On Wednesday (June 21), the Future For Local Government Report will be released. Now, before you push the button taking you back to something else on The App, let me please just tell you that this is a really big deal for you, for Central Otago, for today and for tomorrow.

Still here? Good. Here’s the why.

Central Otago District Council (CODC) and all the other councils, including our regional councils, were formed following a reform process in 1989. In that reform, 850 local bodies were amalgamated into 86 local authorities, made up of regional and territorial levels. The last major reform before that was 1877 when the provincial councils were abolished.  

That is two reforms of local government in New Zealand in almost 150 years. 1989 is a long time ago; David Lange was prime minister, there were fewer than 3.5 million people living in New Zealand and I had a beautiful head of wavy hair. Things have obviously changed, and we are well overdue a look under the hood at how local government operates.

I haven’t read the report yet but the panel writing it has given a bit of an idea of what will be in it in their draft report, which they aptly called a ‘provocation’ when it was released in spring last year.  

I anticipate the media and many in the public will jump on some of the more contentious ideas that are likely to be in it. Things like greater recognition of iwi in local government or lowering the voting age to 16 or increasing the term of an election cycle to four years, but it would be a shame if those became the things people focussed on in Central Otago, because I also suspect that there will be an opportunity that needs discussed and debated at a local level that is much more relevant than those topics which will be debated at a national level where our 25,000 person voice is but a small one.

So, what is the opportunity I speak of? In the Provocation, the panel spoke of different structural ways for councils to operate. Included in that is the potential for amalgamation of some councils, but our geographical size makes that unlikely in my view. However, there is an aspect of amalgamation that, if it remains in the final report, I think we should have a discussion about, and that is what was labelled a Combined Authority in the Provocation.  

At a basic level, what we could be talking about is CODC and Queenstown Lakes District Council remaining as they are, doing the things they are doing, but with a combined ‘Inland Otago Combined Authority’ handling the matters currently undertaken by the regional council but at an Inland Otago level.  

I’m talking environmental regulation, pest management, public transport etc. In the model that has been proposed in the Provocation, the idea is that communities would still elect councillors and a mayor to their local council. The combined council is formed by representatives from each local council and a combined mayor, elected at the same time as local mayors and councillors. 

I want to be clear right here and now, I have no interest in any combined mayor role that could eventuate in the future so there is not an iota of self-interest in my saying this, but I think there may be advantages to such a system for the burgeoning population of Inland Otago into the future; certainly I think that this is something well worth a discussion. 

When the report comes out next week, let’s all keep an open mind to this and other possibilities that may lie within it. All the major political parties appear to agree that the way we are doing local government in New Zealand is not working and I have no doubt change in some significant shape or form to local government is coming, and if we as a community don’t lead the conversation as to what that change looks like, it will be done to us, not by us, no matter what happens in October.