Editorial: Single council plans undemocratic

John Bain, Northland Emergency Services Trust (NEST) chairman.

John Bain tells us that the lack of "one voice when speaking to central government has been our great weakness for quite a number of years, as we have sent mixed messages by selling ideas and projects to government agencies from up to four councils which don't always match ..."

As long as it reflects our wishes, needs and desires a single voice is good, but as every council represents a different group of electors, each with its own priorities, four voices will often provide far better representation.

Sometimes speaking with one voice will be best, but why do we need to reorganise local government to achieve that?

Predicting money savings from amalgamations seems rather hit or miss (costs often seem to increase) and many of the economies of scale are achievable by cooperating rather than amalgamating.

I have become more and more disenchanted with a single unitary authority. I prefer to retain the NRC, which has been a stout bulwark against some of the misdeeds of the district councils and their mayors.

Democracy is threatened by the proposal. Fewer representatives surely means less representation. The travel involved will make it harder for the public to attend meetings and may deter good candidates from standing for election. With few places on the Unitary Council, elections are likely to be much more costly for candidates, deterring the less well-heeled from standing. Northland is far from homogenous. Local needs may be poorly represented.

There seems less likelihood of direct Maori representation - for example, using STV and large constituencies is an approach possible with district councils but not with the proposal.

Community boards may provide some local democracy but that does not compensate for the lack of democratic input into the Unitary Council itself, which is where the big decisions are taken.

Then there is Kaipara's huge debt, an issue that needs to be settled before any decision on local government reorganisation.

Kaipara's debt is seen as Kaipara's problem, but if Kaipara is likely to fail there is little to be said for standing around watching. That debt needs to be reduced, perhaps most appropriately by the taxpayer, given that so much of that debt was hardly foreseeable by the ordinary citizens of Kaipara.

The government no doubt prefers a unitary authority - fewer councils to deal with and in six years Kaipara's debt would be Northland's debt.