Wellington region’s mayors to discuss government directive

Wednesday, 6 May 2026

Mayors from across the Wellington region will be discussing the Government’s local government simplification directive at a meeting this week.

Wellington mayor Andrew Little confirmed the region’s eight mayors, and Daran Ponter, the chairperson of Greater Wellington Regional Council (GWRC), would discuss Tuesday’s announcement at a meeting of the Wellington and Wairarapa Mayoral Forum on Friday.

Little, the Forum’s chairperson, said the group had been working on reform options since last year.

“At this stage it is too early to provide a detailed assessment of the central government’s proposals, but we're meeting together to discuss it on Friday,” he said.

'Wellington and Wairarapa mayors and the Greater Wellington Regional Council chair have been working together on options for regional governance reform since last year. We’ll continue that work to ensure local government reflects the needs and aspirations of the people we represent, genuinely informed by local communities.

“This is an ordinary scheduled meeting of the Forum of regional local government leaders.”

The Forum was made up of the mayors of Wellington City, Hutt City, Upper Hutt City, Porirua City, Kapiti, South Wairarapa, Carterton and Masterton, and the chairperson of GWRC, and has existed for many years.

On Tuesday, Minister for RMA Reform Chris Bishop and Minister of Local Government Simon Watts gave New Zealand’s 78 councils a three-month window to propose measures to simplify and strengthen their local government structures.

“Our message to councils is simple: lead your own reform, or we will do it for you. Either way, change is coming,” Bishop said.

Local government expert Andy Asquith said the Government needed to be careful.

“It’s either very brave or very foolhardy of Bishop and Watts to do this, because history is littered with local government ministers that have come out with amalgamation proposals and the parties that propose these things always suffer at the ballot box.”

Asquith, a local government research associate at Monash University in Melbourne, said the announcement had effectively “green-lighted” moves that had been taking place ”under the table“ to fast-track discussions by councils in the greater Wellington region, and in other areas.

“Councils have got 12 weeks to come up with something. The last time I looked, councils were stressed out about RMA reform, rate-capping, and abolition of the regional councils. There isn’t a single council in New Zealand that is not strapped for cash and strapped for resources.

“Giving this to them on top of everything else is disingenuous,” he said.

“We are talking potentially about a fundamental restructure of the local government system in New Zealand.”

Asquith said the Government was putting distance between themselves and the reforms.

“They are saying it is all down to local government to come up with solutions. So that when it turns to custard, which it invariably will, they can then say ‘we didn’t do this, the councils did this’.”

Asquith said the current structure in Wellington and Wairarapa was nonsensical.

“There isn’t a single person in Wairarapa that lives, works and plays entirely within a single territorial local authority.”

In December the Wellington Mayoral Forum issued a statement saying it was assessing options for regional governance in the region.

“Wellington and Wairarapa mayors and the Greater Wellington Regional Council chair have agreed to work together on options for amalgamation in the region, responding to central government’s recent policy announcements about local government,” it said.

“We’ve seen many announcements from the Beehive recently about reorganising local government, from the proposed replacement of regional councillors with mayors, to prohibiting referenda, to rates caps, to RMA reform,” Little said at the time.

“The economic and infrastructure issues facing Wellington and Wairarapa are too important to be left to chance, and local people should decide the future of their local governments.

“Crucially, this includes putting forward our own proposal for how any council amalgamation could be achieved,” he said.

“We already share a number of services regionally, including water and public transport. More can be done, which is why mayors are jointly committed to getting on with a plan to see what is workable.”

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air