Hastings has the wrong council

The Hastings District’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is equal to the combined output of Napier, Wairoa and Central Hawke’s Bay. Hastings’ advantages include it’s location in the middle of the highly productive Heretaunga plains, has plenty of room to expand both housing and industry (if permitted by local councils), and  combines with Napier to make up the 5th largest urban area in the country. Anyone driving along the expressway early morning or late afternoon will be left in little doubt that Hastings is where the jobs are, and employment growth is happening. 

Yet Hastings, like Hawke’s Bay generally, has done poorly for years ranking along with Northland and Gisborne at the bottom for economic performance and near top for deprivation. After a 3 decade long economic winter, things are looking much better right now with a 4 star performance in the latest ASB/Main report, but we have seen these glimmers of hope before and they have soon petered out as another recession bites. Remember also we started from a very low base and the fact we have been joined by Northland suggests much of the improvement is because Auckland’s boom has run out of slack capacity and now the benefits are spilling over elsewhere. In population Hawke's Bay is still expanding at near the slowest rate in the country. 

There are many reasons for our anaemic track record including isolation, demographics, ethnicity, low population growth and an excessive reliance on primary industries. 

One possibility that seems never to be considered is that Hastings is disadvantaged by having a council with both rural and urban responsibilities. New Zealand has dozens of rural only district councils and almost all have static economies and shrinking populations. There are a few including Whangarei, Rotorua, Gisborne, Wanganui, Timaru and New Plymouth that like Hastings combine urban and rural areas. Interestingly these also rank near the bottom in economic performance.   

In contrast the fastest growing places including the three main centres plus Hamilton and Tauranga are controlled by city councils and are not burdened with rural responsibilities. There are also some cities that are not doing especially well including Dunedin, Palmerston North, Invercargill, and Nelson. Clearly being a city is not a guarantee of top performance but being a district council seems to align with poor performance. Interestingly both Hamilton and Tauranga have shed their surrounding rural areas into separate slow growing district councils, 8 for Hamilton and 4 for Tauranga.  

Population growth and job creation are essentially a feature of urban areas. Most people live and work in town, most of the rates money is collected and spent in town, and most of the development and all of the challenges are concentrated in urban areas. Urban areas have extraordinarily diverse needs ranging from potable water, sewerage, storm water, libraries, animal control, swimming pools, parks, parking plus housing and industrial development, all requiring specialist expertise. Again in contrast the rural heartland is generally shrinking as evidenced by closing schools and abandoned businesses. Rural areas are mostly concerned with just two issues, roads and bridges.

So whilst combining urban and rural areas into district councils may well have been done to make some councils financially viable, the generally poor performance of our mixed urban/rural councils raises the question of whether this model is sensible. 

In Hastings this composite design has had a second and possibly unforeseen consequence. Effectively it has distorted representation. So instead of city people looking after city issues and rural people looking after roads and bridges, in Hastings rural representatives have ended up with a major say in urban matters. Effectively, a bunch of farmy types pop into town to decide on the rules and finances for urban folk, yet strangely often find reasons why the people they are connected to should be exempt from contributing to the costs. 

  

This is not just a function of having mixed rural and urban responsibilities but is a situation that has been deliberately created by the Mayor. Of the six key chairing positions four are occupied by people associated with the rural area. The Mayor is of course a former farmer (though apparently now living Napier), the Deputy Mayor lives rurally in Central Hawke’s Bay, the  Chair of the Finance committee  represents the rural Mohaka Ward, whilst the Chair of the Hearings committee is a retired Farmer representing the rural Kahuranaki Ward.  I call this group who almost never disagree with the Mayor the tight five because they vote as a block.  One of the two Heretaunga Ward councillors is also a farmer and also almost always votes with the group.   

This imbalance means the wrong council structure and wrong key appointments  are contributing to Hastings poor performance. Had the local Government Commission been less myopic during their evaluation of amalgamation options they might have considered the possibility of combining the Hastings pastoral farming areas with either Wairoa and Central Hawke’s Bay thereby creating local councils with either urban or rural responsibilities rather than a mixture of both.

People power against ruling elites

Published Hawke’s Bay Today 21/06/2016

Whilst there is no direct connection between the amalgamation issue here in Hawke’s Bay and things going on in other countries it is clear that ordinary people are fed up with the bureaucratic excesses of an elite who have grabbed all the power and simply don’t want to listen to any views other than their own. 

Last year the proposed merger of Hawke’s Bay’s five councils into one council was rejected by voters with a massive two to one majority. Many saw the proposal as an elitist dream heavily promoted by a small group of influential and mostly wealthy individuals, most of whom kept their heads down despite pouring huge amounts of money into a very expensive campaign. The few who did declare their support including the  Mayor of Hastings, former MP Rick Barker and Iwi leader Ngahiwi Tomoana were seen as trying to advance their own personal power seeking agendas. Similar outcomes were likely in both Northland and Wellington where the Local Government Commission abandoned its proposals. 

On June 23  Britons will be going to the polls to decide if they wish to remain a member of the European Union, an event now commonly known as Brixit. Between 1961 and 1973 Britain made four separate applications to join the European Common market trading block only 20 miles distant at its closest point and now with 500 million people, but views have changed. 

Whilst still a trading block the European Union has become an immense Brussels based political organisation intent on controlling every possible aspect of European lives. The common European currency required individual countries to dump their own currencies and surrender their monetary policy to EU technocrats. Britain declined to join and probably feels totally vindicated when observing the austerity demands imposed on Greece, Spain and other members during and following the Global Financial Crises. 

Faceless European Commissioneers are seen as unconnected, uncaring and unaccountable. Whilst immigration may tip the balance it is growing EC regulation that created the pressure to leave the EC. Ordinary people feel the EC bureaucracy is taking over their lives. A simple example is a recent EC edict limiting the power of vacuum cleaners to1600 watts which will be further reduced to just 900 watts in 2017, half the average power of vacuum cleaners sold previously. 

Even British farmers who have benefited from the Common Agricultural Policy feel EU policies (read subsidies) have distorted markets creating gluts of products including butter and milk whilst swallowing up to 39% of the EU's budget for a sector that accounts for less than 2% of GDP.

The worry is that Brixit may start a mass exit by other member countries. Yet rather than try and accommodate dissenting views the bureaucracy has marched on dreaming up ever more controls so they can justify their existence and hang onto power. 

Prior to her government being voted from office in 2008, Helen Clarke’s made the same mistakes with proposes to eliminating incandescent light bulbs and limit flow rates on shower heads. These and the UN inspired anti smacking bill attracted the description “Nanny State” .     

The third event suggesting people may be rallying against the ruling elite is the astonishing rise of Donald J Trump from being the least popular Republican presidential hopeful to the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. Republican and Democratic candidates are all seen to be connected to the elitist establishment.  

For the moment he appears to be trailing Hillary Clinton and we will have to wait until November to find out who will prevail. However it is already clear that Donald Trump has given a voice to a previously ignored significant voter segment many of whom feel government promoted international trade agreements and globalisation have left them seriously disadvantaged. 

There is nothing new in dissension but suddenly ordinary people in western democracies are being given the tools to express their frustrations and anger at situations they could not previously alter. Amalgamation failed, Brixit looks increasingly likely, and Donald Trump may still be the next President of the United States. Perhaps if those with power had listened a little more carefully to ordinary people the outcomes recent events might have had different outcomes.