Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill.

SPEAKER: The legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon SIMON WATTS: I move, That the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Governance and Administration Committee to consider the bill. At the appropriate time, I intend to move that the bill will be reported to the House by 18 November 2025.

I am pleased to be here today with this bill. In a relatively short period of time, this Government has done a lot to improve the lives for New Zealanders within their communities, from restoring local democracy to addressing water infrastructure issues. I am proud to take the first reading of this system improvements bill. This bill addresses the cost of living concerns we know are shared by New Zealanders around this country. Council rates have been identified as a big driver of inflation for Kiwi households, and we are doing something about that to address that problem.

Our goal is clear. We have said it before, and I will say it again; we want councils to get back to the basics and do those basics brilliantly. That means focusing on the essentials that are the top priorities, like water services, infrastructure, roading, and rubbish. There have been too many instances around the country where councils have lacked fiscal discipline and spent far too much on the things that most people do not consider are core activities of local government. We want to ensure that ratepayers see that the basics are taken care of with the money they pay.

This bill will help councils to reduce the pressure on rates in five key areas. First of all, this bill refocuses the purpose of local government. We looked at the evidence and it showed that whenever the four aspects of community wellbeing are included in the purpose of local government, rates go up as councils are focused on too many things. The most reasonable thing to do, therefore, is to remove the four wellbeings. We want to make it clear that the council’s role is to provide cost-effective and good quality infrastructure and public services to the communities in which they serve. We ask councils to have particular regard to the core services when they’re performing their role; nothing more, nothing less.

Then we want to make sure that council performance is better measured and made public. We all know councils already report their activities in all sorts of ways. That is a positive thing. However, council reporting is inconsistent, and the outcome is no one has the full picture, and ratepayers can’t see how their council is doing compared to another. From the end of this month, council profiles will be published annually on the Department of Internal Affairs website and will show the same set of data for every council in this country, allowing ratepayers to compare the spending and performance of their councils against their neighbours. This is not rocket science. This is common-sense delivery from a common-sense Government. This bill will support broader types of data being reported in the future by enabling new regulations to be made that will make it easier to adjust council performance measures.

We also want councils to prioritise core services in council spending. We have listened to ratepayers; we have listened to households and communities. In this bill, an additional financial management principle for councils has been included. This means that a local authority must have particular regard to the purpose of local government and the core services that they are meant to provide when determining its financial management approach. Councils should focus on what’s important when they are spending ratepayers’ money. The change reinforces that these core services should be given the appropriate focus when councils are deciding how much to spend and how much to charge their ratepayers.

We want to strengthen the transparency and accountability of councils. To do this, we’re rolling out initiatives that will better equip councillors to do their job. This includes a standardised code of conduct, new standing orders, and measures to ensure councillors can access the information that they need to do their job. The bill enables these to be set centrally rather than on an ad hoc individual council basis. This will provide greater certainty and greater consistency about behavioural standards across local government, reduce costs for councils, and ensure councillors are fully informed to make decisions.

Finally, we want to provide further regulatory relief to councils to reduce their cost base. Some regulatory requirements currently in the legislation are outdated and no longer relevant and have become a financial burden for councils and therefore for ratepayers. The regulatory relief we are providing comes in a multitude of ways, including modernising the public notice requirements in the Local Government Act, allowing chief executives to delegate authority for lending approval when they are out of office, removing the requirement for six-yearly service delivery reviews, extending the maximum length of a chief executive’s second term to five years, and removing the requirement for councils to consider the relevance of tikanga Māori knowledge when appointing council-controlled organisation directors because this is already required within other parts of the legislation. Removing these regulatory burdens will support councils to focus on their core businesses, speed up delivery, and bring rates down.

This refocuses our councils and will help us to deliver better value for money and, ultimately, help address the number one issue that Kiwis feel right now, which is the cost of living. It will also ensure that the priorities are done first and foremost for locals in our local communities.

We are committed to reducing the pressure on rates for New Zealand households and acting in the areas we’ve identified as the drivers of rates increases. This is an excellent start to our ambitious yet crucial plan. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Thank you for the opportunity to take a call on this Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill. I am involved in the select committee that will be examining this bill, but the person who will be leading our work in this is our spokesperson Tangi Utikere, who’s actually at the Local Government New Zealand conference today, where apparently this bill is a topic du jour.

