The change that will define our region

Tuesday, 21 July 2026

Ken Laban is the mayor of Hutt City

OPINION: A month ago, I said I wanted to listen before I led. We have. We sat down with community groups, business, mana whenua, neighbouring mayors, and the hundreds of residents who took part in our Annual Plan engagement. Now it’s time to tell you what that listening produced.

This is the biggest change local government in this country has faced in a generation. Getting it right matters.

From that listening came Hutt City Council’s Head Start paper, our discussion piece on the future shape of local government in this region. I was clear that this paper was not written behind closed doors, but from the ground up and built on what our communities told us.

The paper discusses community councils with real decision-making power, not advisory panels that get consulted and then overruled. Real power means real funding, backed by bespoke legislation so these protections can’t be wound back by a future council or government.

It also discusses a two thirds majority requirement on the biggest decisions, like budgets and strategic plans, so no single population centre can dominate the rest by numbers alone. Smaller communities do not get outvoted into irrelevance. That’s not a technicality; it’s the difference between genuine partnership and being managed from a distance.

We must work with all governments and actively respond to their directions, Front footing with the Head Start paper is our city choosing to design its own future, with our own safeguards, built by the people who will live with the outcome.

The alternative is the backstop. If we don’t put forward a credible plan ourselves, central government will make the decision for us, on a timeline and to a design we don’t control. Head Start means we hold the pen. The backstop means it gets done to us. I am unwilling to hand that decision away when we have already done the hard work of building something better.

Consider what’s at stake. New Zealand has 78 councils, most planning housing, consenting, infrastructure and transport on their own. In our region that means separate consent processes slowing the same housing developments, separate infrastructure plans for the same growth corridors, and separate transport priorities for people who cross boundary lines every day without a second thought.

We’re not competing with Auckland or Christchurch like that. We’re competing with ourselves.

The answer isn’t to regionalise everything. It’s to regionalise what makes sense at scale, housing, infrastructure, and transport, and keep the rest close to home, decided by people who actually live there. A region that streamlines the big stuff while protecting the local is a region that can become this country’s next economic and social powerhouse. That is what happens when a region stops duplicating effort eight times over and starts building with one clear, coordinated plan.

I know change is unsettling, and I know some would rather see a separate Hutt Valley unitary, or no change at all. I understand that instinct. But a smaller, standalone structure does not give our communities more say. It gives us less financial resilience, less weight with central government, and less ability to protect what people have told us matters most.

The choice is not between change and no change. Change is coming. The real choice is whether we shape it ourselves, with the protections our communities asked for, or leave it to a process where those protections aren’t guaranteed.

I would rather we hold the pen.

We listened. We built this from the ground up. Now is the time to stand up and lead.