Unitary Council - a Step in the Right Direction?

So the Local Government Commission has decided that the whole of Northland should be one, vast, unitary Council, merging a City, a District and a Region.

I guess it is good to see that the new political leaders of these organisations have already met and say they are willing to work together for the best good of all — whatever that pious generalisation means. And I am pleased to see that the proposal goes some way towards what I consider to be the ideal two-step solution.

With a mixture of modesty and superiority, I suggest again -

1. Merge the sectional interests of all our little country’s Councils and Boards into a single organisation which could take over their roles. Actually, it’s already in place. It’s called the NZ Government. And it, for a country of our size, could do everything our complex system of Councils and Boards does.

2. Return local government to the locals. Reinvent elected voluntary community bodies that represent defined communities with common interests or common boundaries. The present system of wards can link up to seven or eight distinct communities, and consistently creates accusations of sectional interests. By definition, it is not “community”.

The Paihia Community Trust is a model for this view of local government. There may be as many as thirty defined communities under the new Unitary Council. I wonder if it will have thirty or more Community Boards?

A load of rubbish

The news that the Auditor General is not too happy with the way Regional Councils are carrying out their anti-pollution duties doesn’t surprise me.

But adding Government representatives and a whole lot more bureaucracy isn’t the answer. Just do away with the Regional Councils. And the District Councils. And all the regulatory bodies that we have to put in place to keep them on some sort of common track. The whole system is an out of date hangover from the mid-19th century when communication was a little more difficult than it is today.

Let the national government manage water and sewage and pollution and all those things that affect everyone wherever they live in the country. Clean water is clean water, and sewage is sewage: there isn’t one version for Northland another for Wellington. Well, actually sometimes there is, but my point is there shouldn’t be - a national administration would be more consistent.