are imposing themselves on us without fully listening or understanding the concerns.”
The future of local government was localism, Tripe said.
“The energy and emphasis from central government is to take away from and dilute local government. Centralisation takes decisions away from us.
“I’ve said for a long time that localism is what we will fight for.
“It’s about the knowledge that we have on the ground at a local level about how things really work in our communities, and making decisions as close to home as we can.
“I’m keen to focus on how we can give strong relevance to local government in our future but at the same time realise the benefits of being efficient, which is what centralisation is really about.”
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) said it wanted the Future for Local Government Review panel to radically rethink how the country delivered public services.
LGNZ president Stuart Crosby said Cyclone Gabrielle had exposed the enormous challenges facing the regions, which a one-size-fits-all approach had failed to address.
“The rapidly changing climate is just one issue that’s putting tremendous pressure on our lives and livelihoods. We have a massive infrastructure deficit and the gap between our richest and poorest regions is growing.
“These are complex issues and central government can’t tackle them alone.”
Submissions on the panel’s draft report closed this week. Crosby said with the final report due in June, local leaders were frustrated with a lack of concrete proposals so far.
He said councils across the country said the relationship between central and local government needed a reboot.
“Right now, 90 per cent of the country’s public expenditure is allocated by central government. That puts us in the top three most centralised countries in the OECD. That must change,” Crosby said.
“We want to see the panel reimagine the way that local government and central government work with our communities. That means addressing what roles and functions should be delivered centrally, regionally or locally — and we think the answers are radically different to the way things work right now.”
In Whanganui, the district council decided last month to set up and fund a camping and support site for people who are homeless as an interim solution to homelessness in the city.
“We’re having to fix that matter up ourselves. Central government has turned their backs to it,” Tripe said.
“It shouldn’t be on local government to do that, but at the end of the day we’ve needed to find a solution for our community, for our homeless, for the predicament we’re in.
“I’ve reached out to government agencies and central government and had no response. This is what happens, they just leave us to it. They ask a lot of us, but don’t give much back.”
Tripe said central government had failed to understand the importance of local government and the critical relationship between the two.
“That plays itself out with water, planning, environmental and climate activity and policy, in the rural sector, with iwi relationships and so on.
“We’re not heard.”
LGNZ National Council member and Mayor of the Far North Moko Tepania said the best outcomes for people happened when public services were tailored to “what our communities are telling us they need”.
“Unlike a lot of other countries, councils in Aotearoa have no say on social services like housing, healthcare or public welfare. What we wind up with is a bunch of government departments trying to tackle them one by one in the same place without sharing information between them,” Tepania said.
“At the moment we’re not joining up the dots, and we’re not taking advantage of local knowledge. It’s part of the reason why our three poorest regions are around 40 per cent worse off than our three richest.
“We need to give councils the power to make the right decisions for our mokopuna.”
- Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
