The Government is creating a new Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) that will absorb the Ministry for the Environment, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, the Ministry of Transport, and the local government functions from the Department of Internal Affairs.
A MCERT Chief Executive will be appointed in the first half of this year, with the new Ministry fully operational by July.
The Government says its primary purpose is to unlock the potential of our cities and regions by reducing duplication and complexity, and by creating a simpler and more responsive public service.
The new agency will handle new high-performing planning, infrastructure funding and financing, and local government systems.
“The new agency will be at the heart of tackling some of New Zealand’s greatest economic and environmental challenges – from housing affordability, our infrastructure deficit, and adaptation to climate change,” claims Housing, Transport, RMA Reform and Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop.
“The Government has a series of ambitious and complex policy reforms underway across all of these areas, from Going for Housing Growth, a renewed emphasis on transit-oriented development, congestion pricing and the transition to electronic road user charges for all vehicles, Local Water Done Well, City and Regional Deals, and the National Adaptation Framework. Underpinning it all is planning and local government reform.
“Responsibility for many of these reforms currently spans multiple agencies. For example, solving our housing crisis (1) is impossible without fundamental planning reform, which is currently the responsibility of the Ministry for the Environment (which looks after city, district and regional plans). It is also impossible without reforms to infrastructure funding and financing (currently split across HUD, DIA and Transport).”
Bishop adds that our public servants in all of these agencies doing their best to serve Ministers and the public in difficult circumstances. “My experience is that they are often as frustrated as Ministers are by the duplication, overlapping responsibilities and lack of coordination.
“Local government and communities rightly complain that dealing with central government on these important issues is difficult, bordering on impossible, because it is often not clear who they should be talking to and coordinating with. The new agency will be the “one stop shop” for local government and others to deal with on these complex challenges.
“The new MCERT will combine the key levers that shape growth and productivity, including planning, land use, housing, transport, water, and the interface with local government, so advice is integrated and accountability is clear.”
Bishop remains confident that Auckland’s City Rail Link, which opens next year after huge delays and budget blow-outs (with cost falling equally between Auckland rate payers and the Crown) will be “a transformational project” that presents “opportunities across land use change, infrastructure funding and financing, and urban development which have either not been taken up or are only now being belatedly explored”.
“My firm view is that the disconnected nature of central government policy advice has contributed to those missed opportunities.”
Local Government and Climate Change Minister Simon Watts says; “For too long, duplicating functions across these agencies has slowed progress and created uncertainty about who is responsible for what.
“As we move ahead with significant reforms to the role of local government, it makes sense to merge the departments to provide clearer direction and more coordinated support – from planning and infrastructure through to climate adaptation.”
Turning you into delivery arms for the Government
Gwynn Compton, former councillor on Kapiti Coast District Council, and now local government commentator with Local Aotearoa believes that the merger will result, in most cases, the same people doing much the same jobs they are doing now, but the Government has its own motives.
“There’s likely to be benefits in having all these complementary functions under the same roof, however there’s similarly going to be operational disruption and strategic murkiness as everything gets pulled together. That this merger is going to be happening at the same time that major reforms are also being progressed will be a challenge to manage, as MBIE’s significant growing pains in its early years attest.
“From a local government perspective, I think it makes sense for the local government functions to shift from DIA to sit inside MCERT where it will sit alongside the agencies that already shape much of what councils do and how they do it. Speaking from personal experience, the DIA local government team has always been viewed as insular and disconnected both from the sector it was responsible for as well as from relevant policy teams in other ministries.
“Its placement within DIA was largely a product of the local government function being too small to exist on its own and there not being anywhere better for it to sit. While I’m on the record as preferring a stand-alone system stewardship organisation for local government, now that MCERT is going to happen I believe this is much better than the status quo.
“All that being said … it’s not the creation of a mega-ministry people should be worried about, and instead it’s the scale and pace of reforms taking place. At the same time as MCERT is being established, we have the repeal and replacement of the Resource Management Act, the Simplifying Local Government reforms, Local Water Done Well, rates capping proposals, and the development of regional deals all moving forward.
“The net result of these are that councils are being more tightly regulated, more financially constrained, more centrally directed, and increasingly treated as delivery arms for central government rather than local democratic institutions with their own electoral mandates from the communities they serve. Whether or not you agree with those reforms, the main impact of MCERT in this context will be to marginally strengthen central government’s ability to direct councils.”