Tania Tapsell: Rotorua Mayor on the Government wanting to scrap local councils' four well-being provisions

The Government wants to scrap local councils' four well-being provisions. 

A amendment bill has been introduced to remove the social, economic, environmental and cultural wellbeing provisions from the Local Government Act, to refocus councils on their core services. 

The Government wants councils to give more value to ratepayers. 

Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell told Andrew Dickens she's looking forward to the removal of the four wellbeing clauses.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The government is cracking down on councils, forcing them to
stick to their core business. It's scrapping the four well
being provisions brought in by the last MOB, Social, Economic,
environmental and cultural. The last MOB added these in twenty nineteen.
The law change also means councils must report regularly on
their finances and reveal how much they're spending on consultants

(00:22):
and contractors, wrote Rotorua mayor Tania tapsul Is joining me
now good morning to you, Tania.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
What does core business mean for you?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Look, this is quite interesting actually because it's mostly focused
on infrastructure, but overall it's about making sure that our
districts are certainly running well, but also that our community
is able to access services and feel happy about excellence
in customer service. I suppose when they do contact council and.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Who's responsible for the culture of a city, because if
they're scrapping their cultural provision, are they saying it's not
the council's job to actually promote the culture of a
city and every city has a culture.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Well, actually got to give it to this government though,
because when the previous one introduced the four wellbeings, a
lot of the councils said, well, okay, then are we
going to get more funding to do that please? And
of course the answer was no, and so all of
a sudden, councils were taskedworth also having to look after
the social well beings. Now that was quite difficult for

(01:27):
us because when we're trying to run a city keep
the rates as low as possible, but we also have
to drive not only culture but also social wellbeing. We
kind of said, hm, hang on them. In a government,
isn't it your job? So we are very much looking
forward to the removal of the four well beings, But
there is a little bit of hesitancy, I must admit
of councils across the country where we say, hmm, okay,

(01:50):
so you're going to tell us to focus on core business.
But does that mean that you will pick up the
bill and also the work if we do have gaps
that are left for our community.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Yes. How do you feel about the government telling you
what to do? I mean, you are elected based on
your platforms. You go in there telling the people that
have elected you what you're going to do. But here's
the government saying, now, this is what you're going to do.
How do you feel about that.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
This has always been a tricky one for us, of course,
and we saw that when we had the Three Waters
debate now called Local Waters down Well, where our community said, actually, hey,
we want to make sure that we maintain local decision making.
We also saw it when there's the polytechs, the TWU
stories got moved across the country and the local DHB
has got scrapped, and of course we went to an

(02:35):
amalgamated system. So this will be quite interesting because we've
seen that when government does tell councils what to do,
it doesn't really work very well. So we're hoping, at least,
and i'll tell you what we're hoping, at least when
they talk about rates capping, they also look at how
much cost the government is actually putting on local councils.

(02:57):
Because to tell you what half of our rates increases
across the country, certainly in my region it's about eight
point seven percent on average. A half of that rates
increases actually from government reforms and how much money we
have to spend to meet those targets.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
So you're going to have to spend a bit more
as well, because you've got to report regularly on your finances,
and you've got to reveal everything that you're spending. So
there's a whole lot of man hours and person hours
and that as well. Tell you Tapsle, you spoke so fantastically,
you always do, and I thank you for your time today.
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