Editorial: Time for Hide to listen and not just lay down the law

The most interesting sentence in the Cabinet Paper in which Local Government Minister Rodney Hide goes to war on council spending is buried at clause 37 on page 9. "I do not propose to publish a public discussion document," the minister writes, citing "a number of recent processes that have elicited public views on local government".

A list follows: the Local Government Rates Inquiry, published in August, 2007; the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance, which reported in March; and "my own requests for the public's views".

If Hide were not a man of such deadly seriousness, one might have suspected a joke. The commission having been established by the previous government, Hide cannot fairly be accused of hiring a dog and snarling himself. But the disregard with which he treated the report of the commission, which received more than 3500 submissions, has been so high-handed as to border on contempt. He summarily tossed out its recommendations for Maori representation and downgraded the proposed local councils to community boards with sham power. Auckland mayors made their opinions plain - and if Hide is unaware of "the public's views", he isn't reading the newspapers.

Nothing daunted, he is warming to his self-appointed task. The Cabinet signed off on his paper this week, setting in train a Department of Internal Affairs review of local government law in which the minister's terms of reference are plain. The Cabinet paper is full of cosy-sounding buzzwords like "transparency" and "accountability", but what it seeks is a redefinition of core council services that will remove the requirement for local government to deliver "social, economic, environmental and community outcomes".

Mr Hide says that current local government legislation pushes councils into providing services "well beyond their core roles", a comment that simultaneously manages to beg the question and expose his agenda. He says core council services are those to do with transport, water services and health and safety - and he is probably right to claim there is "general acceptance" of that. But, by definition and by his plain implication, this classifies everything else as a frippery that does not belong on the public agenda. Even the most hard-pressed ratepayer might view with alarm a definition of council responsibilities that excludes the provision of, for example, libraries, parks and the preservation of heritage.

The minister wants ratepayers to be consulted on whether councils should invest in activities outside the prescribed core. He suggests referenda, which are expensive and cumbersome and, as a measure of public opinion, a very blunt instrument. But that is a richly ironic suggestion, coming from a man who has shown such contempt for public opinion about his work so far and who wants us to keep our opinions to ourselves until his proposals have taken legislative shape and are before a select committee. Hide knows that submissions to select committees seldom result in more than minor changes to a legislative fait accompli.

Fortunately, Prime Minister John Key has already said that he does not agree with Hide's definition of "core services" and that the proposed review is "an engagement in debate". But he should go further. The Act Party is in Parliament with the support of fewer than three in 100 New Zealanders. The unfettered enthusiasm with which Hide is pursuing his radical agenda is out of all proportion to his mandate. The Prime Minister should give a sharp tug on his leash and remind him that he is there to find out and give legislative shape to what the public wants.