[As published in July/August 2026 BayBuzz magazine]
In a nifty piece of political manoeuvring the Coalition Government’s pre-Christmas reform announcement delivered a hammer blow to the eleven regional councils across the country. All elected councillors gone by lunch time, replaced by local mayors, who were given the task of shuttling in the Government’s reform agenda.
Government spinners wanted to test the waters with an assault on regional councils, considered the easy beats of local government. Regional councils mostly fly under the wider public radar. What do they do anyway?
The public response was predictably muted. One less bill to pay! Who cares!
Euphoric local mayors saw the reform as a huge opportunity to plunder regional council war chests and finally get rid of pesky resource management act compliance police, residing in regional council corridors.
The excitement was short lived!
The main course
The May reform announcement revealed the Government’s true amalgamation agenda. Local council’s were given ninety days to come up with a far-reaching amalgamation plan or else.
The reality is that regional councils were just the entrée.
The main course is widespread amalgamation, forcing unwilling and sometimes warring communities to get into bed together. The classic example, of course is our very own generations-long Napier and Hastings sulky and sometimes acrimonious co-existence.
After a number of failed voluntary attempts to rationalise Hawke’s Bay’s local government functions, the time has finally arrived for a serious and compulsory marriage.
The need for reform is patently obvious to every man and his dog. Hawke’s Bay is over governed. Five councils. Fifty eight councillors. About another hundred unelected people sitting on paid committees. Five chief executives. Over 2000 employees, driving around in 500 cars – spending nearly half a billion dollars of ratepayer dollars, every year.
A good percentage of the spend delivers reasonable value. However, duplication and inefficiencies puts an unnecessary financial drag on the regional economy.
It’s about money
Make no mistake. This reform is about the money. Every ratepayer in the region has felt the pain of escalating rate bills, sometimes upwards of 20% increases annually. This cannot carry on. Preliminary work on a five council merger – CHB, Hastings, Napier, Wairoa councils and the regional council – show savings in the vicinity of $40 to $50 million of rates annually.
A technology shared service initiative has already yielded $350,000 in savings in 3 months for the regional council. Across all councils this will save around $8 million annually.
Merged planning, corporate and regulation services, information systems and other back-office functions, along with slimmed down governance can produce annual savings of around $500 for every household in the region.
These savings are only possible with smart and determined leadership over the next two years. It is premised on an assumption that our four mayors and our councils really do have the best interests of ratepayers firmly fixed in making these far reaching local governance changes.
Sadly, the prospect of achieving a peaceful, non-partisan collaborative outcome, in the best interests of the region is most unlikely. Already some of our leaders are postulating two unitary councils – Napier north to Wairoa and Hastings south to CHB.
Two unitary councils ignores the main reform driver which seeks efficiency and rates affordability. Napier and Hastings share the same catchment, river systems, infrastructure and economy. Hastings and Napier people sometimes even talk to each other.
That this nutty proposition actually has momentum speaks volumes about the prospects of achieving a locally driven and endorsed outcome. The Government will take one look at this and ask questions about the mental state of our local leadership. The Local Government minister will make the obvious and rational decision for us.
There will be an outpouring of grief at local communities losing a place around the decision-making table. Every reform looks like this. Those same voices are often heard furiously bemoaning rates increases.
The time has come to front up and, in the words of the iconic Selwyn Toogood, it’s “the money or the bag!” Either accept slimmed-down local government or keep paying your rates until it really hurts.
Neil Kirton is a long-serving but soon-to-be extinct Hawke’s Bay Regional Councillor.