It’s not without some irony in my mind that I read this bill. I understand that the cost of living is a huge issue for New Zealanders, and almost every opinion poll shows that. I know that the Government will be desperate to try and point to ways that they are trying to address this, but this particular bill is not really about the cost of living; it’s about taking away the rights of democratically elected councils and putting them back to the centre.

Is this the same party that railed against three waters and the decisions that the Labour Government was making in order to save ratepayers hundreds of millions of dollars? It appears so—it appears so. It is deeply ironic that a party that has previously stood—or at least stated that they stand—for local control is snatching control off democratically elected councils through this bill and telling them what to do in a very prescriptive way from Wellington.

That’s what this bill does, and I didn’t think that I would see the day when the National Party would do this, but we see that things do change. They, obviously, have seen that they don’t trust democratically elected councils and seem to ignore the tools that exist currently if there are issues with councils. The House will know that if there are serious issues around the financial sustainability of councils—or serious issues around the management of councils—existing tools are in place in order for Government to, if necessary, take control of those councils. We’ve seen that both under this Government and under the previous Government.

This particular bill does not, in any way, save anyone any amount of money; it just tells local councils what to do. Although there are some minor aspects of this bill that I think we can be supportive of, they’ve really thrown the baby out with the bathwater here in terms of telling councils they’re not allowed to take into account the wellbeing of their communities. It’s shocking—shocking—centralised control of local authorities.

Telling councils that they should no longer be looking at tikanga Māori—I was interested to read this document here, the departmental disclosure statement, in relation to the changes that are being put in place by this bill. The departmental disclosure statement states, “The proposal relating to tikanga Māori knowledge in council-controlled organisation governance may affect Māori participation in local government decision-making”. Well, that sounds like a backwards step for New Zealand. Going hand in hand with the changes that this Government has made in relation to Māori wards, it is another attack on Māori through this bill—one that we absolutely cannot support.

Despite having the opportunity in this bill to address some legitimate concerns—and there are things in here, for example the code of conduct aspect, although I understand Local Government New Zealand does have draft codes of conduct that automatically exist. The other thing I think we can support is the idea of information going from officials to democratically elected councillors. There is a lot in here that takes a step backwards. It takes New Zealand away from a situation where we elect our local representatives and we trust them to know our communities best and what is best for our communities

What this bill says is “Wellington knows best. Wellington knows your community better than you, and the Government is going to step in and tell your council what to do.” It’s a degradation of the rights of democratically elected councils, and we cannot support it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m stoked to speak on this bill. Our local government spokesperson is also at the LGNZ Conference, but, thankfully, we have a wealth of local government experience in our caucus.

Stuart Smith: Where?

TAMATHA PAUL: Well, I’ve served four years as a city councillor, for one. We have Lan Pham, who was an Environmental Canterbury councillor. And, also, Celia Wade-Brown, who was the Mayor of Wellington for a long time. So we know what we’re talking about, unlike the other side of the House. [Interruption]

DEPUTY SPEAKER: OK, this is a barrage; these are not interjections. Interjections are fine, but keep the noise down, please.

TAMATHA PAUL: Thank you, Madam Speaker. So, yes, rates are very high, but this bill completely misses the point about why rates are high. The reason that rates are high is because there has been a legacy in this country of politicians who promised low or zero rates increases and completely under-invest in the infrastructure that we need to survive—things like our water infrastructure, our road infrastructure, our housing. These are things that have been neglected in the pursuit of petty votes.

This is why councils are facing the challenges that they are facing. They are having to deal with decades, legacies, of under-investment, but they also have to look to the future and prepare our cities and our regions for impending climate change and other resilience issues that they face. That is why rates are high, not because councils are focusing on other things.

If we want to talk about the Wellington convention centre, the Tākina convention centre cost a fraction of what the Auckland convention centre and the Christchurch convention centre cost. I’ll also note that those used Crown funding; ours was funded by our own businesses, our own downtown levy, and our own rates. We didn’t rely on the Government for those.

So this bill talks about core services. What are core services? According to this legislation, things like a just transition and mitigation and being able to prepare for climate change is apparently not a basic service. Things like safe walking and cycling infrastructure, making sure that kids don’t get hit off their bikes, is apparently not a core, basic service. Making sure that people are safe in our cities and don’t get harassed and assaulted is apparently not a core service. Well, those are things that are important to our communities, and if you cared about listening to our local communities, you would know that.

