Local Government New Zealand president Stuart Crosby was in Ōpōtiki this week to persuade the district council to continue its membership with the organisation.

Mr Crosby and LGNZ chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene were at an Ōpōtiki District Council meeting this week, where Mayor Lyn Riesterer had tabled a report recommending the council reduce its membership fee by the amount it paid to belong to Communities 4 Local Democracy.

The reduction would effectively end the council's membership of LGNZ.

The report explained that the recommendation was to provide a forum for discussion on the decision to continue with membership in the organisation given the lack of support from LGNZ to the 31 councils forming the Communities 4 Local Democracy group.

'The council has not been satisfied with the stance and actions taken by LGNZ in relation to the Three Waters Reform,” it said.

'We are feeling quite aggrieved around three waters and the conversation around this,” Ms Riesterer told Mr Crosby at Tuesday's meeting.

Mr Crosby began by acknowledging the challenges that all 78 councils around New Zealand - 77 of which are members of LGNZ - are facing.

He said he had never, in the 30-odd years he had been involved with local government as both a district and regional councillor, seen the challenges facing local government and the threats to local government.

'What I've seen in the last 12 months, in particular, is that you've had business as usual you have had to deal with, you've had extraordinary weather events, and then the biggest sweep of reforms any Government has placed on our sector and our communities since 1989. In fact, these are bigger.

'A lot of mayors have said quite openly to me … that they don't actually have the time or the capability or the capacity to participate in this change to a level that they should be participating. There's only so much people can actually do.”
He emphasised that councils needed to show a united front as they had much more power together.
"Central Government would really love for us to be divided. We can be a real nuisance to them."

He acknowledged that LGNZ had completely changed the way they did things, and the new stratagem included taking a less adversarial approach toward central Government so that they could ensure the best deal for councils.

'We made a deliberate decision … that we wanted to be inside as much as we can, giving your thoughts to those changes. You may have felt that LGNZ was on the side of the Government. I assure you that we are not. We have gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that in the Government's model, which we have never agreed with and still don't today, that we can claw back as much as we can.

'As a result of that, Minister Nanaia Mahuta has made changes. That would not have happened unless we were in that advocacy space right at the beginning. We are constantly looking to get at the front end of those conversations.

'I do appreciate that a number of councils are grumpy with LGNZ and the way that we have approached the water reform in particular.”

He also said that LGNZ had been grossly misrepresented in terms of its actual work and its actual position and admitted that they had made mistakes.

'Because the Government did an appalling job of their own communication of their own policy, that left it to LGNZ to do it. So here we were in the very difficult position of having to explain Government policy that we didn't actually agree with, and then we get accused of being cheerleaders of the policy.”

Councillor Barry Howe summed up Mr Crosby's speech.

'So, what you are saying is that the Government was going to go through with it hell or high water and from your point of view you were better to sit at the table to get something out of it.”

Ms Riesterer thanked Mr Crosby and Ms Freeman Greene for their explanations and said she was happy to drop her recommendations.

-Local Democracy Reporting is Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air