By Hayden Donnell
Copyright thespinoff
They want to keep Māori wards, they think rates capping will fail, and they say the government is being patronising and paternalistic.
There’s an intoxicating freedom that comes with quitting your job. You can sit at your desk staring into the void. Run your mouth in the lunchroom. What’s the worst that could happen? They fire you? The four mayors talking to The Spinoff are feeling the exhilarating winds of impending unemployment blowing through their hair. All of them are stepping down at the upcoming election: Campbell Barry after two terms as mayor of Hutt City, Paula Southgate after two terms in Hamilton, Neil Holdom after three terms in New Plymouth, and Max Baxter after three terms in Ōtorohanga. They’re letting loose a bit more. “What about age limits?” asks Southgate, moments after joining the Zoom call. “I want to put that out there as a challenge.”
It’s the ideal time to get these guys to tell us what they really think. All of them are serving out the lame duck period of their mayoralties. None have government relationships to protect or voters to charm. They also have direct experience of some of the most controversial issues affecting local government this term. Three of the four already have Māori wards. The fourth, Hutt City, is establishing one this election, while at the same time being forced by the government to hold a referendum on whether it should be abolished. They’ve all had to sell the public on rates rises caused, in large part, by having to upgrade infrastructure that was neglected by past councils. They’ve all got thoughts on a government that has oscillated between promising to restore local control and removing decision-making power from councils.
But first, what about those age limits, or at the least, term limits?
On how long is too long
Paula Southgate (Hamilton)
We do have people who’ve sat in seats for 40 years, and while they might still be adding value, they’re also taking opportunities away from fresh, emergent thinkers.
Neil Holdom (New Plymouth)
Twelve years max, because if you haven’t made that difference in that period of time, the likelihood of you having a significant impact after that is minimal. And it shouldn’t be a storage facility for retired ministers.
Max Baxter (Ōtorohanga)
I won’t say an age limit, per se, but there needs to be greater diversity. I remember going to my first rural provincial meeting in 2010. I walked into the room and looked around and thought, “What the hell have I walked into?” I saw a room full of old, grey-haired men, and I thought, ‘is this representative of New Zealand? Is this truly representative of local government, or is this where retired pale stale males go to rest up?’”
Neil Holdom
One step before the rest home, bro.
Campbell Barry (Hutt City)
I think there should be a term limit, three or four terms. But I think it should just be for the mayor. I don’t think there should be a term limit for councillors.
On rates capping for ‘non-core’ spending
Neil Holdom
Campbell Barry
The only group that’s going to benefit from rates capping is lawyers. The government’s trying to say “we’re only going to cap the non-core stuff”. You have a council who will then get all sorts of legal action taken against it, or threats of legal action from different lobby groups, on what constitutes core spending. Honestly, it will be a complete mess. All of the evidence overseas tells us rates capping has failed miserably at actually keeping costs down in the long term.
Neil Holdom
We’ve rewarded politicians who’ve promised to keep rates low, and so we’ve sweated all the assets that were built in the 50s and 60s. Now rates have all jumped into double digits because we’re now paying that deferred capital expenditure. The government is going “how do we achieve this political win that’s so popular with the public without trashing the infrastructure?”, and the two things are at absolute opposite ends of achievability. They’re mutually exclusive.
Paula Southgate
I think rates capping is predicated on this argument that councils are wasteful, which I fundamentally reject. I think yes, there are small examples here and there where you could have crunched the numbers a bit better, and you do look to improve, but there isn’t a lot of waste.
Rates capping is just too blunt, too simplistic, and it will fail miserably, as has been seen with overseas experience.
On the government’s promise to ‘restore local control’
Oh, my God, let me start on this one, please. As chair of the Mayors Task Force for Jobs for seven years, all the promises I heard [from government] were about the devolution of responsibility, local delivery, and all the rest of it. But it’s just been really disappointing. In fact, it’s been a total u-turn on the promise that led into the elections. Just incredibly disappointing.
Campbell Barry
All parties in opposition are localists and in government centralists. So it doesn’t matter who it is. This is what happens, and it is a major challenge, regardless of political colour, to be honest.