The other thing that is really concerning in this bill is that it changes a part in the Act around the avoidance or mitigation of natural hazards into simply civil defence management, emergency management, which is basically saying we’re not going to try and futureproof any more. We’re not going to prepare ourselves for climate change and for the storm weather events. Look at what’s happened in the last few weeks in Nelson. Now, we are not going to do that any more; we are just going to prepare ourselves for the worst, and we’re going to say to councils, we’re only going to fund you to prepare for the worst. We won’t make the change that we need to make in this decade to actually curb our emissions and prevent these one-in-100-year disasters from happening over and over again. It is such a deep lack of foresight by people who have very little experience in local government and probably couldn’t get elected anyway.

If we want to talk about the toilets, what’s wrong with having a 24/7 public toilet? It is the first accessible toilet our city has ever had—ever had. That is a place that people can go, particularly our rough-sleeping community—[Interruption]—to wash—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Shh! Too much noise.

TAMATHA PAUL: —themselves and to use the bathroom. It matters to elderly people, who need to use the bathroom more often. So if you actually talk to the communities that made these decisions, then that side might understand that.

What councils need is more funding and financing. This has been said by so many different groups—Local Government New Zealand to the Productivity Commission have said that councils need greater access to different financing tools to actually fund the things that they want to do. But, again, the problem is that they are facing under-investment and they are trying to face the future and the challenges ahead of us.

This bill does nothing to achieve that. On the one hand, you have a Government that campaigned, at least, on central government staying out of local government’s business. Then you give the power to local government and local councils and you don’t like the decisions that they’re making, because they want to keep their Māori wards, they want the centralisation of water services, and, actually, the lack of direction and the lack of a coherent strategy from this Government has resulted in the changes to councils’ credit ratings, which impacts their ability to borrow money and to fund the future.

So that is the problem. This bill completely misses the mark.

The sad thing about this House is that those people who sit in the seats closer to the Speaker’s Chair sound the loudest. There is a lot of noise coming from this side. I just want it to be interjections and toned down. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to support this bill, the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill. It is a step forward to restoring focus and accountability and value in local government, which, ultimately, is about easing the cost of living for all New Zealanders, because local government touches every part of our lives, from rubbish collection, road maintenance, building consents in public spaces, and it needs to be done right so that things can work.

The Minister, in his speech, emphasised that when focus is lost, the cost is paid by ratepayers, who are families and small businesses across this country. Rates are going up faster than inflation, people are feeling squeezed, and one of the contributing reasons is too many councils have drifted away from their core responsibilities and into political and ideological territory, enabled by some changes that happened under the last Government, who introduced the four wellbeings—a bit of a misnomer when you look at the results.

This bill sends a clear message: councils are not mini-parliaments; they are service delivery agencies. Their job is to manage infrastructure and keep communities running, and doing it while delivering value for money. When they deviate from that, and waste ratepayers’ money, they increase the cost of living on all of us.

I’m going to give you an example here: Auckland, Whangārei, and Tauranga, and also councils in the Wairarapa and Wellington regions have adopted their own climate action plan. They’re trying to be well meaning but they are unnecessary because New Zealand has a national emissions reduction system in place: it’s called the emissions trading scheme. It drives behaviour change where it counts, and councils do not need to be getting involved in this area.

Last year, Whanganui District Council considered building a hotel. That is not the role of councils. Ratepayers are not venture capitalists. They expect their potholes to be fixed and their pipes to work, not to speculate on real estate plays. Some councils have even derailed their agendas in recent months after being distracted by international politics. These examples highlight what happens when councils go after political projects rather than delivering practical services, and this can lead to bloated budgets, higher rates, and frustrated residents who just want to see the basics done well.

We need to improve transparency. The Minister has spoken about the inability for members of local councils to get information that they require to properly assess proposals that have been put towards them. But also, think of the poor ratepayers: local residents who want to know how their council compares to other councils around the country. Right now, that would involve something like going out and OIA-ing every local authority—some 28 information requests. Well, what we’re going to see here is a tool, a platform, a table, a dashboard—something like what the Minister thought the building and construction industry has implemented very strategically and that has been well delivered. We’re seeing what building consenting authorities, which are also mostly councils, are delivering when it comes to timeliness for their building consent applications, acceptations, and code of compliance certificates being delivered. That has been a success by the Minister in the construction industry. This is going to be a success by the Minister of Local Government in getting answers for local people. This bill introduces that in the form of benchmarking.

