Community – Connection – Cooperation – Climate
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In a statement yesterday, Local Government Minister Simon Watts said some households were getting frustrated by unfair rate hikes during the cost-of-living crisis.
It followed comments at the recent Local Government NZ (LGNZ) conference, where Watts compared councils to children and suggested that letting them do what they wanted might lead to bad choices.
Olds, who attended the conference, told his colleagues and LGNZ representatives that he was disappointed that councils continued to get “beaten up by central government” over things that were out of their control.
Councils had defended rising rates as they were dealing with increased infrastructure costs, unfunded mandates, insurance, and inflation.
LGNZ chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene said tensions between local and central government were “a challenge”, and that councils bore the impact of frequent changes to government policy.
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“Having created a situation where councils are being forced to put up the rates to pay for things like water infrastructure, the government’s now trying to blame them for doing something that they really don’t have a choice but to do.
“Ultimately if the government don’t want councils to increase rates, they’ve got to find another way of funding the water infrastructure that we need.”
Local Government New Zealand president and Selwyn District mayor Sam Broughton said rates capping could be “disastrous for communities” and leave councils without the means to fund essential infrastructure.
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Many of the managerial techniques that have arrived in the public sector over the austerity years – such as results-based pay, corporate contracting, performance management or evaluation culture – have their origins in a budgetary revolution that took place in the 1960s at the US Department of Defence.
In the early 1960s, Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was frustrated with being nominally in charge of budgeting but having to mediate between the seemingly arbitrary demands of military leaders for more tanks, submarines or missiles.
In response, he called on the RAND Corporation, a US think tank and consultancy, to remake the Defence Department’s budgetary process to give the secretary greater capacity to plan.
Continue ReadingGovernment to give itself power to override councils on housing in RMA changes Source June 18, 2025 PDF The government will take back power from local councils if their decisions are going to negatively impact economic growth, development or employment. In a speech to business leaders at the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, Housing and RMA […]
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