Addressing issues before Christmas
Generally I feel uncomfortable when issues of major significance are voted on by council right on the cusp of Christmas.
An example of this happened this year at our last council meeting.
A motion was moved whereby council would lose its control of Holdco. It was lost by a slim majority. If it had been passed it would have had similar results to central government’s attempt to ‘reform’ local government by way of the Better Local Services Bill in 2016.
The proposed legislation would allow the Local Government Commission to swoop on the city’s water supply and assets then transfer the ownership and control to a company and this would be run by commercial directors without any form of consultation.
No elected member from any council would be permitted to be a director on any such company.
Fortunately, the majority of New Zealand’s Mayors are staunch National Party supporters, including the then local government president Lawrence Yule, who is now a National Party Member of Parliament.
John Key then announced he would not ‘‘die in a ditch’’ for this proposal and the battle was over.
In my view, councillors are the masters of our collective destiny but if you intend on overturning a major strategy of a previous council you should signal your intentions during the election campaign.
Council provides voters with a little booklet that summarises every candidates beliefs and priorities.
It is a level playing field because every candidate is restricted to a similar number of words and a similar sized photo.
I was surprised that only three of the successful candidates mentioned SoRDS or the Southland Regional Development Strategy (Tom Conroy, Darren Ludlow and myself).
Along with Lindsay Abbott, I was one of the only candidates to mention the Better Local Services Bill, yet it had been a major concern for the council that was still in office.
We sent a delegation to Christchurch to make submissions opposing the Bill, we published a full page feature outlining our opposition in The Southland Times and every councillor made a public statement opposing the bill.
I believe if a candidate supported the bill they should publish their views clearly in the Candidate Information Booklet and when speaking at election meetings they should have made their intentions clear i.e. if you vote for me I’ll try to sack every elected council member from directorship positions on council owned companies and I support the principles as outline in the Better Local Services Bill.
Inspirational words like passion and courage, pop up everywhere and that’s great.
We need to be inspired but we also need to know where candidates stand on the really tough issues confronting our city.
For those who were not present when I made my submissions to parliament this was my statement: I don’t care what political parties control parliament.
I fought alongside Labour to stop National closing our schools and then fought alongside National to stop Labour closing our schools.
Along with my fellow Southland mayors, the Act Party and Federated Farmers, I picketed the American Embassy over lamb quotas and free trade.
Along with the support of students I waged a relentless campaign when funding for the Southern Institute of Technology was threatened.
When the Tiwai Smelter was under threat of closure I undertook intense lobbying and the battle continues today regarding transmission costs.
When the French government sank the Rainbow Warrior and then resumed nuclear testing in the Pacific, I joined 30 other Kiwis who marched down the ChampsElysees in Paris and then picketed the European Parliament in Brussels.
The reason I’m so politically active is because Invercargill suffers from the tyranny of distance and until recently had the fastest population decline of any city in New Zealand or Australia.
We have had to fight hard to hold on to the few advantages we had. We also had to rebuild the city. We had only four corporate head offices in our city and the few government departments were facing staff and funding cuts.
Sixty seven per cent of Southland is controlled by DOC but their headquarters is in Wellington.
What we do to our advantage is community wealth. Our Community Trust had $200 million in cash.
We have a powerful progressive licensing trust with assets of $96 million, no term debt and a turnover of $90 million.
Our Council has a business empire consisting of electricity companies, a property portfolio and forestry with assets worth $212 million and debts of $70 million.
They contribute $5 million of their profits to the Council which is 10 per cent of council’s rate revenue.
This community wealth has enabled us to develop our Aquatic Centre, an indoor stadium, and indoor velodrome, a zero fee scheme, a restored Civic Theatre, a CBD upgrade, a thriving film and events industry, a smelter that produces the purest aluminium in the world, an international space programme, a flood protection system, political stability, shared services, an economic development unit and a 2.7 per cent increase in our population.
If we weren’t so modest we could claim to be one of the most successful communities in New Zealand.
Then along comes central government with a brand new Minister of Local Government and announces that they have a wonderful new plan for us.
It’s called the ‘‘Better Local Services Bill’’. How cute is that? In my view it should be called the ‘‘Crushing of Local Government Democracy and Ripping Off Their Assets Bill’’.