Value for money needs to be at the heart of everything that councils do, from procuring to planning, and it might sound obvious, but right now, many councils have got into pursuing vague policy objectives and social outcomes, with little regard to the cost. We have seen procurement policies that emphasise ideology over results. This is not just unfair on ratepayers who are footing the bill; it is especially unfair at a time when every dollar counts. This bill helps restore fiscal discipline by putting costs and quality at the centre of council decision-making.

Finally, democracy matters. We have seen places like Tauranga put unelected iwi representatives with full voting rights on council committees. In Hastings, we’ve seen unelected youth councillors being appointed to council committees with full voting rights and pay. This is not how democracy should work. If you want a say in how local money is spent, you should get elected, and this bill is working to fix that direction in New Zealand. This change to the local government legislation that is being amended is going to focus councils on the job they were created to do, and I commend this to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you. This is an important bill. It is a well-signalled bill. The background to this bill, obviously, is some very, very high rates increases, and the last three years have been unprecedented. What we’ve seen is the average across all councils was 34.4 percent over the last three years compared to the Consumers Price Index. I know councils will say the local government inflation index of 13.7 percent is more important. In some jurisdictions—this city—it was 46 percent plus.

That is the sort of number which really hurts, and we are, I think for the first time ever—I had 30 years on a council. Generally speaking, what we heard from is people saying we want more services, more services, more services. For the last three years, we’ve started to hear people say in increasing numbers, “We are concerned about our rates. We are really hurting and people are really now afraid. They’re finding it difficult to actually pay the rates and they’re concerned they may not be able to stay in their own homes.” That is a real concern. That, really, is what this bill is responding to. I think what people are saying is they are really questioning the value for money that they are getting from their council, so that is what this bill is intending to do. It’s about imposing greater disciplines.

The thing is, when you’ve got statutory monopoly powers to rate, that comes with a lot of responsibility. That’s what this bill is trying to do, to impose greater responsibility. It removes—as we’ve heard—the four wellbeings and it changes the purpose of local government. What actually is good in that is it also does retain or keeps in there the purpose of economic development and growth, because that is consistent with the Government’s agenda, the necessity we have as a country to grow our economy. So it would make no sense whatsoever to say to councils, “You can’t be involved in that area and get that dropped because then it would harm our economic development.”

It requires a focus on core services. Now, there’s going to be a huge amount of debate about what is core, but what I do like is that core here is not just asset infrastructure, like network infrastructure. That’s really, really important. That’s obviously core-core, and waste management and public transport services and civil defence, but it also includes libraries, museums, reserves, and other recreational facilities. I think that is really, really important because those things are really, really valuable to communities and to the people who live right around our country to enjoy.

I think it’s going to be really interesting to see how we think about what environmental services are, how we define those, because in that reserves category, quite clearly environmental areas are very, very important. I think that that is important, particularly in this city, something that I’m personally very proud of.

Trying to define “core” has been a challenge in the past as well. You might well recall Rodney Hide, who said councils stick to core services. The next thing that was said was “What are you guys doing for the Rugby World Cup?” As soon as that was done, every event under the sun was in play. That is the danger that sometimes, when you say you can’t do this, this, and this—this, this and this—and this Government has done it as well, actually. We said, “Stick to core services.”, and I think the next day we had one of the Ministers of the Crown, plus the Mayor of Auckland, saying, “Hey, we’re funding this festival.”

Now, again, what is a core service? There’s going to be a lot of debate around that as this bill advances. There’s no question that some councils are going well beyond what is a core service at the moment and they should draw back in again. There are also—and we heard already in the debate—some critically important services that are only provided by councils that, if they are not core, councils are going to have to make some decisions about whether they are able to do those or not. It’s going to be a subject of some significant debate.

It’s good to see the focus on good quality local infrastructure. We’ve heard about under-investment in infrastructure. Good quality means you must be investing in it to keep it as good quality, to keep it being able to do the job it does, so it means good quality asset management. We’ve heard from the Office of the Auditor-General (OAG) that over the last decade plus, councils across the country have been under-investing by about a quarter what they should have been. That’s every single council in the country under-investing by about a quarter in basic three waters infrastructure, so that’s where that deficit comes from.

