Mike's Minute: Council amalgamation – something else this Govt didn't deliver

Andrew Little had a good crack at the Government over council amalgamation.  He got interrupted by an alarm but made his point and his disappointment is well-founded.  My major criticism of this Government is they said a lot of stuff they simply didn’t deliver on.  Someone like Luxon would argue it's aspirational and it's better to fall short trying hard than not try at all.  Little is rightly ropeable about council amalgamation being delayed until after the election. If the Government flips of course, it will never happen at all.  Maybe, given the submissions made by various councils against the plan, that was what they wanted all along: stall until it's possibly too late.  "Unleashed chaos" was a good line he used. But then it was a good policy.  We are hopelessly over-counselled in this country and too many of them are run by a collection of knobs. They're well-meaning I'm sure, but complacency and mediocrity litter the council landscape.  The fewer of them the better.  Some got on with it and formed groups. Some kind of had a crack and some outright refused and you knew they were holding out until the bitter end.  But like all top-down restructuring, it causes time, energy, and money to be spent on things that, as it turns out, might be off, which is an irony given wastage was one of the reasons the idea was being proffered in the first place.  I like Little. He walks a fairly decent line between being a Labour wonk and a council representative, but also a guy with vast experience who plays the game and is professional with it.  So when he says this is poor form he means it, and I believe him, and he is right.  From 500 police that didn’t happen, to the reviews that never got to Cabinet, to the LNG deal that’s run out of time, to council amalgamation that wasted a lot of hours, this Government wasn't quite as sharp at delivery as they might have led you to believe when they showed you the tin.  It won't switch any votes. But you would want to hope for a slicker, more well-oiled machine after November 7th. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.