Local Government Act Review

A review of Local Government has been signalled earlier this year by Minister Rodney Hide. He has said it’s because of his concerns about transparency, accountability and fiscal management within local government.

For a while it was on the back burner while the Auckland issues were a priority. Now it has become more active, and we are hearing disturbing things about what this rearrangement would mean, and there are real concerns for disabled people.

We hear that it’s intended to have local government to concern itself solely with “core services”. It seems these focus around infrastructure services (roads and rubbish), waste management, disaster management, regulatory responsibilities and libraries.

Core services don’t appear to include the many social services that keep communities going. This may well mean that disability advisers and the work areas they cover are under threat. Council support to the arts isn’t a core service. And community housing, isn’t being mentioned at all in relation to core services. That’s likely to be deeply concerning to many disabled people too. 

A real problem with this review process is that there is little out in the public domain so that people can discuss things properly in a decent time scale.

Some of the questions that people have asked so far include:

• Why is the basis for this proposed restructure focussed on financial matters
• What impact will this have on the community’s vulnerable members? (particularly disabled and older people)

If it is proposed that all of these greatly-used social services are going to disappear, who is going to provide those social services, and how? 

You may wish to express your concern to MPs about the impact of removing social services from local government, and the impact this would have on our community. The lack of material on which discussion of these proposals can be based is a further point they may wish to make.

Wendi Wicks
National Policy Researcher
DPA (NZ) Inc.