We as a Government—every Government—need to look in the mirror as well and say, “Government’s not that crash hot at looking after infrastructure as well.” That is one of the things that the New Zealand Infrastructure Commission is saying to us loud and clear: we need to be investing more in asset management so we look after those assets so they can continue to do the job they need.

Look, just still on the OAG, it’s interesting that when I’ve talked to a number of councils about it—because we need to think about the cost that the Government imposes on local authorities—do you know the first thing that a lot of them said to me? Several of them in a row said, unprompted, that the audit costs are extortionate. For some of them, it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. For some of them—small councils—it’s 1 percent or even 2 percent of their rates. So we’ve got to think very, very carefully about the amount of money that we, effectively, cost councils as well. Look, there’s a lot more I’d like to say, but I’m looking forward to seeing the bill progress, and I commend it to the House.

Tēnā koe e te Pīka, otirā tēnā tātou. Māku ngā kōrero mō tēnei pire hāngai te haere ake nei, nō reira tēnā tātou.

[Thank you, Madam Speaker, indeed greetings to us all. The statements about this relevant bill that is progressing are up to me, and so greetings to us all.]

This bill is not a reform; it’s an absolute takeover. It marks the devolution of our democratic rights, stripping power from local communities and forcibly absorbing it as part of central government control. This goes far beyond reshaping local government. It introduces the same control mechanisms seen in the Regulatory Standards Bill, a piece of legislation so troubling that even the United Nations has raised concerns.

Under this bill, local councils shall be gutted. They will be gutted; gutted of their power to tailor decisions to their local needs, effectively turning councils into administrative arms of central government, as if to imply that out-of-touch politicians know better than the communities themselves. The claim by the Government that these moves will reduce rates pressures and improve efficiencies is an outcome that’s hardly likely to materialise, as they then set out to deal with all the backlash that’s going to come to them. The claim from this coalition Government, it’s just out the gate; it won’t be there.

Reshaping the function and purpose of local government in Aotearoa is only a taster of what the coalition Government intends to impose at the national level. And this is all happening in real time—real time—before our eyes. As I listen to the Minister’s opening statements, they’re so far removed from the reality of interpersonal life—you know, thinking that things can just be managed in units from some central location that’s not in the place that they live. These things will all have a real impact on many communities, and Māori are, for sure, likely to be amongst the highest affected negatively.

Democracy for us as Māori is an experience that we’ve never had the full benefit of, and this bill will only take that even further. The removal of requirements for councils to consider tikanga Māori in appointing directors of council-controlled organisations, particularly as these entities prepare for the partial privatisation of water services—you might want to reflect on the fact that the water case is still before the courts, eh—

Simon Court: You’re not the Speaker.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: —well, that the water case is still before the courts, e te Pīka, and that there is no clear statement—

DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yeah, I think they were referring to the fact that you used the word “you”, but you’re not the first person today that’s done that.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: Yeah, I’ve heard all of them do it before too. But kei te pai. So the community wellbeing mandate, well, that’s gone. Councils will no longer be empowered to invest in the hauora of their communities through social, economic, environmental, or the cultural lenses; instead, just short-term fiscal targets. Yeah, I don’t know, I thought we would have learnt these lessons a long, long time ago, but obviously we haven’t.

All of this completely undoes the progress that’s been made in reconciling the holistic wellbeing of communities. We’ve seen time and time again that intervention by Government doesn’t work. Here we go; let’s do this one. It’s right down to doing it all based on cost efficiency, as if society is made up of widgets and robots that can be managed in a unitary fashion. You all look confused. I know. You’re very confusing.

Hon Member: No one understands what you’re saying.

TĀKUTA FERRIS: It’s a joke, mate—it’s a joke. It’s a joke to think that you can deal with people and the emotions that drive life in that fashion. It’s a joke. It’s an unimaginative joke. It’s a no vision, no capacity to see past your own small boxes in front of you; a joke. So to broadly summarise the bill, it removes councils’ ability to invest in equity—so no equity. It eliminates the requirements to consider tikanga Māori in establishing certain jobs in the council.

They should have taken a leaf from all of the mayors and the CEOs and the people from the councils who came before Parliament, before select committees, and said they actually are very happy to partner with iwi, with mana whenua in their rohe—they’re very happy to work with them. They’ve actually done the job of walking alongside those iwi, those hapū—walking alongside them for years now and have learnt that the future is with them, not excluding them. That’s a lesson that the central government has yet to learn, and this crowd over here are likely to never learn, but it is the reality. It is the reality.

