Chris Bishop: RMA Reform Minister and National's Housing Spokesperson on council amalgamation plans, Labour's latest election pledge
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Long line of angry mayors this morning after the government hit pause on these council amalgamations. Some have cut deals, some had a few ideas, some didn't want to do it at all. Basically time's run out. Chris Bishop's in charge of it all and he's with us. Good morning.
Good morning.
Should you have organized yourself better?
Look, the we conducted Head Start because a bunch of councils came to us and said, Listen, we're doing RMA reform, you're doing all of these changes to local government. We we sort of recognise that we need change. We're up for it. Give us a chance to get our own um act together, get our ducks in a row. And get on with it. So we did that and um there's been a bunch of really good proposals that have come through and we're just gonna take a bit more time now to consider those and not let the hubbub of the election campaign for the next six weeks distract from that process and then get on with the thing.
And you wasted everyone's time.
Oh no, my sense is that there's real desire for change inside local government. Um, you know, I've just been in Hawke's Bay just in the last um last twenty four hours or so, right? And that their proposal was one of the highest quality proposals. So you've basically got a um a view here that you need to combine it all together, have a Hawks Bay unitary, you know, put their best foot forward, um, centr you know, essentially centralize around that model. Um so there's a that that that desire for change is not going away. It doesn't really matter who's in government, that that underlying sense that the bay can do better if they're united, that's not going away. So
Okay. What what about the people who stalled and I suspect deliberately stalled knowing that this very thing could happen?
Yeah, so it was it it's interesting. We had eighteen proposals. Um, some of them are really high quality, but there's obviously a spectrum. And for some of the regions it was it got really complicated. So you think about Canterbury, right? Um They had a variety of different proposals. There just wasn't any sort of consensus between uh say YMAC, Salwyn, Christchurch City. Um, Waikato is another one where you've got all these, you've got lots of different councils in Waikato, right? But you had a sort of East Waikato proposal, you had a West Waikato proposal. Um, so there's a sort of spectrum of um of proposals and lots of I good ideas that came through, but with some of them need a bit more work. So that's the basic answer.
I get all that, but what about what about the people who told you yesterday basically you're a dick and you've wasted their time? What do you say to those people? 'Cause they are genuinely angry.
Yeah, I get that. And um, you know, I'm sort of got g getting used to being um told off by local government. Well, I mean um I guess all I'd say to them is that, you know Without without wanting to get into a slagging match with local government. I mean, we we were told by lots of them that they could get their act together and um we could take things forward and it isn't quite turned out like that. And so Oh, so it's their fault? Didn't real I didn't realise that.
It's their
fault, is it? I'm I'm not saying I'm not saying that. I don't want to get into a public slinging match because I do I do genuinely want to work together on this with them because I think there's actually lots of good ideas that have come through. We've just run out of runway, right, to make decisions between now and the election and um you know, we'll pick it up in the next few weeks. So it's not uh we're not stopping the work, it's just a bit of a pause while we, you know, central government as well. Well as long as
long as you win, of course. On that note, can I ask you this question, a broad based question? So Labour yesterday made that big announcement of there's four billion dollars worth of housing and all the other stuff they announced. The best they could say, because they weren't really asked, is how to pay for it, is it it's it's future operating in capital allowances.
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