Unless Wayne Brown can roll the Wellington bureaucrats with the support of the new Government there will be little even he can do about it. The Russell debacle occurred long before these new requirements were foistered on us by the previous unlamented Government.

Prior to the 1989 local government reorganization the NZ Treasury did a literature survey and concluded there is no evidence that size of local authorities has any correlation with financial efficiency. They opposed the reorganization. Its actual outcome was increased debt, greatly increased rates relative to inflation over the next decade as well as a large immediate transition cost financed by altering the financial year so as to bring forward rate payments by three months.

There was also a large decline in voter participation in local government elections.

The financial impact of large authorities is simply that they are able to deploy (and waste) large sums of money on undeserving “needs”. A typical example is right here in Russell where the Far North District Council after 1989 managed to waste somewhere between $14-20M (the exact amount is indeterminable because of grossly incompetent financial management and reporting) on a sewage scheme to service some 600 properties.

A small local authority would simply be unable to raise such a sum of money in order to waste it on anything so comprehensively stupid.

Show me anything produced by “more comprehensive planning” and ticked off by government bureaucracies that is beautiful, lifts the human spirit and will be preserved and treasured for generations.

And if you find something, I will find you a thousand counter examples of crass, ugly, disfunctional and overbearing insults to the human psyche that are stamped out without having to think of anything other than butt protection and rule following by people who do not understand subtlety, art or individuality.

I would just recommend that the legal functional, and financial framework for the Boards should be the same as for existing councils.
BUT and this is an important BUT, the LGA should be reformed so that Councils are not given so much room to spend on nonsense and not believe they are master planners and rulers of the universe.
And we must drip financial contributions and MULs and mover to deregulate land use and to move to long term financing of infrastructure.

I am not normally a nervous nellie but we need to understand that while there have been a few Super Cities formed by forced amalgamation over the last decade (mostly in Canada) there were not total amalgamations as has been posed for Auckland.
So the Auckland Super City is a unique first in the world experiment and I do wonder if this is a good time to indulge in such massive social engineering. The pattern of regional councils or counties or metros which deal with region wide issues while very local councils (in large cities these can number in the hundreds) deal with local issues has been developed over hundreds or even thousands of years.

IT seems risky to be going towards a massive centralised structure at a time of recession and at a time when decentralisation is winning over centralisation in virtually every other field of human activity. When I wrote my essays on Tribal Marketing I was arguing that during a time of globalisation at one level we are seeing people becoming more “tribal” at another – in other words people are becoming more not less anchored to their own neighbourhood. In my presentation to Quest in Florida I pointed out that I used to be a vaguely British New Zealander – now I am more conscious of being of Celtic descent and living in a tiny village on the West Coast.
Similarly, a researcher from New York said that she was no longer a New Yorker – she identified much more with Greenwich Village than with New York, but she was of course a citizen of the world.

1.Any person found guilty of manufacture of the drug,any person found guilty of selling the drug should be executed imediately after sentence.
2All persons found guilty of providing the ingredients for the drug should be executed.
3.All assets should be sold ,profits going to the state for drug enforcement.

Any thing less than this will not work.
Me personally I would love to see all A -class drug users and providers with this treatment.
Short ,sharp and effective.
You push this poison into our kids for money then you derserve all you get.

So you got the stomarch for it, or are you all full of shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Was second prize lunch AND dinner with Bill English?’

still beats a breakfast with Richard Worth”

And better still than breakfast IN bed with Richard Worth.

Nice to know we will not be hearing any more from you about Phillip Field or Winston Peters!

Not the sharpest knife in the box our Adolf, good for a laugh of course, but thats about it!

Bending the mold to fit public opinion. Bulk funded boards – yawn – been done & failed.
They should stick to the model – one authority i/c all infrastructure
As many local Councils as now – more maybe – i/c recreaton/arts/culture bla bla – Paris has over 1000, Tokyo 250. Banks as Mayor? Better to give him a knighthood on the terms he doesn’t stand. That could shore up his neediness for recognition.

Key on drugs is a cringe. Destroy the gangs. How dumb can he be unless of course like Taksin Shinawat in Thailand he has some of his mates ready to take over the trade, ‘cos while there big money to be made someone will fill any vacancy made by gang busting. Legalisation, loke alcohol & tobacco is the only way to free drugs from criminality.

But great to hear Bill & John can share a joke – if the couldn’t they’d be missing a big one!

But government reorganisations have no such clear goals or consequences for failure. They are interminable, distractions from real performance goals and vastly costly. Often the main result is a loss of the most competent staff who leave in disgust.

Yes, incompetent staff will also feel threatened but sadly many will wind up in major positions in the reorganised structure.