Māori are the future, particularly in the regions. You either do the work and catch up to your local counterparts in local government, do the work, understand where Māori are going, get alongside them, or be left behind, like this bill. We don’t support it.

The cost of living is the number one issue that I spend time working on. The cost of living is the number one issue that the National Party is focused on. It is the number one issue and the top priority for this Government. One of the things I continually hear as I’m working in the great Ōtaki electorate is people coming to me and talking—and we had it when I was out with Suze Redmayne, who’s the other MP in Horowhenua, when we were in the community on Monday. People were saying that rate rises are too high. They are a huge burden, and they are forecast over a three-year period to be more than 30 percent across a couple of councils in our area.

Hon Member: How much?

TIM COSTLEY: They’re 30 percent increases. We have to do something. People say, “What will you do about it?” I have a long list of people that request meetings with me and they come to my office and they want to talk about issues with councils, but they want to know what can we do to drive down the costs of living when it comes to things like rates. We know that not only did New Zealand suffer from inflation under the last Labour Government but we know that rates increases are inflationary. There are studies that demonstrate that, that they push costs up. So limiting rate rises is really important.

This bill brings a range of changes that, yes, are intentionally designed to get economic efficiency, to keep the costs of living down for Kiwis, because we think that’s the thing that matters to them more than any other right now: making life affordable. So we’re not embarrassed, we’re not ashamed, and we don’t agree with people like Te Pāti Māori and the Green Party when they come and say that we shouldn’t be focused on those things. We had the Green Party before saying we should have had more rate rises over the last few years, that that is the answer. What kind of lunacy is that?

I want to just reflect on one part of this bill, just one small section: Part 1, clause 6, amending section 10 of the Local Government Act. It is redefining the purpose of local government back to what it always was, which will be this: “[one] to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; [secondly] to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses; and [finally] to support local economic growth”—our Government’s all about going for growth—“and development by fulfilling the purpose set out” that I just discussed in No. 2.

Let me focus on that No. 2: good quality local infrastructure. Now, I think councils should spend money, on occasion, on public toilets. They should spend it on things like bus shelters. But I agree with people in my community that complain when they point to the bus shelter in Paraparaumu—or the bus stop there—that cost in the vicinity of $2 million.

Hon James Meager: What’s it made of?

TIM COSTLEY: What’s it made of? Reinforced steel so that they could put a garden on the roof. You can’t see it; it’s on the roof. But they put one up there anyway. We need a shelter on the side of the road, maybe, yeah, so people can get out of the wind and the rain—occasionally we have rain in Kāpiti—but we need councils to be making wise, sensible, and, at times, tough decisions. Our Government has to make tough decisions. Sure, it would be fun and make me feel good, like the last Government, to just spray money around everywhere, but it leads to inflation and it causes more problems. We have to make the tough, grown-up decisions and invest in sensible things. Quality local infrastructure—but done in an affordable way.

Secondly, local public services. Some of the examples that people have listed have been things like local rubbish and recycling. Actually, in the Kāpiti Coast, there is no curb-side rubbish collection or recycling, and they closed down the Waikanae recycling plant. I did object to that; it was prior to my time as an MP. But we need to do that in a cost-effective way.

Some of the local services—you might have seen the Horowhenua council and the outcry because they said, in the last budget round, that they were no longer going to mow people’s front lawns for them; they were mowing the berms out on the street. Actually, I think that was a sign of leadership. They, in part, backed down, but I thought that was a good decision from council, a sensible thing to say, “Actually, we don’t expect every ratepayer to pay for you to mow your lawns; you can mow your own lawns. You’re mowing the rest of them on the other side of the fence.” We need to make more grown-up decisions like that.

Finally, to the performance of regulatory functions. I acknowledge that the Government has a role to play here. That’s why we’re reforming the Resource Management Act. That’s why we’re looking for faster consenting, for cheaper and easier consenting. But we need councils to play their part as well. So I stand by this. I want to see good quality local infrastructure, local public services, and those regulatory functions, but it should be done, as it will now be done, in the most cost-effective way for mums, dads, and ordinary Kiwis. That’s what this bill is all about. I commend it to the House.

