{"id":152689,"date":"2025-11-25T09:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152689\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T09:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T09:59:08","slug":"regional-councils-arent-being-abolished-territorial-authorities-are-being-amalgamated-eventually-thomas-coughlan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/152689\/","title":{"rendered":"Regional councils aren\u2019t being abolished, territorial authorities are being amalgamated (eventually) – Thomas Coughlan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The full story, when it came out in an embargoed press briefing at 2.30pm, was both less and more exciting. <\/p>\n

Regional councils weren\u2019t being abolished \u2013 regional councillors were. The 11 organisations, the Northland Regional Council, the Waikato Regional Council … all the way down to the Greater Wellington Regional Council, and yes, Shane Jones, the Otago Regional Council too, will remain.<\/p>\n

Instead, under the Government\u2019s proposal, these organisations would have their governance replaced by Combined Territories Boards (CTBs), a group made up of a region\u2019s mayors which would govern regional councils instead.<\/p>\n

A name change might be needed \u2013 a regional council without a council isn\u2019t quite right \u2013 but the organisation remains the same.<\/p>\n

What happens next is where things get interesting. The Government wants these new CTBs to decide the future of local government in their regions over a period of two years.<\/p>\n

The questions the board would ask include whether to share services across councils, form shared council-owned companies, right the way up to the biggest question of all, which is whether these mayors, representing territorial authorities, want to amalgamate into larger unitary authorities like Auckland, Gisborne, Nelson, Marlborough and the Chatham Islands.<\/p>\n

This is the desired outcome of the Government, with RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop saying as much during his press conference.<\/p>\n

The Government has a lot of say over the matter too \u2013 it\u2019s the Local Government minister, not local voters, who has the final say over whether mayors\u2019 proposals meet the Government\u2019s criteria.<\/p>\n

The pitch has quite clearly been set for the amalgamation of services \u2013 and some full amalgamations of councils.<\/p>\n

In the unlikely event all 67 territorial authorities chose to go with it, it would merge them into just 11 regional councils with unitary functions, leaving New Zealand with about 17 councils in total.<\/p>\n

Far from being abolished, the regional councils are likely to be the last ones standing. It is territorial authorities, the ones whose mayors will sit on the new boards, who should be worried.<\/p>\n

The proposal isn\u2019t therefore fundamentally about abolition, but about amalgamation \u2013 a fact the Herald revealed back in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This reveals two truths.<\/p>\n

One, the eternal value of a subscription to the Herald if you want to read today\u2019s news yesterday (we currently have a Black Friday sale<\/a> for any interested readers).<\/p>\n

Two, the inevitable, unavoidable trend towards amalgamation.<\/p>\n

It began under Labour, with Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta and later Kieran McAnulty proposing to amalgamate the councils\u2019 water services into four and later 10 entities.<\/p>\n

Those reforms are a logical outcome of these ones, with councils that opt to avoid full unitary authorities likely to look to amalgamate things like water instead.<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s own RMA reformer, David Parker, pushed it further. His reforms (which look similar in parts to what Bishop is set to unveil) would have come close to amalgamating council planning functions, stripping core planning powers from individual councils and handing them to 15 planning committees.<\/p>\n

For all the huffing and puffing National made about both of those reforms (including repealing both of them within days of taking office) it is pushing local government very much in the same direction.<\/p>\n

Its Local Water Done Well and Local Government reforms are clearly designed at amalgamating water services \u2013 which makes sense. It is just doing it in a more delicate, consensual and, frankly, chaotic and expensive way.<\/p>\n

Mayors will ultimately have a say over their councils\u2019 destiny, but that destiny will be effectively proscribed by the guardrails and goals the Government has set for them: infrastructure, housing, low rates.<\/p>\n

It makes sense. Wellington\u2019s disastrous \u201cbustastrophe\u201d<\/a> demonstrated the challenge of splitting functions. The Greater Wellington Regional Council controls the bus system, but the region\u2019s city councils control the physical infrastructure like bus stops. The Regional Council did a poor job of designing a new system and the city council got blamed.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know when the end will come, but we\u2019ve got a good idea of what it will look like. We also know the Government has its work cut out for it: the reason we no longer have Labour\u2019s reforms is that they were incredibly unpopular, rallying most councils in the country against them.<\/p>\n

Regional councils aren\u2019t going anywhere, but they might need a bigger table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The full story, when it came out in an embargoed press briefing at 2.30pm, was both less and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[101672,101673,192,27299,29893,682,21438,7558,30692,3278,111,43,139,69,5914,101477,113],"class_list":["post-152689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abolished","tag-amalgamated","tag-are","tag-arent","tag-authorities","tag-being","tag-coughlan","tag-councils","tag-eventually","tag-facts","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-regional","tag-territorial","tag-thomas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}