How long is long enough?
Published in The National Business Review
Since the government decisions on Auckland governance were released in April, the remarkably swift progression through the seven stages of grief has been grudgingly accepted as inevitable by virtually everyone in and around the local government scene.
The select committee report on the Local Government(Auckland Council) Bill is due on September 4 and it will be passed into law with great rapidity.
Shock and denial have given way to acceptance and hope, so even the loudest opponents concede the idea has some merits. Most are making a virtue of necessity and have settled down to fight the lesser battles as to form and function.
Once the bill has determined the broad form of the Auckland Council (membership, ward structure, etc) and the second tier (number and nature of entities and their functions) the Local Government Commission can begin its job of determining names, boundaries, numbers and membership of local boards. This job has to be completed by next March to allow arrangements to be concluded for the triennial elections in October.
The bill’s passing should also allow the Auckland Transition Agency (ATA) to confirm its project outline for the establishment of the Auckland Council and to begin to move from the discovery phase to the strategy and design phase.
The ATA has already proved it can move quickly to implement complex projects, having assessed and confirmed the adoption of all eight long-term council community plans within mere weeks of its establishment.
But the task required across the work streams is enormous and the delivery deadline is fixed. Further, it is understood the ATA does not intend to appoint the transitional chief executive until next June, which both increases the hold it has on the transitional arrangements and limits the input it could get from the appointee.
The next legislative step is the as yet unnamed bill for the governance structure, functions, roles and powers of council and local boards, and the detailed legislative framework. It will tie up the remaining loose ends, including the fate of the staff of the existing local government organisations.
The bill should also address all the consequent legislative amendments that will result from the creation of the Auckland Council as a unitary authority. For example, what will happen to the electoral college comprising appointments by each of the Auckland local authorities that makes appointments to the board of the Auckland War Memorial Museum?
This third bill is due to be introduced in December and enacted in March alongside the proposed changes to the Local Government Act 2002. Since drafting of the former can hardly advance until the Local Government (Auckland Council) Bill is passed, the teams at the Department of Internal Affairs and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel can be expected to be working overtime to meet the deadline.
It is not unreasonable to ask whether just too much is being asked of the local government sector generally into little time. Look at what is on the programme: Auckland reorganisation by November next year; review of the Local Government Act by year’s end; a Building Act amendment has just been passed; the delayed report back on the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bills due this month and phase two is in the wings.
Then there are proposed changes to the Local Government (Rating) Act 2002 while Auckland local authorities are carrying on planning for new infrastructure, finalising district plan amendments, making policies and hoping that the arrangements they have put in place will prevail in the new scheme of things.
Mercifully, Prime Minister John Key and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide told the local government conference in Christchurch that reorganisation beyond Auckland needed to be led by the regions.
Presumably, it will also occur within the confines of the existing statutory framework. But there can be no doubt the Auckland example has set the wheels in motion.
For Auckland, or indeed local government generally, to succeed and flourish, some masterful hand has to be pulling all of these initiatives and statutory changes together.
Mr Hide told conference delegates that his one questioning assessing policy is whether it will “make the boat go faster?” We need to hope he is a master sailmaker and sail setter assisted by a remarkably able crew and that he will not, as one delegate suggested, "steer the boat into a sandbank".
For more information, please contact:
Linda O'Reilly
Partner
t: +64 9 979 2167
e: Linda O'Reilly
Last updated: August 2009
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