Councils Compete For SuperLocal Awards; 2025 Finalists Announced
The annual LGNZ SuperLocal Awards were created to recognise and celebrate excellent performance by local councils in leading their communities and working together.
LGNZ CE Susan Freeman-Greene says that local government plays a huge role in shaping our communities — yet much of its work goes unnoticed or is undervalued.
'The SuperLocal Awards are all about showcasing the incredible outcomes that councils across the country achieve for their communities. Every year, councils go the extra mile to deliver what their communities need and want, and these awards are our chance to celebrate and share those successes,' says Susan Freeman-Greene.
'The SuperLocal awards are a highlight of our LGNZ annual conference, held this year in Christchurch from 16-17 July. These awards showcase the best in leadership, collaboration, innovation, engagement, and environmental sustainability that our councils have to offer.'
This year's awards are spread across the SuperHuman, SuperEngaged, SuperCollab, SuperIdea and SuperSteward categories, with judges including former Mayors Rachel Reese, Kerry Prendergast, Tim Cadogan and Justin Lester among others.
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RNZ News
5 days ago
- RNZ News
Battling apathy over local government
Local body elections are struggling to spark interest in spite of candidate numbers rising. Photo: Marika Khabazi / RNZ It is the most grassroots level of our democracy - the place where potholes get fixed, parks are built, and local voices matter. But this year's local body elections are proving to be a sobering snapshot of just how uninspired and underwhelmed Kiwis feel about their councils. While candidate numbers are up , six one-term mayors are leaving office; some seats are going unchallenged, meaning power is being achieved without even a campaign; and in some cases positions have had no applicants. "It does show a bit of a crisis in local democracy, when these are important roles, we need them, we need people in those roles, we need people to represent the public and make decisions, and we can't get them," says Newsroom Pro managing director Jonathan Milne, who has been covering local body elections extensively. Local Government New Zealand says 3526 candidates will vie for roles across 78 councils. That's actually the highest number seen in New Zealand's past six elections. LGNZ released the figures on Wednesday. "We see the numbers as a strong sign that people are more engaged in this year's local elections in the past," says LGNZ chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene. But that depends on how you look at the numbers. There are 1465 individual elections in total - the exact number of those uncontested has not been confirmed yet but about half a dozen will require by-elections because there are fewer candidates than the number of places. "It's not ideal," says Milne. "You would kind of like a democracy to be hard fought and hard won. You'd like options to be available to voters, and that's not the case." He says the health of local democracy is vital for the country. "I think this election is one of the most important we've seen in a generation for local government. I think it's existential. I think the future of local government, as we know it, is at stake. "Because right now, it's not sustainable, and we need to elect people who can help us navigate through a very difficult three years, six years, nine years to find a new model of governing at a local level, which we all agree is important." This year, 16 mayors across the country have decided not to stand for re-election - six of them first-termers. Two mayors, in Hurunui and Manawatū, will be elected unopposed, but that's down from seven mayors in 2022. Campbell Barry, the outgoing two-term mayor of Lower Hutt and the vice president of Local Government New Zealand, tells The Detail it is a less-than-ideal situation. "I think we need to do a deep dive into this," he says. "I can't recall any situation where we've had that many first-term mayors not stand for a second term. "I think [the reasons for that] would be quite different in each location. I think you look at the experience of [Wellington's] Tory Whanau, who has been quite open about the reason she's not standing again for mayor. "I think it would be worth having a deep dive with them individually to just understand and unpack those reasons and see if we can learn anything from it." Both Barry and Milne agree that postal voting is past its prime and question if it is time to bring back polling booths to boost voter participation. "There are some practical reasons why I think voter turnout is low," Barry tells The Detail . "The postal system that we have. Good luck finding an 18-year-old who receives letters, who's going to then be motivated to work out how to vote in this upcoming election. "And even if you want to vote by post, you then have to find a post box or else the orange bin that the council might put out to be able to put it in. So, I think there are some practical things we can do." The last day for posting votes by mail is 7 October, while election day is 11 October. But LGNZ is hoping the bigger candidate numbers will lift the 40 percent turnout from last time. Both Barry and Milne agree that a boost in pay for candidates would potentially lure more to put their hands up for the next election in three years' time. So, what is the money? A councillor's salary can range from $14,274 in the Chatham Islands to more than $100,000 in Christchurch and Auckland. For a mayor, the salary can range from about $59,000 to more than $300,000 in Auckland. If you're on the Methven Community Board though, the pay is $2995 a year, while in Mataura, it is $2288. And community board members in Auckland hover around the $50,000 mark, even though that is a full time job and you are available round the clock. "No question that [a pay rise] would help," says Barry. Check out how to listen to and follow The Detail here . You can also stay up-to-date by liking us on Facebook
The Spinoff
6 days ago
- The Spinoff
The politics of trust: What the wellbeing era got right (and wrong)