Talofa, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call on this bill. The Minister has explained through his legislative statement that local government has lacked fiscal discipline amongst councils—that this bill will ensure councils are focused on core functions, spending within their means, and that ratepayers must scrutinise council operations. What’s more is this bill removes all references to the four aspects of community wellbeing. It reinstates the purpose of local government being focused on cost-effective provision of good quality local infrastructure and public services. It reinstates the specific core services a local government must have, in particular regarding its performing of that role.

But the term local government means exactly that—that it’s local. So why is the central government dictating yet again to local government through this bill? The local body elections will be held towards the end of the year: October 2025. How does the Government expect democratically elected local politicians to help run their communities, when local government’s core role is to work with their communities? In fact, I looked up the definition and the core purpose of local government. The core purpose of local government in New Zealand is to enable democratic decision-making and action by and on behalf of communities to promote social, economic, environmental, and cultural wellbeing, both in the present and for the future. This is achieved through a two-tiered system of regional and territorial authorities working to represent and serve the needs of their specific communities.

The Minister also explained that this is to achieve better measuring and publicising of council performance, helping councils to focus on financial prudence, so that ratepayers will benefit from increased transparency of council spending and improved decision-making. Well, that’s a lot of brick and mortar and rules around the who and the what in terms of that. But what about the people from local communities? Do they get to have a say in this top-down approach?

I want to emphasise that democratically elected local politicians work with their communities every day. Why do I know that? Because I had to do that over a decade, and it was a great pleasure working alongside communities and with council officials. Whilst the rulebook is being rewritten of council’s core functionalities, it is the local politicians that have to get around, day in, day out, to achieve with their local community, community outcomes—and they do.

The Minister also explained and advised on the essentials under this bill. Well, I can stand here and say that community kōrero, conversations with the community, community talanoa—that is an essential. Additionally, this bill removes the obligation for councils to consider tikanga Māori when it comes to appointing council-controlled organisation (CCO) directors. Well, that step removes the mana of tikanga Māori. When CCO directors are appointed specifically to make good decisions within their role, they are serving diverse communities. CCO directors must have an understanding of the benefits and the taonga as their role in serving those local communities. So whilst this bill has some technical improvements, these are far outweighed by the ideological and the structural changes that will constrain local leadership and erode bicultural governance.

Communities up and down Aotearoa are diverse. Communities understand the important relationship with local government and must have a voice within this kaupapa. Unfortunately, this is part of the Government’s agenda, with its reforms; alongside the water services bill and regional deals that increases central control, stripping councils of autonomy and the local voices of community. I do not support this bill.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I intend only to take a very short call, but I just want to start off by saying that it’s rather ironic to hear from that side of the House that they actually, all of a sudden, care for the people in local communities, because in the previous six years before National—and the coalition Government—took power in this country, they really did not care about what the local communities actually said.

This is the thing: yes, there are diverse communities up and down the country, and one of the biggest things that they complain about is the cost of living that we currently face. It is something that this Government is doing, and working very hard to fix, and one of the things that the cost of living impacts on is the ability for people to pay their rates. The reason why the rates are going up so high is because the cost for councils is actually going up. When I think about how the rates have actually grown in the last 20 years, I thought it was about 15 percent, but, you know, my learned colleague here, Andy Foster, who has actually been a mayor, said that it has actually grown by 30 percent and above.

This is one of the things that we need to actually make sure we return the councils to focusing on: their core-core work programme, to make sure that they deliver for the local community who want to make sure that their rates are not increasing at the rate of 30 percent as we were talking about before, and actually making sure that they focus on things like potholes, the infrastructure, and local community issues that people want their councils to focus on.

For example, I think one of my colleagues across the House actually talked about how the infrastructure for dealing with flood issues—whereas drainage and sewage issues were not dealt with for decades, in many, many iterations of councils and Governments. I think these are the things that councils need to focus on, and this bill delivers on that, to make sure they do that for our local communities. I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Much has been said in the discussion about this bill today about the removal of the four wellbeings from the Local Government Act. I thought I might take some time to actually talk about those four wellbeings—what they are and what they do—because—

Tim Costley: Economic.

RACHEL BOYACK: Yeah, there is one. I’m going to get to the economic one, Mr Costley, because I think it’s a bit odd for the National Party, which claims to be the party of the economy, to be taking out the responsibility for the council to think about economic impacts of their decisions. It kind of seems weird and bizarre. I’m going to talk about a few examples.

