John MacDonald: Here's how we could keep local councils on track

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

After saying just the other week that I don’t agree with central Government taking over local councils when things go pear-shaped, I’ve changed my tune. Slightly. And I’ve got an idea to run past you.

First, though, can you imagine what it must feel like being a mayor and getting the phone call from the Beehive saying ‘you’re doing a pretty cruddy job so we’re sending someone in to sort you out’?

It happened in Christchurch a few years back when the Government-of-the-day wasn’t happy with the time it was taking the council to process consent applications.

It happened more recently in Christchurch too when there was all that kerfuffle over housing intensifications laws.

And then way before all of that, of course, there was the time that the government didn’t like the way Environment Canterbury was doing things and so stepped-in, gave all the councillors the boot, and put commissioners in to run the place.

And, yesterday, it was Wellington mayor Tory Whanau’s turn to get the phone call. Which was hardly surprising and, from the coverage I’ve seen, she seems to have been relatively gracious about it all.

But there was one thing she was adamant about - she’s not going to resign, after what is clearly a vote of no confidence from the Government.

The thing is, though, when you have no other option and you’ve got the Local Government Minister on the other end of the line spelling out what’s going to happen, you’re hardly going to make a clown of yourself and start chaining yourself to the front of the building in protest or locking the doors so the Minister’s enforcer can’t get in the place.

Because we know, don’t we, from experience that when a Government sends someone into a council, that person is there to enforce what the Government-of-the-day wants.

It was the enforcer who was sent to Christchurch to sort out the council over the consenting and the housing density stuff.

And it was the enforcer who was sent-in to sort out Environment Canterbury back in the day.

But I don’t think it needs to be this way. Because, when you get a Government intervening like it has here in Canterbury in the past, and the way it is in Wellington now, it does make a mockery of local Government, doesn’t it?

So I reckon the solution is to identify problems or issues before they become a crisis. Which councils themselves are never going to do. Because everyone likes to think they’re on top of things and you’re never going to get a council putting its hand up and saying‘ we’re a bit of a basket case, we’ve cocked things up here’.

Which is why we need another set of eyes and ears involved. And we already have a model here in New Zealand that I think could easily be replicated in local Government.

We have the Education Review Office which sends out inspectors to keep an eye on what’s happening in schools to make sure they’re doing what they should be doing.

And I reckon the same thing should happen with local councils. So, instead of the Crown observer only being sent-in when things are hitting the fan, the Government should have a team of observers who would go around all councils on a regular basis.

Do you think all that strife at the Gore council between the mayor and the chief executive might have been avoided or might have been sorted out sooner if there was more of an external microscope being run over the place? I do.

Do you think we might be more reassured that the councillors around the council table are actually the ones making the decisions and not the council staff, if someone from outside was doing a regular check on things? I do.

Do you think the shambles we’re seeing now in Wellington might have been avoided if we had this kind of external observation going on? I do.

So the way I’d see it running would be very similar to the way school inspectors do their job. There’d be a checklist or a criteria that councils could be assessed against. So at school, for example, the inspectors might go in and see how well the kids are going with reading or maths.

The council inspectors or observers could go in and check how well council meetings are being run; how much independent decision-making is going on around the council table; how they’re going with their 10-year budgets - which has been the big sticking point for Wellington.

And then, if they found that a council wasn’t up to scratch, the government could decide whether to give councils a few tips or whether it needed to go full noise and send someone in to bang heads together.

But, even if they did send someone in to get things under control, it would be at a point where the councils had already been called-out, been given the opportunity to fix things, and retained some sense of self-direction or self-management.

Because, the way things are at the moment, it’s no action, no action, no action and then - bang - the Government going all knee-jerk on it and sending the Crown observer in. There’s got to be a better way.

And I think doing regular council inspections or assessments would be that better way.

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