We throw around the phrase 'trust in institutions' like it means the same thing to everyone, but it doesn't. Who trusts, when and why is deeply political, and far from universal, writes Natalia Albert. God, we throw around trust in institutions like confetti. Trust in government, trust in the system, trust between groups, it's everywhere. It shows up in political speeches, policy frameworks, media headlines and academic papers. Last week, while reading a 2022 Treasury paper on social cohesion for my PhD research, I was struck by the language. It was wellbeing all the way down: the indicators, the frameworks, the aspirations. Just a few days later, I found myself at the Local Government New Zealand conference, where the tone couldn't have been more different. The buzz there was about the government removing the four wellbeings from the Local Government Act. In just a few years, wellbeing had gone from centrepiece to scrapheap. So, do people trust government more when it talks about wellbeing, kindness and social cohesion? Or do they feel more confident when the language is stripped back to cost control and going back to basics? Does trust rise and fall with policy frameworks or with political alignment? Do we even notice the difference, or do we only care when we feel left out? It seems we talk about trust in government as if it's a single, collective feeling, like we all either do or don't trust institutions as one big, unified public. But that just doesn't hold. It misses the messiness and nuance of a society as hyper-diverse and politically pluralistic as ours. Trust doesn't live at the national level, it lives in lived experience, and it shifts depending on identity, history, power and whose values are being reflected back through the system. When we talk about 'restoring trust', we often imagine it as a linear project. But what if the problem isn't that trust is broken, it's that we're measuring the wrong thing altogether? Trust is not easy to define or measure Defining and measuring trust in institutions is messy and very political. The OECD's 2023 Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions in New Zealand report found that responsiveness, openness and reliability are the biggest drivers of trust, but that trust looks very different depending on which institution you're talking about. People trust the police the most, the media the least, and local councillors sit somewhere near the bottom, which tracks with the conversations I heard at the conference. The biggest influence on trust isn't ideology, it's experience. Your personal experiences with government, or what's happened to your family or community, are what really shape whether or not you trust the system. Media matters less than you'd think, and abstract values like transparency or fairness only come into play if people actually experience them directly. Political scientists like Eric Uslaner argue that we need to stop lumping all kinds of trust together. He distinguishes between generalised trust (trust in strangers), particularised trust (trust in people like you), and political trust (trust in institutions). Political trust, he says, is the one that fluctuates most, and is most responsive to things like economic performance, political scandals and partisan divides. And then there's the causality problem. Do better-performing public services lead to more trust? Or do people who already trust government just rate services more highly? Academics like Steven Van de Walle and Geert Bouckaert say it's probably both, and that context, perception and political alignment all distort the feedback loop. In other words: if you already think government is useless, you'll probably see even decent services as underwhelming. The rise of 'Wellbeing' as a political project Back in 2017, Jacindamania hit us like a wall of bricks, or rose petals, depending on where you sit politically. That election didn't just usher in a new government; it brought with it a whole new language. 'Kindness' became a political virtue (personally, I never want to hear it again), and 'wellbeing' became the flagship policy concept of the Ardern government. There was the Wellbeing Budget, the Living Standards Framework from Treasury, the Social Cohesion Framework from MSD, and legislative changes like the Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Act 2020. That act introduced a formal requirement for Treasury to regularly assess the state of wellbeing in New Zealand: how it's changing, how sustainable it is and what risks we face. It sits alongside the Long-Term Fiscal Statement and the Investment Statement as part of Treasury's big-picture reporting. Here's how Treasury themselves put it in the introduction to the Te Tai Waiora Wellbeing Report: 'The wellbeing report has the broadest scope of Treasury's strategic assessments. It must describe the state of wellbeing in New Zealand, how it's changed over time, and how sustainable it is. This is supported by a series of detailed background papers that explore indicators and provide introductory analysis on cohesion, sustainability and other key areas.' At the time, you could reasonably say these reforms were about rebuilding public trust in institutions. There was a sense, especially post-GFC and post-neoliberal consensus, that people had lost faith in government's ability to deliver something more than just economic growth. Wellbeing was meant to change that. But trust in institutions… according to who? The tricky thing is this: trust isn't universal, and it's not stable. It moves. It depends on who you are, where you sit politically, and which government is in charge. Right now, the 2025 coalition government is quietly dismantling much of the wellbeing agenda, among other flagship polices from the previous government. The Public Finance (Wellbeing) Amendment Act is on the chopping block. The language of kindness and social cohesion is being swapped out for terms like 'efficiency' and 'core services'. And while some will see this as a loss, a regression, others will feel their trust in institutions increase. That's the key point: trust in institutions isn't something we all experience in the same way. It's a political variable. It shifts every election cycle. One group's 'accountable governance' is another's 'state overreach'. One person's 'meaningful wellbeing agenda' is another's 'woke box-ticking'. And yet, when we talk about trust in policy or the media, we often treat it like it's some kind of fixed, objective measure. But it's not. It's a seesaw. Take what's happening right now between local and central government. There's increasing tension, especially around who's responsible for managing