{"id":501831,"date":"2026-06-29T23:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T23:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501831\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T23:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T23:56:09","slug":"is-bigger-really-better-thinktank-says-merging-councils-may-not-be-the-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/501831\/","title":{"rendered":"Is bigger really better? Thinktank says merging councils may not be the solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A thinktank suggests we need to move away from a &#8216;bigger is better&#8217; mindset when reforming local government. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A New Zealand Initiative report says the Government&#8217;s plan for creating fewer larger councils through mergers is the wrong fix. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It cites Infrastructure Commission findings that Auckland&#8217;s 2010 super-city merger delivered more costs than savings.<\/p>\n<p>Initiative Senior Fellow Nick Clark told Ryan Bridge that our councils are already large by overseas standards. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He says that if bigger is better, than we would see a lot better results, and we aren\u2019t. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>LISTEN ABOVE\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A thinktank suggests we need to move away from a &#8216;bigger is better&#8217; mindset when reforming local government.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[250553,7558,250551,250552,5472,111,43,139,250549,69,203856,250550],"class_list":["post-501831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-councilmergers","tag-councils","tag-localgoverment","tag-localgovernmentreform","tag-mergers","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-newzealandinit","tag-nz","tag-nzinitiative","tag-thenewzealandinitiative"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501831","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=501831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}