Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Regional councillors who've just been sworn in have been shown the writing on the wall by the government, which is plotting a swift end to their terms
It's been billed as the biggest shakeup in local government since amalgamation in 1989.
But at the end of the day, "all the government's really announced is work to start a brain storming session," says Stuff political reporter Glenn McConnell.
Simpler, more cost-effective local government is the stated aim from the ministers involved; local government minister Simon Watts and the man in charge of resource management reform, Chris Bishop.
The media release from the Beehive didn't mention the word 'amalgamation' once, but that's effectively what it will end up being.
"It is a huge announcement," McConnell tells The Detail, "because it's effectively a key part of New Zealand's democracy ... regional councils, local government being completely overhauled, reformed, so that ... probably the next time a local government election comes up, you won't be voting for who is on your regional council."
He says it's probably fair to say this is effective amalgamation but "the government hasn't come out and said 'we want to amalgamate all these councils; we want to merge regional and district councils across the country'."
There are 11 regional councils in New Zealand - Auckland, Marlborough and the Chatham and subantarctic islands don't have them.
McConnell says Chris Bishop raised a pretty good point when he asked if people actually know who they're voting for on a regional council - who can name the councillors?
He adds that local government voting percentages are so low that you could ask if the democratic process is even working that well, with less than half the population participating.
On the other hand, the chair of Environment Canterbury, Deon Swiggs, has told him that locals are well engaged in his area and do know what's happening.
"So maybe that's a good example of this new system that everyone is going to need to think about. We could have, depending on engagement in the areas, and the concerns raised, different voting systems."
McConnell says local government in New Zealand is a complex system and simplifying it will be a complicated job. He also points out that the country's busy mayors didn't sign up for this.
The first step is to replace regional councillors with the mayors who cover those regions, on what will be called Combined Territories Boards, and they have two years to work out what the decision-making structures will look like in the future.
One irony here is that Prime Minister Christopher Luxon campaigned on giving more power to locals to make decisions, in a bite-back to Labour's Three Waters changes.
McConnell says in a way, this move is not dissimilar.
"This is the same rationale as having Three Waters, that you could combine resources across different cities and regions to make it more effective and cheaper to operate local government services. That is the same rationale that Chris Bishop is using for pushing for this reform of regional councils."
Bishop has been very interested in this area and has been open with his desire to reform it.
National has backing from both its coalition parties, but interestingly for different philosophical reasons.
"The politics of this is quite fascinating," says McConnell.
New Zealand First's Shane Jones has effectively made getting rid of regional councils a party policy - "particularly he's unhappy about the Otago Regional Council, which he said is a 'Kremlin-like institution' in the South Island, all because he doesn't like the decisions they're making."
Act, on the other hand, sees it as a way to get rid of co-governance.
"In Canterbury, ECan has seats for Ngāi Tahu - Ngāi Tahu representation is guaranteed on the ECan board - now this change, getting rid of the board that runs ECan and just replacing it with mayors, means that Ngāi Tahu representation is gone.
"So Act is celebrating from the perspective of getting rid of co-governance. Three completely different reasons for this policy.
"But this is going to take years to change this ... I think this discussion will be going on for quite some time."
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