Speech by Hon Rodney Hide to Sister Cities New Zealand 2010 Annual Conference, Otago Museum, Hutton Theatre, 419 Great King St, Dunedin, Thursday 15 April 2010

Thank you for the invitation to address the 2010 National Sister Cities Conference.

I wish to extend a warm welcome to all Sister City delegates, especially those of you who have travelled from overseas and have taken this opportunity to share your international experiences as participants at this conference.

I trust your time here will be both rewarding to you as individuals and to the communities you serve. I am sure that New Zealand delegates will appreciate the opportunity that your attendance at this conference affords them in enhancing international relationships between local communities.

I hope you will take back to your home countries some new ideas and initiatives from your New Zealand Sister City partners.

When Dwight D Eisenhower launched the twinned cities concept in his People to People programme in 1956 - which became the sister cities movement in 1974 - he said:

"The purpose of the sister cities programme is to increase international understanding and foster world peace by furthering international communication and exchange at the person-to-person level through city-to-city affiliations."

This tenet of Sister Cities as fostering relationships to reduce the likelihood of conflict and polarisation among nations remains. However the relationships have also now evolved to include fostering trade, tourism, educational exchanges, cultural understanding, the arts and sports, and research and technology.

The range of topics covered by this year's conference acknowledges the broad role that Sister City bonds can play. The bonds formed here, and through the sister city relationships, not only help to strengthen the social, cultural and economic links between local communities, but also contribute to the enhancement of national and global partnerships.

Sister City exchanges offer an opportunity for communities to share their histories and cultures, and to offer proudly to other communities an insight into their way of life.

Sister city events and activities are particularly important for our youth. School and sports exchanges, and the opportunity to participate in national conferences and forums, help to broaden the outlook of our future leaders and citizens.

I am pleased to see that many of our councils and organisations in New Zealand are acknowledging the importance of Sister City activities to youth, and are taking a lead role in building Sister City relationships based on youth activities.

These include the International Christchurch Youth organisation which is dedicated to promoting and upholding the ideals of the Sister City movement among youth in Christchurch, the Hastings City Council with the Secondary Schools Ultimate Challenge, which encouraged the young people of Hastings to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the Council's Sister City relationship with Guilin in China, and the Raranga Taioha (Youth weaving for the future) - the first New Zealand-Japan Youth Forum, held in Rotorua in 2006.

New Zealand local authorities have over 150 sister cities throughout the world. The relationship that Dunedin City has with Shanghai is one such example that exemplifies the strong bonds that exist between two cities and two cultures. This relationship sowed the seed, so to speak, for the establishment of the Dunedin Chinese Garden.

The garden is a fitting, permanent, recognition of the Chinese people who first came to Otago during the 1860s gold rush and stayed to establish some of the city's businesses.

I am sure the delegates who will tour the garden during the conference, will recognise the gardens' historical significance, which is shared by two cultures in honouring the past, celebrating the present, and providing a shared pathway between two cultures and two cities for the future.

Dunedin is privileged, as the garden is the only authentic Chinese Garden in New Zealand. It is the first in the Southern Hemisphere and one of only a handful outside of China. I commend the Dunedin Chinese Garden Trust and all those involved that have provided a lasting footprint of Chinese identity and culture here in Dunedin.

I want to summarise now how I see the role of local government reform fitting into the broader objectives of this Government.

The primary objective of the Government's economic policy is to lift the living standards of New Zealanders by lifting the productivity growth rate in New Zealand. The performance of local government is crucial to that effort.

In my role as Minister for Local Government, I am taking action to improve transparency, accountability and financial management in local government, all of which I believe are essential to improving the performance of local government.

I started my work on improving the transparency, accountability and financial management of local government because it very quickly became clear to me, from letters I received and the public meetings I attended, that very many ratepayers are concerned about increasing rates, and many are struggling to pay these increases. Households and businesses are struggling with complex and costly consent processes. These concerns are well founded.

The trends underway, as revealed by aggregated long-term council community plans (LTCCPs), show that the cumulative increase in rates per head expected over the next 10 years is 49 per cent, and public debt for the sector is forecast to increase by 97 per cent and interest expenses by 91 per cent. And of course it is ratepayers who are expected to pay for most of the increases.

I decided that the necessary changes are most easily achieved by improving certain aspects of the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA). Cabinet has made decisions to review aspects of the LGA and this work has three underlying principles:

• local government should operate within a defined fiscal envelope;
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• councils should focus on core activities; and
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• council decision-making should be clear, transparent and accountable.
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This work will help ratepayers and residents to understand council costs, rates and activities a whole lot better so they can exert greater influence and control during planning and decision-making.

The proposals will focus on long-term council community plans being simpler and more strategic in focus, financial disclosures will be in plain English, and councils will have more flexibility in choosing effective and efficient delivery methods for water services.

Council reporting will be consistent so that residents and ratepayers will be able to make comparisons between different councils.

I also believe councils' consultation processes are unnecessarily onerous and complex. Worst of all, they are largely meaningless to the average ratepayer.

Essentially these proposals will allow for greater flexibility for councils in responding to community needs and clearer information for the public by integrating community outcomes into strategic planning.

I am proposing that, as from 2013, every council will produce pre-election financial reports to allow voters to make better informed choices. These will compile existing information, giving an account of activities over the previous three years, and identify proposed items of expenditure for the next three years.

This will result in better informed local debate about expenditure priorities, and allow electors to put the hard questions to candidates about past and proposed expenditure.

These changes will be provided for in a Bill, which I plan to introduce this year. There will, of course be a chance for public input through the Select Committee process, and I hope you will make your views known when that process begins.

Increased transparency does put more pressure on politicians, whether at local or central government. But the ratepayers and the taxpayers deserve to know what is being done in their name, as they are funding it.

In the past we have increased transparency in central government with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, which greatly improved the conduct of fiscal policy in New Zealand. We did the same in monetary policy with the Reserve Bank Act, which is what underpins our sustained low inflation rate.

I am pushing hard to get support for a Regulatory Responsibility Bill, which would provide the transparency to regulatory processes which is necessary to improve the quality of regulation in New Zealand.

And thus in local government I am working on improving transparency, accountability and financial management as well.

I believe that these initiatives will make our local authorities stronger and more robust, by being more accountable to ratepayers.

Our reforms of Auckland governance are based on the view that effective region-wide decision making needs region-wide governance arrangements. This is how we will overcome the competing interests, parochialism and factionalism that have hampered decision making in Auckland for so long.

We intend to provide a better environment for Auckland citizens and businesses to interact with their local authority. Strengthening Auckland's governance will, in turn, make it a better place for businesses to operate in.

In closing, I commend the practical relationships your communities share with your overseas counterparts. As Minister of Local Government, I support the work done by the national Sister Cities body and its members.

I would like to acknowledge the hard work that Sister Cities New Zealand Inc - and its members - do on our behalf, and the contribution that it makes to New Zealand.

I would also like to acknowledge the other avenues by which communities share their cultural, social and economic experiences, such as the Centre for Local Authority International Relations (CLAIR). Involving partnerships with Australia, Japan and New Zealand, CLAIR is a great supporter of the Sister Cities Programme and undertakes tremendous work to promote information sharing and an understanding of different cultures and local government systems.

I would like to thank all our city and district councils which promote the many Sister City relationships New Zealand has.

Thank you once again to our international participants for your commitment to good relationships with New Zealand.

I wish you all a memorable and productive conference for Sister Cities New Zealand here in Dunedin.

ENDS

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