On Māori wards
We didn’t go for public consultation when we introduced our Māori wards, and my rationale behind that was that there is no non-Māori that’s going to be worse off through the inclusion of Māori wards within our council. The only people who are going to be affected by it are Māori and it’s going to be advantageous. So you wouldn’t consult people who aren’t going to be negatively affected by a decision. Look, I’m really proud of our Māori wards and I really hope they stay.
Neil Holdom
It adds to the richness of the debate, and in my view, the more diverse the debate material, the higher quality the decision. To me, it’s about diversity and fairness. And as Max said, nobody’s missing out.
Paula Southgate
Twenty-five percent of Hamilton are Māori, so they’ve got to have a place to bring their world views to the table. It does give effect to te Tiriti ō Waitangi, which is a long-standing and embedded document between the Crown and iwi. And iwi are massive infrastructure and economic developers and investors. Having a great relationship with them leads to great results.
Campbell Barry
I think that it’s just a terrible position that the government has put us in. I’m hopeful that in our city, we actually will support the retention of a Māori ward, and there’s a strong campaign locally for that.
That covers off some of the hot-button issues. But councils are also facing a whole lot of long-term, seemingly intractable challenges. Very few people vote in their elections. They’re going to have to pay huge amounts of money just to fix and maintain their long-neglected core infrastructure, and some of them are already butting up their debt caps. Perhaps due to those issues, many areas are struggling to attract quality candidates to their council and board races.
What would these mayors actually do about that though, starting with how to fix elections?
Neil Holdom
What resonated with me was a polling day.
Paula Southgate
Definitely a polling day, and let’s get rid of postal voting.
Campbell Barry
All of the evidence overseas tells us that western democracies that have higher levels of centralisation, and less decision-making happening at local levels, have lower turnout. So the countries that have far more localism – where people can see that’s where a lot of the decisions are made and the power is held – have a much higher turnout.
On whether we need STV voting nationwide
Yep, keep it consistent across the country.
Neil Holdom
Yes. It brings the average age of the team down and broadens the diversity too. The big thing is you want any elected team to look like the community it serves.
On whether they’d get the Electoral Commission and its orange man and orange dog to step in to run local elections
Campbell Barry
Max Baxter
I do think it should be the Electoral Commission, and there should also be online voting and a lot more investment in elections.
On cash-strapped councils and amalgamation
Campbell Barry
Given the current situation facing local government, the systemic issues we face around funding and financing, how we’ve been set up, I think council amalgamation is inevitable. The question is whether councils and local communities will lead amalgamation or whether the government will do it to us once a council goes bust, or if we have an incident that forces it to take that step.
Paula Southgate
If you look at the projections on what we need to do just to stay as we are, with the funding tools that we have, it’s going to be difficult to deliver what we need to deliver. So we have to look at reorganising ourselves. I believe in things like local shared services. But also, there may be cases where amalgamating and doing things at a greater scale would be very useful.
On what advice they’d give to someone wanting to be a mayor
The top piece of advice would be, spend time with councillors, understand them and learn what their strengths are, and don’t try to achieve everything in the first five minutes.
Paula Southgate
Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Get to know the business in detail, because it’s really hard to backtrack when you’ve made promises, and then you find out that that’s impossible.
Neil Holdom
I got a really good piece of advice from one of my daughters, who was about nine at the time, and it was “dad, your job is not to react”. Always focus on what it is you’re wanting to achieve, as opposed to kind of being drawn into things.
On dealing with councillors who just say no to everything
Neil Holdom
I’ve got one of those. And he’d probably be proud to say it: Murray Chong. And so we have found opportunities for him to say no. In the long-term plan, every single councillor could see one or several of their ideas or initiatives, and Murray took out a toilet that we were going to stick by a lake, and he was stoked.
Max Baxter
Ask them for alternatives. If they’re saying no to something, ask “what is your alternative and what is the evidence to support your alternative?” Realising that saying no has to come with a consequence, then I think they’ll stop saying no quite as often as they do.
Campbell Barry
And if all else fails, wait until they’re overseas and then call a major council meeting.
