The Governance and Administration Committee has reported back to Parliament following its examination of the Local Government (System Improvements) Amendment Bill. The Bill was introduced in July, with the key objective being to "address cost of living concerns and a perceived lack of fiscal discipline among councils." The changes proposed to the Local Government Act 2002 (LGA) to achieve that objective include:
- Changing the description of the purpose of local government to focus on core services and infrastructure
- Including new requirements to measure and publish information about councils' performance
- Changing transparency and accountability mechanisms
- Providing regulatory relief to councils.
The Committee has recommended a number of changes to the Bill as introduced that will be of interest to councils and other stakeholders.
In particular, the Committee has recommended further changes to emphasise the importance of "core services" and the need for "cost-effective" decisions, further changes to the governance principles in the LGA, and the addition of new requirements relating to codes of conduct and standing orders, and rules relating to members' rights to access documents held by council. Other changes are more technical, aimed at simplification and consistency with other legislation such as the Waste Minimisation Act 2008 and the Local Government (Water Services) Act 2025.
More specifically, the Committee has recommended:
- That the LGA include a new definition for the term "cost-effective", which is used in various places in the LGA (eg, the purpose section)
- Clause 7 (the proposed new section 11A) is amended to state upfront the requirement that councils have "particular regard" to core services when performing their roles – these are network infrastructure, public transport services, waste management and minimisation, civil defence emergency management, and libraries, museums, reserves and other community and recreation facilities
- Clause 10 is amended to place greater emphasis on the role of all of the elected council members collaboratively setting and implementing the council's policy agenda. Specifically, it amends the governance principles in section 39 of the LGA to provide that council should "foster the responsibility of its elected members to work collaboratively to set and deliver the local authority's policy agenda, determine its policies and budgets, and make decisions on behalf of its communities." The reference to elected members being responsible for delivery is new – the Committee states that "while the mayor takes the lead when undertaking any piece of work, councillors also fully engage in the process of determining a policy programme and the implementation of a programme or project"
- Clause 25 is amended to make further changes to elected members' rights to access documents held by the council. The Bill as introduced included new provisions that give members the right to request access to documents held by the council, provided those documents are reasonably necessary to enable the member to effectively perform their duties. Those provisions have been further amended to give members the right to request documents from the council's governing body (ie, all elected members), if a request for the documents is declined by the chief executive.
We are still digesting these changes, and will provide a further update on some of the Committee's recommendations in due course. For more information about the Bill, see our July update "Changes to the Local Government Act incoming" from when the Bill was introduced.
Co-authored by Hugo Schwarz (Solicitor).
