Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown lobbying for local bill to reorganise Auckland
With the structure of local government likely to be a hot topic from next month when the Review into the Future for Local Government drops their final report and recommendations in June, Auckland’s Mayor Wayne Brown appears to be trying to get ahead of the conversation with Stuff reporting that Wayne Brown has proposed “sweeping changes” to the organisation of the Auckland region.
To achieve these changes Mayor Brown needs one of two things to happen: either Auckland Council has to agree to promote a local bill to change the Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009, and then successfully get the support of Parliament to pass the legislation. The other option is for the Government of the day to decide they want to change things themselves and advance any changes as a Government bill.
Local bills in themselves are interesting, in that many people don’t realise that local authorities do have the ability to pursue them - or “promote” as the technical term is.
One of the most recent examples of this mechanism being used was Rotorua Lakes Council (legally Rotorua District Council) pursuring the Rotorua District Council (Representation Arrangements) Bill which would have changed the representation structure for the district in a way that was not permitted under the Local Electoral Act 2001. The Council itself ultimately withdrew the bill after substantial criticism regarding fact it essentially granted voters on Rotorua’s Māori Roll more electoral power than those on the General Roll. Following the 2022 local government elections, Rotorua Lakes Council themselves decided to abandon the bill.
In order to get a local bill through Parliament, the local member of Parliament is usually the MP “in charge” of a local bill. Much like accepting petitions being presented to Parliament, this doesn’t necessarily mean the MP is supportive of the premise of the bill, but rather it’s one of the roles that MPs have where they help facilitate their community to interact with Parliament and its mechanisms.
Parliament’s website has a comprehensive guide about local bills which is well worth a read if you want to learn more about the process.
In any event, the decision for a local authority to go down the route of promoting a local bill is not a cheap one. Rotorua spent at least $146,000 in pursuit of their local bill before pulling the plug, and their change would be an order of magnitude smaller than what Mayor Brown is attempting to achieve.
In any event, it’s not clear just how far Brown’s idea has progressed. Stuff reports that in his letter to Ministers and opposition spokespeople Wayne Brown claims to have workshopped things with Auckland Council’s Governing Body, though comments in the story suggest the council is - unsurprisingly - divided on the idea at the moment.
The comments from North Shore councillor Chris Darby, where he calls for a “joined-up government and council-scoped independent review” are likely a much better place to start rather than diving headfirst into developing a local bill. It’s also nothing new. Dr Eric Crampton of the New Zealand Initiative highlighted last year on Newsroom that a proposed post-implementation review of Auckland amalgamation by the Department of Internal Affairs has evidently never been carried out.
As much as people can role their eyes at what can feel at times like an endless parade of reviews, inquiries, and working groups, the reality is that many of these issues are hugely complex, and a deliberative approach is needed to collect evidence and views, consider the impacts of past changes, research and analyse potential changes, consult on them, and then recommend them. It is admittedly painful and slow, but it often creates the momentum and political permission needed to enact necessary changes.
The challenge, as always, is to get cross-party support for these things. One of the reasons the massive 1989 local government reforms stuck was because of the broad ideological alignment between the Fourth Labour Government and the Fourth National Government that followed it. A similar alignment followed when Auckland was amalgamated in 2010, in so far that Labour and National both agreed Auckland needed a single unitary authority, though they differed on how much power should be devolved from that unitary authority to localities within it, with National favouring a much more centralised model.
The problem currently is that times appear to have changed. While Labour has been pushing for a more centralised model of some aspects of local government through its Three Waters and Resource Management Act reform programmes, National has instead gone the opposite way, advocating to largely retain the current levels of local control.
It does remain to be seen just what the Review into the Future for Local Government will recommend, and whether the current Government will look to progress those recommendations or kick to touch on them. Given the recent policy purge by Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, it may be that further changes to local government, however well intentioned, may be simply a bridge too far politically for the time being.
With that reality in mind, Councillor Darby’s idea of a comprehensive review of the successes and failures of Auckland amalgamation, ideally not just between Auckland Council and central government, but also cross-party as well, may well be the best way to proceed for the foreseeable future. At least until a détente once again emerges on the broad direction of local government reform.
Photo credit: CC-BY-SA-4.0 photo by Daniel Vorndran from Wikimedia Commons
