Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Glyn Lewers: Queenstown Lakes District Mayor on changes to the Local Government Act

Transcript

Glyn Lewers: Queenstown Lakes District Mayor on changes to the Local Government Act · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So the government's making moves to refocus local councils on
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: core services and to improve their accountability for ratepayers. Councils
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: will be focused on delivering basic services without paying attention
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: to the four well beings, which is social, environmental, economic
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: and cultural. I will also be required to do a
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: yearly report so people can compare rate increases, council spending
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: and debt to other councils. A leaderboard, if you will.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: The Mayor of Queenstown is Glenn Lewis, who joins me
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: right now. Glynn, Hello Martin, do you focus on the
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: basics or not?
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: We hesty given our large proportion of the visitor population
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: to our district.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: So hearing all this yesterday, how did you feel?
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Look, this was well signposted earlier in the year by
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: the Minister and the Prime Minister at the Local government conference,
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: so it came to me as no surprise.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: Sure, but how do you feel?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Look? I think some of the stuff asking for it's
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: all publicly available information now, so they're just going to
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: collate it and put a edible doesn't make men to
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: my feelings about it. It's the information's there, they're just
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: going to publish it in a different format.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: This is absolutely true. The media used to do that
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: when we have more reporters. That's true. And of course
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the question is our council's less transparent than central government?
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: And I would actually argue that councils are more transparent
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: than central government. I mean, how often do you get
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: to see the debate about what the finance minister is
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: doing with the budget?
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Look, all our workshops and decision making is all
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: open to the public. We don't have closed corse every Monday,
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: so and governments don't have to produce ten year budgets
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: or have asset management plans for all the assets they own.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: So I think local government, certainly, let's say, has better
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: methodologies and looking after the assets they own on behalf
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: of the rate payers.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But the point being the government has got into a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: vibe that councilors need to do better. So will these
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: measures make councilors do things better?
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: No, they'll just make them them the same as they've
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: always done them in the last teen fifteen years. Because
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: all the like I said, all the accountability measures as
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: they call them, we're doing anyway, and they're just going
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: to report them differently. And the whole problem earns that
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: no one reads those documents anyway. And I'm telling now
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: my rate pays don't get into the detail of my
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: lot to implan or the annual plan or the annual report.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know how another document is going to solve it.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, you are accountable. It's called the vote, Glenn lewis
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Well said, thank you very much. Glenn is the mayor
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of Queenstown.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 2:56
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• 2:59
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