cities, infrastructure and long-term planning. If you ask someone who trusts their council more than parliament, they'll say Wellington is meddling. Ask someone else, and they'll say local government is broken and needs reining in. Same institutions. Different trust profile. And this isn't just theoretical. Look at Stats NZ after the 2018 census – public confidence took a real hit. That kind of damage is hard to undo, especially when it intersects with other trust-fracturing events (like Covid, housing unaffordability or misinformation cycles). So when we say 'trust in institutions', we need to ask: which institutions, which groups and under what conditions? More Reading Media, perception, and the filter bubble effect Let's also talk about media, because that's a huge part of how trust is shaped. If you watch TVNZ believing it's neutral (when many would argue it has a soft centre-left lean), or you follow The Platform or Reality Check Radio thinking they're unbiased (when they very clearly lean libertarian or right-wing), your trust in the wider system will reflect that lens. Media isn't just reporting on trust in institutions, it's creating it. Or undermining it. If you're left-leaning, you probably felt more trust during the Ardern years and found meaning in the wellbeing agenda. If you're more conservative, it might've felt alienating or overly idealistic. Flip it around today, and the right may feel their values are being restored, while the left sees something important being gutted. So again, trust shifts depending on who's in power and how aligned you feel with the institutional tone. I'm not saying we should give up on trying to build trust. But we do need a more realistic and dynamic understanding of what trust actually is – politically, psychologically and socially. It's not static. It's not neutral. It's not equally held by all. We also need to ask: what groups trust institutions? When does that trust shift, and why? What role does media – and media literacy – play in those shifts? Can institutions be designed to be trusted across partisan lines? I don't have all the answers. But I do know we need to stop treating trust like a KPI and start treating it like the complex, shifting thing that it is. Because otherwise, we're just chasing shadows – and wondering why we always feel like we're either winning or losing, up or down, in or out.
RNZ News
01-08-2025
- RNZ News
Councillors tired of being ‘beaten up' and blamed by central government
The South Wairarapa District Council doesn't want to be "the whipping boy" of central government. Photo: LDR / Emily Ireland Councils feel "beaten up" and blamed for problems outside their control as tensions rise between them and central government. South Wairarapa councillor Colin Olds made the remarks after councils were once again in the firing line of central government. In a statement yesterday, Local Government Minister Simon Watts said some households were getting frustrated by unfair rate hikes during the cost-of-living crisis. It followed comments at the recent Local Government NZ (LGNZ) conference, where Watts compared councils to children and suggested that letting them do what they wanted might lead to bad choices. Olds, who attended the conference, told his colleagues and LGNZ representatives that he was disappointed that councils continued to get "beaten up by central government" over things that were out of their control. Councils had defended rising rates as they were dealing with increased infrastructure costs, unfunded mandates, insurance, and inflation. LGNZ chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene said tensions between local and central government were "a challenge", and that councils bore the impact of frequent changes to government policy. "We all know that in opposition, parties are really strong localists and in government they tend to be much greater centralists and much more likely to want to constrain and tell you what to do and tell you how badly you are doing to deflect some of the challenges they are facing," she said. LGNZ chief advisor Ranjani Ponnuchetty said governments of all persuasions "need a natural enemy". "It's extremely unfortunate that we are here now and somehow seem to be that focal point at this point in time. "No matter the government, no one will take the blame. "No government will ever accept responsibility for the consequences of anything." In response to the comments made at the South Wairarapa meeting, Watts said when it came to spending, the government had been clear that councils needed to prioritise the basics - essential services like roading, water, infrastructure, and rubbish. "There are different councils in different positions across the country - some councils have signalled through their annual plans quite significant increases in rates, and others have not. "The bottom line and most important outcome is ensuring ratepayers get value from money for the service that they pay for. "That's also why we're working at pace on a potential rates capping model to save people money. "Cost of living is the number one issue many New Zealanders are facing right now and we're committed to providing relief - I intend to bring options to Cabinet later this year for consideration." Meanwhile, councillor Alistair Plimmer said the only way forward to fix the "mess" was a complete rewrite of the Local Government Act, instead of continuous tweaks that could result in "a dog's breakfast". He said the Local Government Act was not fit-for purpose, and took no account of the realities of small rural councils. He urged LGNZ to take matters into their own hands and do the rewrite themselves to make it "fit for the next century". "If you don't do it, who is going to?" he asked LGNZ representatives at this week's council meeting. "There is no incentive for central government to do this. They like the whipping boy." Freeman-Greene agreed with Plimmer that the Act was "out of date" and "complex". "It's been added to and amended from, and is continuously tweaked," she said. "We need an Act that is fit-for-purpose and future focused and clear. "Ideally, also supported across the house so that we are not flip-flopping between different intents of what your role is." At the recent LGNZ conference, councils passed a remit calling for a review of the current functions and governance arrangements of local government. - LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air
