- By Christopher Luxon, Prime Minister and MP for Botany
Some of you might have seen reports on the speech I gave at the Local Government New Zealand conference in Wellington a few weeks ago.
At the conference, Simeon Brown and I set out a range of changes we want to see take place in the local government space and how we’re going to encourage that to happen.
The first area where we need to see change is by making sure councils focus on the basics and do them brilliantly.
Councils exist to deliver quality services for ratepayers. These are simple but essential tasks such as picking up rubbish, fixing pipes, filling in potholes, and maintaining local assets.
We know rates have been increasing for Kiwis across New Zealand. Some of these huge increases are just not justifiable in tough economic times.
We’re seeing too many councils become distracted from their core business.
Ratepayers should not be footing the bill for ‘nice to haves’ while water, waste, and roads need work.
So, we’re making some big changes to ensure local government gets back to basics by delivering their key services well.
We’ll refocus the Local Government Act by abolishing the four well-being provisions to ensure councils are focused on the delivery of local services.
We’re also looking at bringing in performance benchmarks for local councils, particularly in financial performance and customer service delivery.
This will help ratepayers better understand where their rates are going and how councils are delivering for them.
Some Australian states apply revenue caps on non-core expenditures for local government. We think that has potential, so we’re looking at how it could work here. Councils need adequate revenue to fund key services, but we’ve seen plenty of wasteful spending on pet projects over the past few years.
I was forthright in my speech to the LGNZ conference because it’s time for the unnecessary spending to cease.
We know times are tough, and that’s why councils need to take a leaf out of the Government’s prudent economic book and make difficult decisions.
We’ve been getting on with the job in central Government by cutting wasteful spending, setting targets, and letting Kiwis keep more of their own money.
We want local government to do the same.
