Local Govt. Reform

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30822, 6 August 1965, Page 10

Local Govt. Reform

People get the government they deserve; and the saying is as true of local government as it is of central government. The present multiplicity of local bodies throughout New Zealand has been condemned by experts as inefficient and wasteful; but the system is still with us. Whenever a proposal for reform is made it is usually defeated by a wellorganised minority. Changes in local body boundaries, which are discussed in the annual report of the Local Government Commission, are frequently voted out by fewer than 20 per cent of the electors affected. This system is described as “ the antithesis of democracy ” by the commission, which regards it as essential that more effective means be found for carrying out the necessary reorganisation.

The apathy of local body electors virtually ensures that a majority of those supporting, or at least acquiescing in, a proposed merger of local bodies or boundary alteration will not record their votes. Signs of a renewed interest in local body administration are, fortunately, beginning to appear. In Christchurch two study groups have been formed by the Canterbury branch of the Institute of Public Administration. The common interest of the two groups is the problems affecting planning for the growth and development in the Christchurch area. The need for regional organisations for greater Christchurch and the problems of mergers are, in general terms, the agenda for the two committees. The publication and subsequent discussion of these committees' reports should stimulate public interest in their work.

Effective reform of local body administration depends ultimately on public awareness of the need for reform and public pressure for reform; it cannot come from the central government. Indeed, the Local Government Commission set up in 1957, which was in many ways more effectually empowered for its task than the present commission, failed not because it shirked its responsible task, or performed it inefficiently, but because the well-organised protests of sectional interests opposed to reform carried more weight with the central government than the welfare of the inarticulate and largely apathetic community at large. The present Local Government Commission, like its predecessor, can go to all kinds of trouble to investigate and draw up schemes for reorganisation—and then have its work thrown into the wastepaper basket by a minority of electors. As the commisssion says in its latest report, local government is a delegated power of central government, and the responsibility of devising an effective organisation for exercising delegated power lies in the hands of the Government. It will be persuaded to do so only when the public unmistakably show their impatience with the slow progress towards reform of an admittedly expensive and inefficient system.