We asked southern leaders whether there is room for a pan-provincial council, centred on Dunedin, but stretching from Waitaki to the Lakes District and Clutha? Chris Morris and Allison Rudd report.
Imagine a giant super council straddling Otago, running the show for everyone.
Councillors travelling from all corners to thrash out the issues in Dunedin, and council staff - all with the same logo on their cars - buzzing about the countryside like busy bees from the hive.
Gone would be the Dunedin City Council, Otago Regional Council, councils across the Lakes District, Central Otago, Waitaki and Clutha, and gone, too, would be their duplicated paperwork, staff, managers and mayors. There would be one district plan, one rates system, and one mayor sitting atop it all.
It is an idea gaining traction in Auckland, where they call it the "super city" concept. It is aimed at streamlining governance and was recommended last week following 18 months of work by the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance.
The plan would see the sprawling city's regional council and seven territorial authorities scrapped, replaced by a new city-wide council centred on one all-powerful mayor.
However, southern leaders spoken to by the Otago Daily Times were almost all in agreement - what was good for Auckland was unlikely to work in the South.
That was because the "tyranny of distance" separating Dunedin from Queenstown, Oamaru from Balclutha, as well as the diverse challenges facing each centre, made a "one-rule-fits-all" approach difficult. Centralising governance in Dunedin would also hurt "grass-roots" democracy.
"Why do you need to do it?" was Dunedin City Council Mayor Peter Chin's reaction. "Is what we have down here broke?"
The challenges of diversity - Otago's issues
Like others spoken to, Mr Chin believed Otago's issues were not comparable with Auckland's, and nor were Dunedin's issues comparable with those faced by the city's smaller outlying rural communities, or Queenstown and Wanaka.
"Clearly, the argument that things are broke in Auckland - that's been an accepted fact for decades," he said.
"Some of the problems we each have are different."
His Queenstown Lakes counterpart, Mayor Clive Geddes, agreed. How could an Otago super council craft a single district plan that protected Queenstown's outstanding landscape from the resort's unique development pressures, while also working for Oamaru?
And would Dunedin people want Queenstown's new blanket 4am closing time for bars, tailored as it was to combat disorderly behaviour in the resort?
"It would be a nightmare to administer," Mr Geddes said.
A super city would bring clear benefits to Auckland, which had multiple councils facing the same problems - like choking traffic congestion, he said.
At the same time, a motorist battling his way across Auckland could pass from one city centre to the next "without realising you have done it".
The "tyranny of distance" - Otago's size
Not so in Otago, where the drive from Queenstown to Dunedin took three and a-half hours and passed through rural communities, town centres and sprawling open landscapes.
"It's the tyranny of distance - you can fly to Sydney in a shorter time than you can drive from Queenstown to Dunedin," Mr Geddes said.
Those distances would make cost savings hard to achieve in Otago, he and Mr Chin agreed.
Auckland's Royal Commission estimated amalgamation in Auckland could eventually lead to savings through efficiencies rising to $113 million each year. However, Otago's size made centralisation less feasible - staff would have to remain "on the ground" in each centre to provide essential council services, Mr Geddes believed.
In Queenstown, the council employed 108 staff, many of whom - such as a senior planner carrying out site inspections during the resource consent process - would be needed locally even under a super council structure.
The alternative was to pay greater travel costs for staff from Dunedin, or an increased budget to cover consultants' fees.
"I don't think you could drive the efficiencies out of any Otago regional amalgamation that you can out of cities that have contiguous boundaries," Mr Geddes said.
The message was the same from Otago's council chief executives.
Otago Regional Council chief executive Graeme Martin said a super city would solve the "Auckland syndrome" but was "not a solution for anywhere other than Auckland".
QLDC chief executive Duncan Field said amalgamation in the South was "a solution looking for a problem".
DCC chief executive Jim Harland said establishing a pan-Otago council would be a "complex and interesting exercise", but doubted it would result in major savings. A small reduction in senior managers could save "hundreds of thousands" of dollars, but not "millions".
Let's get together - logical amalgamations
However, Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt not only favoured greater collaboration in the South, he even supported the possibility of a single council for Otago and Southland to compete with the "huge" proposed Auckland council for central Government financial resources.
"With the amount of influence and power Auckland is going to have, the whole of the lower South Island is going to have to co-operate a whole lot more."