One of the things that local councils do, and have a big impact on, is housing. The decisions they make around the council table can have an impact on the affordability of housing. The decisions they make around the table can have an impact on ensuring that housing developments don’t have a negative impact on the environment. Another thing that the decisions they make can do is to consider the positive social impacts that good quality housing can have on the community. Some of those decisions are actually related back to those four wellbeings—the social, economic, environmental, and cultural benefits to the community.

I would have thought we would want councils, when they’re making decisions around housing, to make sure that there’s good stormwater in place so it doesn’t have a poor impact on the environment, that the decisions they’re making around where houses are built and how houses are built will help improve the affordability of housing for the community, and that things like the social impacts of housing in the community will be considered.

There’s a particular example I want to raise from my community of Nelson—but it’s occurring across the whole country—which is around homelessness. In inner-city Nelson, we are seeing a growing increase in the number of rough sleepers. Now, if you consider the wellbeings, having a growing number of rough sleepers is impacting on the social wellbeing of the community. It is actually having an economic impact. I visited the museum the other day, where people are actually not coming in to visit our museum, because we have rough sleepers outside. This is a direct result of the fact we don’t have good provisions for rough sleepers in Nelson. Now, Nelson City Council has set aside some money to help improve services for our homeless community in Nelson. That’s a good thing. They should be doing that because it actually, as well as having a social impact, has an economic impact. If people aren’t coming and spending their money in a city, because there’s a growing number of rough sleepers, there’s negative economic impact on Nelson.

Let’s just talk about the economic decisions that councils make. Rates: I think about rates. I would have thought that it’s a good thing for councils to consider the decisions they’re making in the context of rates. I would have thought it’s a good thing for councils to be considering the impact of their decisions on things like the cost of living. I would have thought it was a good idea for councils to be making decisions that are ensuring investment in their cities. In Nelson, we invest in the Nelson Regional Development Agency. They go out, and they seek funding for our companies and our industries that help grow our economy. I would have thought that’s a good thing to do, but somehow the National Party wants to stop councils from doing that. It’s quite weird.

The last one was around the cultural decision. I haven’t touched enough on the cultural wellbeing. Every year in Nelson, we have the Nelson-Tasman Multicultural Festival. Thousands of people come to Founders. We’ve had to move it to Founders in Nelson, which is owned by the council, because the numbers that attend every year are growing and growing and growing. People come down, and, for a gold coin donation, they can enjoy cultural performances, cultural food, a whole lot of fun activities, holy festivals, and they can engage with local organisations like the Police and Fire and Emergency. They can purchase items made by our local ethnic communities. Funnily enough, when people come to that event, they spend a lot of money in our inner city, so there is a multiplier effect—something that we learn when we do Economics 101. What is actually a tiny, minute investment from the council actually helps improve the cultural wellbeing of our community, and it actually creates economic activity.

I think these are good things for local government to do, and so it’s a terrible move for this Government to, once again, remove the four wellbeings from the Local Government Act, and I do not commend this bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a great pleasure to rise as the final speaker on the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill.

This bill directly addresses cost of living concerns shared by New Zealanders around the country; we know it’s the number one issue facing Kiwis at the moment. Council rates have been identified as a big driver of inflation. For Kiwi households, average rate increases last year were 8.4 percent across the country, while the Consumer Price Index (CPI) was at 2.2 percent. Therefore, we as a Government have to take action to ensure ratepayers get real value for money from their local councils. Too many councils across New Zealand have lost sight of their core purpose and are spending ratepayer money on things that aren’t essential services. There have been too many instances where councils have lacked fiscal discipline and spent far too much on activities most people don’t consider to be core council business.

Ratepayers are frustrated with rising rates. I think of my home patch in the Bay of Plenty: the Tauranga City Council recently consulted on their annual plan at 12.5 percent and settled on 9.9 percent—far outstretching what CPI is at the moment—while spending on many things that many ratepayers would consider nice-to-haves. That’s why this legislation is so vital for the New Zealand that we want, to ensure that it’s affordable for our families and households across the country. People are frustrated with rising rates, expanding bureaucracy, and poor value for money. Removing things like the four wellbeings and actually focusing on their core business is ultimately what this legislation is focused on, and therefore, I commend it to the House.

The question is, That the

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Governance and Administration Committee.

Instruction to the Governance and Administration Committee