The time for Council amalgamation in Hawke’s Bay has surely come.

It is the only realistic way we can affordably and effectively meet the challenges presented by climate change, achieve flood resilience and water security as a region, and confront an otherwise overwhelming regional infrastructure deficit.

Cyclone Gabrielle shone a harsh spotlight of reality on our complicated even clumsy civil defence emergency group structure, with the timeline of events on February 13 revealing the passage of several hours while the regional leaders debated and took advice over whether to declare an emergency.

No disrespect, and hindsight is a wonderful thing, but this shows how many moving parts there are in the current system before a decision can be made. This makes accountability elusive, as no one council is responsible, yet somehow they all are (or not, as the case may be). 

While the Regional Recovery Agency stood up in the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle has done a truly fantastic job in delivering a coordinated regional voice since the Cyclone, securing around a billion dollars of financial support for recovery to date, if we had one Council, we would not have needed that agency to leverage maximum support from Wellington.

Looking ahead, rate rises of 15-20% across the region are causing an outcry but will not even scratch the surface of what is still required in the years to come. This includes: 

• Another $700M of currently unfunded repairs to our roading network from Cyclone Gabrielle damage, 
• A similar scale of investment to implement the Independent Flood Review Panel’s recommendations for a resilient and predictable flood protection scheme in Hawke’s Bay, 
• At least the same order or magnitude spend again on three waters infrastructure (water supply, urban stormwater management and wastewater treatment and disposal),  
• Public transport is nowhere near at the level of service which the region deserves, and is basically unaffordable outside Hastings and Napier, so as yet there isn’t any.

I estimate there would be over 1500 staff in Councils across Hawke’s Bay, including over 50 senior level staff, overseen by 56 Councillors. Substantial overall savings in operational spend to deliver a more effective, coordinated, integrated and affordable local government service and confront the massive infrastructure deficit backlog, could surely be better achieved through amalgamation. 

While our Central Hawke’s Bay and Wairoa communities might understandably fear a loss of localism and voice or even leverage at regional level, these same communities have the most to gain in terms of economies of scale for new wastewater treatment, roading and general infrastructure investment. 

To me the question is how we amalgamate to get the best of both worlds, not whether.  

To give one recent example, there is no doubt river mouth management in Wairoa needs to be more locally led, and it now is. Amalgamation needn’t upset that. Indeed, Wairoa would have a direct voice at the Hawke’s Bay Council table to ensure exactly that approach is upheld, and who else would stand in their way? Local community boards and a guaranteed fair level of representation for both Wairoa and Central Hawke’s Bay within an HB Council would be essential, but achievable in the way we design what amalgamation looks like for our region. 

Process & effectiveness costs

Beyond infrastructure and general ratepayer affordability concerns, our planning system is hopelessly cluttered, complex and slow. For example,  the Independent Flood Review Panel recommended that HBRC urgently issue strongly worded regional policy direction to prohibit subdivision and new housing in the kind of areas worst affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, some of which suffered in the same way in 1938.  

But as it stands the overall process would take several years to deliver on these findings, and avoid repeating the mistakes of the past. The Regional Council first has to change its Policy Statement and then each local Council will have to bring its District Plans into line. This is likely to be a highly contentious issue, particularly for affected landowners, and each process could cost ratepayers literally millions of dollars. I seriously doubt the overall process would be completed before 2030.

One Council and a Unitary Plan (as in Auckland, Marlborough and Gisborne) would not only enable a faster and cheaper process for that specific issue, but more integrated overall environmental and future urban growth planning, without the prospect of ratepayers and local Councils across the region fighting each other in the Environment Court. The Future Development Strategy currently out for consultation is a case in point, with Napier and Hastings supporting including a highly flood prone site at Riverbend Road, but the Regional Council voting against that. 

But this is not just about greater agility as a region to adapt and move quickly to respond to disruptions in either the environment or economy, but also about effectiveness in doing so.  

Take Napier stormwater.  The current set up is an almost absurd artefact of previous local government organisation where Napier City and Hawke’s Bay Regional Council own and manage an ad hoc potpourri arrangement of different parts of the overall Napier stormwater drainage network. Despite a clear independent recommendation to do so several years ago, the two councils have failed to agree on how the system should be rationalised with just one Council owning and operating the assets in urban Napier. The project has stalled, meaning upgrading the system to be able to deal with the likes of the 2020 flood happening again is yet to begin. 

Take water security and water conservation.  Water metering and charging could assist with municipal water conservation, but is not projected to be in place within Napier until 2034, with Hastings following suit sometime later.  We can set the policy direction requiring a water conservation approach at regional level, but we do not own the assets involved nor have the ability to fix broken pipes and apply water metering under the current structure.  

Public transport is the same. At regional level, we have set a policy of actively discouraging parking in the CBD’s of Napier and Hastings, to better incentivise the uptake of public transport and make the services more economic to run. But again, we do not own the road assets involved and political pressure experienced at city or district level makes it challenging to put  this policy direction into practice.

In short, in all of these areas, whatever we might aspire to achieve at regional level we cannot deliver on the ground because we either do not own or manage all the assets involved, or the costs would be beyond the local councils’ ability to pay. Amalgamation could fix that.

To date there has been a lack of shared political ambition to amalgamate, both in Wellington and locally it seems, and anyone raising it (including me) risks spending whatever political capital they currently enjoy. We all recall the failed attempt in 2015, and the various reasons for that. I understand the concerns, but frankly I do not think we really have any other choice. That world is now behind us. 

Don’t get me wrong. This region is incredibly well served by over fifty hardworking and dedicated Councillors at present across five local authorities, and on the whole we have never been more united and collaborative in our approach to the increasingly difficult challenges we face in local government. The same goes for all of the staff. But the fact is the issue is more fundamental and structural, than all the good will in the world can overcome. 

The previous Government’s commissioned ‘Future of Local Government’ report recommended progression to unitary or combined councils, but from a locally led platform and approach. We need to begin to face that future and design a united council structure that works for all of our communities, before someone else figures this all out and does it to us instead.  

Martin Williams
Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, Ahuriri Ward