We are experiencing yet another ‘Local Government movement of the deck chairs’ but the Titanic is still sinking.
David Blume’s great book “Alcohol Can be a Gas” provides a great insight into the reality that there are no waste products, only those that have not found a purpose. Some still remember what Pa used to say – “Don’t throw out that piece of steel, it might be of some use.” Usually, at some stage it was. Resources are not squandered when you are paying for them yourself.
Every time regulation comes into being, it seems that the theme is what the author of the regulations has been trained in. This means you get what someone else believes is true by education, without actual experience of local conditions, knowledge and resources.
The four big attempts to change local body regulations continues. All are promised as being more efficient, leaner in costs, effective economies of scale.
This current and the fourth one is far removed from the first scheme that I had real faith in, which was the establishment of local body drainage and catchment boards run by locals with actual experience of the environment, local weather, water movement and not the least – farmers’ requirements to keep the land dry and utilisable for primary production.
Max Phireg of Victorian Farmers Union and a Churchill Fellow, having studied water ways around the world, found that the Catchment Board was the structure that stood head and shoulders above any other as to engage the locals in local matters.
The requirement to be governed by central government does not stand the test even as a very poor comedy show. I provide this example from memory – the original problem of mangroves growing in the Whangamata Harbour. The community came together to cut them down, only to be told they would be prosecuted by Environment Waikato if they continued. Environment Waikato, shortly after, actually realised they had to get rid of the mangroves, so went ahead and got contractors to remove them when they could have been removed by the locals.
There was no apology to the locals for threatening them, or for taking the money in rates to do something that could have been done by the locals themselves.
So we don’t have local government, we have locals directed by central government. The locals are overwhelmed by central government regulations enforced by all sorts of threats, mainly the reduction in funding if you don’t comply. This certainly doesn’t appear to be going to change as the National Party has recently vocalised that they will step in ‘and do it for you’ if the Councils don’t come up with the changes they want, meaning ‘do what we tell you or else’.
The reality of centralisation created by Muldoon’s Think Big, followed by Rogernomics, removed the local governance of local affairs to be bullied from Wellington. This in no uncertain manner will continue to strip the regions of their capacity to look after themselves, all the time taking the contracting funds for service from local businesses to large scale corporates. Then we see the workers travelling up to eighty kilometres to get to jobs that should have been done locally.
It may be a shot in the dark but we need to find a way to stop giving up our independence, and our money to those who don’t have the experience and ability to manage local affairs and actually keep it where there are people who care and have passion for the community.
