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  "description": "Are wholesale mergers really the answer?",
  "path": "/a-new-look-for-local-government/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-12T22:30:30.000Z",
  "site": "https://goodoil.news",
  "tags": [
    "Peter Williams",
    "check.radio",
    "author’s Substack"
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  "textContent": "Peter Williams\n_Writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines although verbalising thoughts on www.reality_ check.radio_three days a week._\n\nIn 1875 New Zealand had 10 provinces, each with their own government.\n\nWe now have 26 provincial rugby unions.\n\nCurrently there are 78 local authorities – 12 city councils, 53 district councils, Auckland Council, Chatham Islands council and 11 regional councils.\n\nIt used to be worse, much worse.\n\nUp till 1989 we had about 850 local authorities and special purpose bodies. Remember borough councils, county councils and catchment boards? Our biggest cities were ridiculously separated. I bought my first house in the Christchurch suburb of Burwood but paid rates to, and had my rubbish collected, by the Waimairi County Council.\n\nThe coalition government are keen to condense our local authorities yet again. There’s no specific total in mind but it seems the relevant cabinet ministers, Simon Watts and Chris Bishop, want to land on a number somewhere between the old provincial governments and today’s local rugby unions. In other words they want local government reduced to about 20 unitary authorities.\n\nBut is reducing the number of local authorities really the answer to cutting the exorbitant cost of local government? The current rates rises all across the country are just not sustainable.\n\nBut the biggest single cost on local government is staff wages and salaries. Currently 59,700 staff across those 78 local authorities are paid $3.85 billion a year. That’s 21 per cent of all council operating expenditure and cost every New Zealander about $74 a week.\n\nAs in the central government bureaucracy, the number employed in local government has ballooned in recent years. In 2021 there were 52,200 workers. So there’s been a 14 per cent increase in just four years.\n\nA reduction from 78 councils to say 20 will not reduce staff numbers by three quarters, but there will most certainly be no need to have nearly 60,000 people on the books.\n\nThe engineers, the planners, the inspectors, the scientists and many department managers will stay. But reducing the number of CEOs by three quarters would likely save nearly $20 million alone.\n\nThen there’s the HR, communications and, dare they be mentioned, the climate change departments. A scalpel to the head count there is well overdue.\n\nSo on the surface taking the clippers to local government authorities and amalgamating them sounds like a straightforward way to save money. But we know it’s not that simple.\n\nThe Auckland Council, a 2010 merger of Auckland City, Manukau, Waitakere, North Shore, Papakura, Franklin, Rodney and the Auckland Regional Council is not a poster child for efficiency or cost saving. It alone employs about 14,000 people.\n\nWhere I live in Central Otago, we’re most likely to be folded into some province-wide conglomerate, with the head office in Dunedin administering a population of about 250,000.\n\nExcept that the Otago hinterland could not be more different, economically, politically and culturally, than its big city cousin. Dunedin is hardcore Labour. The country is National.\n\nThe redeeming factor is that if the elected representatives are proportionately spread across the province’s population then there will be more non-Dunedin councillors than those based in the city.\n\nThis scenario is likely to be repeated and questioned the length and breadth of the country. Will existing local authorities really be able to merge into enlarged, meaningful and efficient new councils?\n\nFor instance, can Wairarapa, with four current authorities from Tararua to South Wairarapa be merged into one and be economically viable? Or will it have to join greater Wellington with whom it has little in common?\n\nNelson and Marlborough merged their rugby teams to form the successful Tasman Makos. Can the area’s district unitary authorities follow suit?\n\nIn many respects the big problem with local government is not the number or size of councils per se but what they’re expected to do and what they can take upon themselves to do.\n\nThat stems back to the Local Government Act of 2002, which gave councils carte blanche to essentially do whatever they want.\n\nSection 3 (d) of the act provides for local authorities “to play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach.”\n\nTherein lies the real issue.\n\nIf Simon Watts and Chris Bishop want to reel in the local government runaway train, then they have to significantly change the legislation to make it far more prescriptive.\n\nThat means laying out what councils can and must do – and no more.\n\nMaybe they can work on that if they’re re-elected, but I doubt Watts especially, as the Local Government Minister, has the stomach or the courage for such a transformation.\n\nIn the meantime, councils themselves have to work out with their neighbours who they’ll join forces with for the 2028 local body elections. Otherwise Watts, Bishop and their bureaucracy will do it for them.\n\nThat is not a good idea.\n\nThe locals better get on with it, but expect pushback and arguments no matter what’s finally decided.\n\nThis article was originally published on the author’s Substack.",
  "title": "A New Look for Local Government",
  "updatedAt": "2026-05-12T22:30:30.255Z"
}