He was unsure if he would support a resolution to go before the Invercargill City Council next week, calling for a "one-Southland" council to be established, merging others covering Invercargill, Southland District and Gore, as well as Environment Southland.
Given the time-consuming process likely to result, it might be better to consult on wider amalgamation, he suggested.
"A Southern Regional Council . . . would work. There is such a logical southern triangle between the main urban centres of Dunedin, Queenstown and Invercargill.
"We may as well have change that will carry us through the next 100 years," he said.
A less ambitious suggestion came from Auckland-based local government expert Peter McKinlay, the director of Auckland University of Technology's Local Government Centre, who helped Auckland councils write their submissions to the Royal Commission.
It was hard to argue for Otago-wide amalgamation, but some councils should consider amalgamation - or at least closer collaboration - with neighbouring councils, he believed.
"Local government autonomy only exists as long as central government decides to retain that. Councils which see merits in amalgamating or sharing services with their neighbours should go ahead and do it. Don't wait for the Government to do it to you - get the solution which suits you," he said.
It was a limited proposal favoured by some Southern leaders. Mr Geddes and Central Otago Mayor Malcolm Macpherson both backed possible future amalgamation of their councils, given their similar tourism and development issues and library and solid waste disposal facilities.
Dr Macpherson would spend "about 10 seconds thinking about" a pan-Otago council, but supported the merger of "logical units" - possibly also including a coastal Otago council, perhaps encompassing coastal Southland.
Environment Southland chairman Stuart Collie defended his council's role overseeing other Southland councils, but agreed some reform was "almost inevitable".
The province was over-governed with 44 "paid politicians" for 91,000 residents, although an Otago-Southland council was "ridiculously ambitious", he believed.
Otago Regional Council chairman Stephen Cairns said regional co-operation was working well, but he was "completely open" to closer collaboration with neighbouring councils.
"As a business case, there are merits in the economies of scale which might come with amalgamation. But the people just won't swallow it."
Mr Chin also believed there "may be an argument" for the city's amalgamation with the Clutha District Council.
"But Dunedin to the Lakes District? That's a huge call."
But we already get along - regional co-operation
Mr Chin believed regional collaboration was working in Otago, due to the absence of "the ego things" that occurred between Auckland's mayors.
"I believe I have a wonderful working relationship with every mayor and chair in Otago. I'm not sure that my peers in Auckland can make that same comment."
Mr Geddes agreed, saying issues like transport or economic development were already the subject of co-operation, and future issues - such as the need for a regional landfill for Central Otago - could be tackled that way too.
"We don't need some mega-amalgamation to force that to happen."
However, Mr Chin acknowledged the need for closer collaboration between Otago and Southland to attract finance from Wellington.
"If governments look at votes in order to stay in government, then the strength of Otago and Southland, vis-a-vis northern centres, isn't there.
"For this area, Otago, to be relevant, Otago and Southland have got to work together . . . but I don't believe it necessarily means a change in our district to enable us to do that," Mr Chin said.
Where are the voters? - The importance of "local" democracy
For veteran Dunedin councillor and former mayor Richard Walls, the concept of a super Otago council brought a sense of deja vu.
Cr Walls was part of a travelling roadshow that promoted a similar proposal - touted in the late 1980s by then Dunedin mayor Sir Clifford Skeggs and then chief executive Merv Montacute - to other Otago councils.
The idea was for a united region with an overarching council making major decisions and district councils looking after service delivery. While the idea got some traction, it was "scuppered", Cr Walls said.
"It was an idea ahead of its time. So, instead of that structure, we got the 1989 reforms and an enlarged Dunedin City Council."
And Mr Chin said the 1989 amalgamations that followed instead - which incorporated borough councils including Mosgiel, Port Chalmers and Green Island into a greater Dunedin - caused some resentment that still lingered. He was in no doubt the same thing would happen if an Otago-wide council was formed, and feared it would be bad for local democracy.
Mr Geddes said local democracy would be diluted if councillors from Queenstown or Wanaka spent "all their time in a car or a flat in Dunedin" and ratepayers were forced to travel long distances for meetings or hearings.
"I think the important thing about local government is keeping that word 'local'."
• Clutha Mayor Juno Hayes is on holiday and could not be reached for comment.
