It’s democracy Jim, but not as we know it. In line with the plans that the government unveiled this week to reform local government, the recently elected regional councils will be scrapped, and their roles will be handed over to mayors. Those mayors will be invited at gunpoint to explore opportunities for collaboration with their fellow mayors. Hint: amalgamate, or perish.
Basically, those mayors have been given two years to devise an agenda for service delivery consistent with the wishes and desires of the coalition government. In essence, this looks more like a scoping exercise to identify which non-revenue generating public services can be jettisoned or downgraded, and which profitable operations can be contracted out for private gain.
To focus their minds on the job at hand, the mayors may also be required to work alongside unelected advisors chosen and appointed by central government to ensure that the expected outcomes are achieved– and should those desired results still be not forthcoming, central government will also be able to appoint commissioners to make them happen.
In sum, this looks like the sort of exercise of centralised state power that we used to regard with horror if we read about it happening in say, Africa or South America. Ironically, the amalgamations being pursued via this blueprint are being promoted by the same political parties that – less than three years ago – were stumping the country and railing against the erosion of local democracy, and the extinction of community voices via the Three Waters reforms. Well, this plan is Three Waters, on steroids.
In reality, the Three Waters amalgamation model was only a tool to enable the financing of New Zealand’s much-needed renewal of its water infrastructure. This new plan goes far further, in that it aims to centralise power, restrict the role of elected councillors and reduce local community inputs with respect to the entire range of public services.
You may have to sacrifice your holidays (again) if you aim to try and stop it. As happened last year with the Treaty Principles Bill, the period for public submissions on this contentious legislation will straddle the Christmas/New Year holiday period, with the final deadline for public submissions being February 20 next year.
In case you are wondering about the role of those doomed regional councils…in unison with local councils they currently employ around 5,000 workers nationwide to do stuff like managing environmental well-being, protecting bio-diversity and bio-security, improving emergency preparedness and civil defence planning, and (in some cases) organising regional public transport.
They are also tasked with helping communities become more resilient to the effects of climate change. Totally dispensable stuff, obviously. Stands to reason. No-one has ever made a profit out of protecting bio-diversity. If there isn’t a market for it, it has no right to exist.
What will go
Reportedly, one of the main aims of the new reforms is to improve economic efficiency. As I’ve said before, this type of efficiency is not your friend.
Before it got seduced and started hanging out with the wrong crowd, ‘efficiency” used to be an innocent little word. At its best, it conjured up images of health and economy, of things whirring happily in place as men and women in suits strode confidently towards their destiny. Efficiency is, in that sense, the enemy of waste, the friend of purpose. At its worst, though…’efficiency” has a ruthless quality, and is easily irritated by human frailty. These days, when people use the word “efficient” it can reliably be taken as a sign that ends have become means, and that what started out as a quest for the wise use of resources has now totally jumped the shark.
Somehow, efficiency’s arithmetic always seems to involve subtraction, never addition. In the name of efficiency, public services first get relegated to the “nice to have’ category before being downgraded, or eliminated entirely. Efficiency prides itself on reducing spending (and staff) to achieve short term gains.
Rarely (if ever) is it said to be efficient for the state to make long term investments in the likes of mental health, prisoner rehabilitation, drug treatment facilities, job creation, social housing etc – even though this would demonstrably save more money over time, and deliver greater social benefits. Especially so when compared to going further down the path of racheting up Police powers, building more prisons, and allowing farmers to keep on poisoning the water supply with nitrates, as they see fit. (Shane Jones hates it when the likes of ECAN try to reduce the farm-generated “nutrients” in our water.)
Future Shock
For a glimpse into what the future may hold if local government is put through the government shredder to the extent envisaged by Chris Bishop, consider this week’s release of the Deloitte’s report on the Wellington City Council. Reportedly, Deloitte’s were paid $435,000 to tell the WCC what it could “save” if it sacked a whole lot of staff and slashed and burned and centralised (suddenly that’s a good word) its way through many of the services that the benighted public thinks it wants. On its own terms, the Deloittes report certainly has been a model of efficiency at scooping up public funds. For a report that runs to a scant 35 pages, Deloittes have billed Wellington ratepayers to the tune of $12,428 per page. Golden words, indeed.
Is there room for improvement at WCC? Of course. Was it worthwhile for ratepayers to pay so much to be told how to shrink the services they receive and sack so many of the people employed to deliver them? Hardly.
When it comes to addressing the quality and extent of service delivery, some gems of consultancy jargon can be found throughout the document, as a chilling vision of the future. At page seven for instance, we find that in place of the current “disjointed customer experience” the reform will allegedly create “customer centric, AI- enabled service delivery” that will culminate in “optimised, responsive, and accessible services and increased customer satisfaction provided through an AI-powered single front door.”
Yikes. In this bright new future envisaged for local democracy, all paths will lead the public to a Chat GTP-5 robot, who will be your one and only efficient, customer-centric council buddy. Have a nice day. You’re’ welcome. Will that be all?
Footnote : For a wider (i.e. international) perspective on where the government reforms of local government are leading us, I strongly recommend Barbara O’Grady’s excellent article on Scoop.
Popp music, and Jimmy Cliff RIP
Genocide in Gaza prime time. Repeated extrajudicial killings by the US in international waters, as the prelude to a possible invasion of Venezuela. Feelings of outrage and despair that atrocities and really, really bad policies are being enacted in plain sight regardless of what the public thinks or wants has become a familiar state of mind. Totalitarianism and its younger brother, authoritarianism, seem to be growing up all around us, virtually unchecked.
A new single called “Right Before My Eyes” addresses that feeling, within a Northern Soul genre more known for looking backwards through rose-tinted glasses than for addressing the world in which we currently reside. On this ballad, the neo-Northern Soul veterans known as the Frank Popp Ensemble – Frank grew up in Germany listening to the Jam – feature Paul Weller himself on lead vocals.
The death of Jimmy Cliff inspired many tributes about him being a reggae pioneer. Fair enough. Yet for all his talents and despite several great reggae singles, Cliff spent the bulk of his career as a pop singer operating at a distance from the main currents (from rock steady to Rastafari to dub to dancehall) that shaped reggae’s evolution, especially during the classic period of the 1970s.
True, it was The Harder They Come film soundtrack featuring Cliff – plus the Maytals etc – that first earned reggae a huge international audience. Yet apart from the title track and the buoyant “You Can Get It If You Really Want” the soundtrack album had also featured Cliff doing two excellent non-reggae songs, one of which (“Sitting in Limbo”) underpins the tragic climax of the film. The other non-reggae track is the film’s musical highlight, and emotional core: