Politicians duck for cover on Head Start
If New Zealand is going to undertake the most significant reform of local government in a generation, it needs a far more careful, considered and...
Category : Local Democracy
Tsunami of change for local government
The risk is not necessarily the reforms themselves – it is the cumulative weight of implementing them all at once, writes Mike Doesburg, Wynn Williams...
The battlefield of local government reform
The number one reason why Simon Watts and Chris Bishop have suddenly put the brakes on Head Start is a fear of suffering at the...
How reform will impact workforce
Workforce savings are more concentrated, slower and less permanent than a merger business case implies, and the transition succeeds or fails on people rather than...
Wake-up call for councils
This editorial has been updated to reflect the fact Tauranga City Council CEO Marty Grenfell resigned. Council officials around the country should be scouring agendas,...
Capping rates – a danger for local & central government
We need an inquiry into local government funding, but it must have cross-party support and a clear commitment to implement its recommendations, write Andy Asquith,...
Turning vision into reality
The next phase of local government reform is about taking the foundations established through priorities, community voice, evidence and process, and applying them to three...
Local democracy swept aside
If amalgamation weakened accountability and drove costs up in 1989, is there any reason to believe that even more heavy-handed mergers can deliver the opposite...
Lessons from setting up a new water entity
Creating a new organisation is not the finish line; it’s the foundation on which long-term success depends, writes Jaron Shaw, Establishment Programme Director for Waikato...
And the early winners are…
Each potential coalition of councils has essentially had to outsource the work around amalgamation to a consultancy because of a lack of internal capacity and capability, write...