Presentation to Local Government Commission (LGC)

Presentation to Local Government Commission (LGC) on Tuesday 16 December 2025 by Environment Southland Chair Jeremy McPhail.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our thoughts with you this morning.

When we talk about the challenges of our current local government structure - both for Environment Southland and for our wider community - we think it’s important to begin by looking at how we got to our current situation.

The foundations of regional collaboration

The structure we work within today was put in place in 1989, when local government was reformed across the country. That reform established the four councils we still have in Southland. By the early 2000s, those councils were well established, and there was a strong appetite to work together to get the best value for our communities.

A shared services joint committee was set up in 2000 to look across the region at what each council was delivering and whether any of those functions could be managed more effectively together.

A strong era of shared services

The results were significant. A shared services report from 2014 notes more than 50 collaborative projects completed between 2000 and 2014, highlighting just how committed Southland has always been to collective problem-solving.

Some of the projects highlighted in the 2014 report as most successful were:

• Establishment of WasteNet Southland, our regional landfill and consolidated solid waste services
• Emergency Management Southland
• Venture Southland, our regional development agency, which later evolved into Great South

Why collaboration has slowed

Over the last decade, collaboration has slowed. That’s not because people are less willing, but because many of the easy wins have already been done.

Southland was ahead of the rest of the country in the 2000s. By 2014, most of the logical, high-value shared services were already in place.

Since then, our strategic priorities have diverged.

Different pressures across councils

For Environment Southland, this has meant dealing with repeated waves of national policy changes - from the NPS-FM in 2017 and its 2020 update, through to the introduction and then rapid repeal of the Spatial Planning Act and the Natural and Built Environment Act.

These changes required significant focus and resources. On top of that, during the Covid years we lost around $2.8 million a year in cruise ship income.

Meanwhile, our territorial authorities have been dealing with their own shifting pressures, particularly the challenges associated with three waters reforms.

In practice, this has meant councils have been pulled in different directions by forces largely outside our control. Each of us has been responding to our own legislative demands and financial constraints, making it harder to align timing, funding and priorities across the region.

Where challenges are emerging

While many shared services have continued to deliver well at an operational level, challenges have emerged at a governance level, particularly where there are geographical differences between areas of need and the areas generating the funding.

Capability constraints

We are also facing increasing difficulty attracting the specialised expertise needed to manage today’s environmental and regulatory challenges, particularly in key fields such as corporate services and policy and planning.

What this means for the wider community

For ratepayers, the current structure can be confusing. People often struggle to understand who is responsible for what and can become frustrated by receiving multiple rates bills.

For iwi partners, industry and landowners, dealing with multiple councils can add unnecessary time, cost and complexity.

Engagement fatigue is also very real. The same people are often asked for input multiple times by different organisations, which can reduce participation and trust over time.

Communities can also feel the impact of limited specialist capacity, with some local government processes taking longer than they reasonably should as a result.

Behind the scenes, having multiple organisations means multiple senior management teams, back-office functions, systems, buildings and rating frameworks.

Taken together, it’s clear the structure put in place in 1989 is now being asked to carry challenges it was never designed for. With a population of around 104,000 people, our current local government arrangements are more complex than they need to be.

Opportunities looking ahead

With this context in mind, there are also clear opportunities moving forward.

For Environment Southland, a more integrated structure could deliver several benefits.

Stronger technical capacity
Pooling specialist expertise, particularly in areas such as corporate services and policy and planning, could reduce duplication, stabilise workloads and make better use of scarce skills across the region.

Clearer and faster decision-making
Fewer layers of governance and more consistent strategic direction could support more timely and coordinated decision-making, helping councils work more effectively towards the outcomes communities expect.

Improved natural hazard and climate response
Natural hazards and a changing climate are placing increasing pressure on councils and communities. While current arrangements, such as the Regional Climate Change Working Group, aim to coordinate efforts, a more integrated local government structure would allow planning and investment to occur at the right scale and with greater alignment.

Better balance between growth and environmental stewardship
Looking ahead, one of the key opportunities, and challenges, will be balancing future economic growth with the need to protect and restore our environment.

Southland is an agricultural powerhouse, producing around 14% of New Zealand’s agricultural exports with just 2% of the population. However, Environment Southland’s work in recent years has highlighted a significant gap between the current state of our freshwater and estuaries and the aspirations communities hold for them.

Future growth will require careful navigation and an appropriate regulatory framework. It is critical that any future structure maintains a strong environmental focus alongside economic development, rather than prioritising one at the expense of the other.

So, what could this mean for our wider community?

A more coherent structure could offer significant benefits to Southlanders.

It could provide clearer, more consistent services.
People would know who to talk to, what processes to follow, and what to expect—reducing confusion and duplication.

This goes hand-in-hand with more efficient use of ratepayer funding.
Better alignment across councils could reduce duplicated work, lower overheads, and direct more funding to frontline services and infrastructure.

There is the opportunity for us to benefit from stronger regional advocacy.
A unified voice for Southland would carry more weight with central government and national agencies, ensuring our unique needs are heard early and often, especially on issues like freshwater, climate resilience and infrastructure investment.

And this means faster progress on big, cross-boundary issues.
Freshwater quality, coastal hazards, natural hazards, transport corridors and regional economic development all cross district lines. A structure that allows for joined-up planning and delivery would move these issues forward more efficiently.

Finally, better support for iwi and community partners.
Reducing the number of engagement processes and decision points would allow our partners to spend more time working on solutions, and less time navigating the system.
Southland has a proud history of working together and we look forward to progressing this investigation to find a structure that sets us up for the decades to come, just as the 1989 reforms served us so well in the past.