Mayors and councillors are being warned the country might “need a bigger hero than Christopher Luxon” to deliver localism, which was a key plank of National’s 2023 election campaign.

It comes as local government entities grapple with the Government’s proposed reforms, which include abolishing elected regional councillors and replacing them with Combined Territories Boards run by mayors of the councils that currently sit underneath a regional council.

During the All of Local Government conference held at Parliament, attendees today heard from Dr Oliver Hartwich, executive director of business-funded think-tank the New Zealand Initiative, and Southern Infrastructure chief executive Ross Copland, who challenged the notion that “bigger is better” in local government and discussed how councils could improve in delivering large-scale infrastructure.

In a question-and-answer session, the pair were asked, “How do we educate politicians?” after an audience member expressed frustration at the central Government’s ability to deliver infrastructure on time and within budget while local government operated with much fewer resources.

Dr Oliver Hartwich (right), of the New Zealand Initiative, and Southern Infrastructure chief Ross Copland speak at a local government conference at Parliament. Photo / Adam Pearse

Hartwich declared he had found that “you cannot educate central Government”, but there were opportunities when political parties left the Beehive.

“When you’re in Opposition, nobody wants to talk to you … you haven’t got the 60,000 people in the public service behind you, and they’re usually grateful when people actually want to talk to them.

“So you use that opportunity and talk to Opposition, no matter whether it’s Labour or National or anyone else, because these people have time, they listen, they need ideas, and then you make sure that they really commit to these great ideas in Opposition.

“Once they’re in government, they’ve got the whole inertia of the public service behind them, who tell them that all of these ideas are crazy and stupid and we’ve always done it differently.”

He admitted that engagement with Luxon while in Opposition hadn’t been as effective as he’d hoped.

“He’s seen it, and he’s given great speeches … that’s when we thought we had him on localism. But the forces of inertia and central Government and the forces of actually the status quo are too great … we need a bigger hero than Christopher Luxon to actually achieve this in the future.”

Localism, an approach intended to empower local communities instead of central entities retaining authority, was a key theme of National’s 2023 election campaign under Luxon as he railed against the previous Labour Government’s Three Waters reforms, which the current Government scrapped and replaced with its Local Water Done Well policy.

New Zealand Initiative executive director Dr Oliver Hartwich spoke at Parliament today.

Earlier, Hartwich referenced delegations he had been on with Luxon to countries such as Switzerland and Sweden, which he considered to be good examples of localism and effective regional taxation structures.

“We had Christopher Luxon convinced at the time; he gave beautiful speeches as Opposition spokesperson on the role of incentives and the wonderful things he learned going on these trips with us.

“As soon as you swap these politicians in central Government, they turn into centralists, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s National or Labour, it’s always the same.

“The really frustrating thing is everybody gets the rationale in Opposition, [but] as soon as they get into this building to the ninth floor, they forget about it.”

Luxon’s office has been approached for comment.

Copland, who spoke from extensive experience as former Infrastructure Commission chief executive, put it bluntly when assessing central Government’s ability to plan and deliver infrastructure.

“The closer infrastructure decision-making gets to politics, the poorer the outcomes. Unequivocally.

“Because politicians make decisions about infrastructure investment, they’re not made in a rational, logical, sound, economically justifiable way.”

Adam Pearse is the deputy political editor and part of the NZ Herald’s press gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.