Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Mahé Drysdale: Tauranga Mayor on the Government's local government amalgamation ultimatum

Transcript

Mahé Drysdale: Tauranga Mayor on the Government's local government amalgamation ultimatum · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Councils have been given an ultimatum by the government. You've
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: got three months to come up with a plan to
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: merge or restructure yourselves or government will come in and
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: do it for you.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: There is a clear carrot which is a three month
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: window for councils to shape their own destiny and the
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: future of their own local governing arrangements. And if that
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: opportunity is not seized and grasped by local government, then
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: the government will act and do it for those communities.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Mahe Drysdale Totong amir with me this morning. Mahay, good morning,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: good morning. Do you want amalgamation?
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Oh?
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: Look, I think we need to change the way we
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: do things. The local government system was designed in nineteen
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: eighty nine and needs to change. I think everyone's agreeing
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: on that. So yeah, I welcome the opportunity to do that.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Do you will you be able to get this done
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: in three months? Put something in it.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Look, that's going to be tough. You know, We've got
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: to work with seven different councils around our region to
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: come up with a plan. But I will definitely be
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: advocate with them that we should do it ourselves. We've
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: been elected by our communities to make decisions for our communities,
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: and I think that's a better way than waiting for
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: the government to doing whatever they want up to us.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Regional council's gone, what is the you know, you've got
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: seven councils to deal with. What what sort of structure
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: would be ideal do you think for your area?
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Look, I'm not exactly sure. I think it's less and
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: you know, the government have set some pretty clear guidelines.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: You can have a maximum of three unitaries in a region,
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: so you know that that's potentially something that works pretty well.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: You know, we've got some natural kind of boundaries, I
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: guess if if you kind of think about the Bay
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: of Plenty with us in Western Bay being very aligned
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: in our geography and basically one economy, you know, you've
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: got rot R and you've got sort of the Eastern councils.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: So look, I'm not sure exactly where the boundaries end up,
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: but you know that's a conversation that we'd have to
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: have and going to have to do it very quickly,
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: because three months is a tight time frame to get
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: a proposal together.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: No, it's not long at all, but it's sort of
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: something has to be done. With it because it's been
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: a mess for a very long time. As you pointed
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: out at the start of this interview, how much do
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you reckon we would realistically save from doing something like this.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, rape payers hate spending money on councils, no
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: matter which level they are at. Do you think we'd
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: actually save a huge amount?
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, I do if we do it right. And you
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: know that's where we've got to start doing a lot
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: more sort of shared services, et cetera. So I think
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: there's probably two facets to this. There's a partly a
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: region and there's going to be a whole lot of
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: things that we deliver as a region. And then and
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: then we're going to have the sort of local councils
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: doing a lot more. And I guess you know, Local
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: Water has done well, has showed us that our community
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: is going to save about two hundred million dollars over
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: over ten years. That's what the modeling says. So yeah,
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I think the opportunities for saving are significant if you
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: think that's their few percent of our business. So yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: I think I think you could be looking at at
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: hundreds of millions. But you know, it's it's that efficiency
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: ultimately that that is something that can be achieved better
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: and and you know it, that's going to be the
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: challenges is getting all that and getting all that data
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: in three months, selling that to our communities, showing them
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: why this is a good thing. But look, we've got
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: an opportunity and now we've got to sort of try
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: to grasp it. And you know we've heard the backstop.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: The government will do it. So you know, I'm certainly
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: an advocate of holding our own destiny and I think
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: that's what we've been elected to do.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Mahe drives down to amir Good TV on the show.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Listen live to News Talks.
• 3:56
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• 4:00
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