Mike's Minute: Why would the councils not amalgamate?

Author: Mike Hosking ,
Publish Date: Thu, 6 Aug 2026, 11:55am

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I'm trying to work out in this council amalgamation back and forward, how many who aren't amalgamating are genuinely stuck, versus how many are simply sticking it up the Government because they don't like them and/or they don’t like being told what to do?

Councils are the bane of our lives. We are over council-ed, we are overrated and we should be immeasurably grateful to the central government who are capping rates and reducing the number of these groups.

The deadline to submit your plan is this weekend.

As always there are a decent number who haven't been able to get there, or if they have it will be close to deadline.

Another part of the problem is of course we don’t care. Our participation rate via voting is a joke.

I noted ironically the other day Auckland Council set up a committee to work out why their turn out was only 28%. I could help them there – get rates down and produce fewer committees.

The only reason you can argue against amalgamation is you're power hungry.

There are 70+ councils in this country. A tiny island nation with a handful of people and we need, they argue, over 70 councils?

Tiny little operations with duplication of services all over the place, all with their own rules, regulations and staffing costs and all with their weird variation and interpretation of rules.

If ever there was a case for “less is more”, we have it. But no.

Like recalcitrant children they are holding out. I assume some of them because they hope Labour get back and let them get on with their orgy of waste and inefficiency.

When those who don’t submit rely on the so-called back-up plan, they will moan about that too.

The sad truth or outworking of this sort of behaviour is the revelation that these people are not really about us. They are not really about their community. They are about themselves.

They are power grabbers and control freaks. They love their insignificant little fiefdoms and love to laud their perceived power over others.

Come deadline and come the capping of the rates and the reduction of the council numbers, not to mention the water amalgamation, is there a single person outside those whose power is being disabled, that will actually miss what we currently have?