Wellington intervention looks like a first resort, not the last

Opinion: I remember reading Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau’s words in response to ministers who had described the council as a “shambles”, “shemozzle”, and a hot bed of “meddling bureaucracy”, after the council changed its vote to sell its airport shares as part of its long-term plan.
She said the council needed assistance, not “punching down”. It was a great choice of words, because when the Government decides to punch down, there is nothing you can do.
I was not the mayor when the Government appointed a Crown observer at Christchurch City Council in 2012, an appointment requested by the council. I feel like a ‘yeah right’ should end that sentence. There were many of us who believed the only thing that stopped the Government appointing commissioners was the fact they had only recently done that to the regional council, ECan.
It is worth noting that appointing commissioners was the only option back then. It was only later in 2012 that “a simpler, more graduated mechanism … to assist struggling local authorities and intervene before situations become critical” was brought in. This added the options of non-statutory interventions, the appointment of a Crown review team, a Crown observer, or a Crown manager, in addition to the option of replacing council with commissioners. 
I haven’t compared other decisions relating to Government intervention, but the Wellington papers make for interesting reading – not so much the Cabinet paper advising that the decision had been made, but the advice to the minister.
I should declare that I personally know Lindsay McKenzie from my time as mayor, and rate him highly. If I would want anyone taking on a role such as this, he would be my top choice both in terms of experience and integrity.
But reading the papers has left me asking whether the threshold for intervention was met. It certainly doesn’t look like it.
The Cabinet paper said an intervention was necessary on the basis that it was unclear whether council members could effectively work together, or with council staff, to identify a path to financial sustainability. It mentioned councillors walking out of recent meetings and refusing to participate in votes. It also reported confusion regarding decisions, amendments, and voting, and councillors repeatedly publicly criticising one another and council staff.
The paper says that the environment is not conducive to the council effectively managing the long-term plan amendment and adoption process.
What was missing from the Cabinet paper was the advice that the minister had received about Wellington’s water infrastructure, which appeared to be a much more significant reason for ministerial intervention. The minister briefed Cabinet on the Wellington situation about a month ago, but that paper hasn’t been proactively released with the others, so I cannot tell if the water woes were part of that.
According to Government officials, Wellington has not been using enough of its borrowing headroom on its infrastructure, and neither had it adjusted its plans for the increased debt-to-revenue ratios for water infrastructure to allow for more borrowing and headroom. That may well be the case, and it may not have been a position adopted by another council, even by me, but I thought that Local Water Done Well made this a council decision!
When it was in opposition, the present Government accepted that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to the challenges in water management across the country was not the answer. The then opposition leader even said that “residents need to hold the council to account, and the council then can go off and do something about that”.
But that’s not what has happened here. The Government has stepped in. So, when I think of the promise of Local Water Done Well, then maybe this doesn’t apply to local infrastructure funding decisions that the Government disagrees with. 
Another point to note is that the minister’s intervention powers can only be used if a local authority is experiencing “a significant problem” and is either unwilling or unable to resolve it. The briefing paper tells the minister the threshold for intervention is high and is therefore considered a last resort.
This looks like a first resort.
The first thing a minister needs to consider is that local authorities are accountable to their ratepayers and residents, and that elections are the primary mechanism for them to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with elected representatives. This is what sets a very high bar.
Mayors and councillors are not accountable to the Minister of Local Government or to Government for that matter. That’s why intervention is a last resort.
And then there is the nature of the problem. The sorts of things interventions are directed at are financial mismanagement, a significant failure in service delivery, and/or dysfunctional governance and management. The latter includes failure or breakdown of key relationships, and/or serious capability deficiencies of elected members which affects their ability to perform their role. Has that really happened in Wellington? Why did the minister not meet with the council before saying he was looking at options? There was nothing in the advice that provided any in-depth analysis of the state of play around the council table.
Due regard is also required to be given to the local authority’s acknowledgement of the problem, and commitment to its resolution, something they appeared to be determined to resolve once everyone from the Prime Minister down had stuck the boot in.
That seemed to be a direct response to the media coverage of the meeting when the earlier vote of council on the sale of airport shares was overturned.
I often wonder if ministers understand that councils face a real challenge when notices of motion are lodged that seek to unwind decisions that have already been made.
I was always incredibly mindful of that, which is why I worked so hard to achieve a compromise when things looked difficult. This is a systemic issue in local government that no central government minister ever needs to fear, protected as they are by Cabinet collective responsibility.
The redaction of three key paragraphs in the advice makes it difficult to see precisely what grounds were relied on, and what aspects made the decision finely balanced as against non-statutory options. All I can say is that the threshold is no longer as high as it should be, and this intervention was not the last resort. And that should be a warning to other councils.
Unless of course the minister had been left with no choice but to act when his colleagues decided to publicly punch down on the council.