Divided loyalties in city government

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32566, 27 March 1971, Page 18

Divided loyalties in city government

The two meetings of Christchurch local authority leaders called this month by the chairman of the Waimairi County Council (Mr D. B. Rich) have been instrumental in settling several questions of metropolitan interest. Anyone who has read the reports of these meetings must have observed that throughout their discussions the spokesmen for the six councils have had to wrestle with a conflict of loyalties. On' the one hand, they know that their councils must somehow work together to serve the general interests of the metropolitan area. Mr Rich obviously called the meetings with this in mind: and any council would have had to be blind to the identity of the city to reject his invitation. Happily, there is no council in the area whose members deny that thejr individual electorates are parts of one city and have interlocking interests. For that matter, there is probably no citizen in the area who can claim, or would wish to claim, that his interests, his personal welfare, the public sendees he uses, his work, shopping, or entertainment, are sought and supplied wholly within the local authority area in which he lives. Councillors throughout Christchurch recognise the interaction that makes nonsense of the artificial and outdated boundaries of their territories.

On the other hand, council spokesmen remain conscious of their allegiances to their own areas; and few, in meetings of this kind, are slow to assert the independence of their several councils. In spite of the brittleness of some of the discussion between the councils, the outcome has been much more satisfactory than many might have expected. The results attest to much more, wisdom and discretion among senior local body representatives than many citizens are inclined to ascribe to them. For all this, the meetings have served principally to underline once again the absurdity of the structure of local government in Christchurch; and it is to be hoped that before many more years have passed effect will have been given to reforms that will make unnecessary such painful accommodations and reconciliations of interests that should never need to be reconciled.