“Taranaki Central Press” WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1937. LESS LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 362, 17 February 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 1937. LESS LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

The Minister of Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, is now suggesting the abolition of river boards; he has already advocated the abolition of power boards; and he is responsible for legislation which has very substantially reduced the powers of county councils in respect of roading and traffic control. Whether in the event he will be able to abolish local boards as easily as he has abolished central administrative boards is perhaps doubtful, since most governments discover that it is not. politically expedient to make any direct assault on the loca Igovernment system. That does not mean, however, that local government in New Zealand is firmly and securely established. Indeed, it is obvious that over the last 20 years or so there has been a steady- tendency to centralise the functions of government, a tendency which has undergone a rapid acceleration since the Labour party came into power.

It need not be inferred from this that Mr. Semple and his colleagues do not believe in local government and would like to see it done away with completely. it is merely that any government which seeks to make administration more efficient and less costly is faced with the alternatives of a drastic overhaul of local government or the imposition of restrictions on the powers of local bodies. And since the great majority of New Zealand’s many thousands of local body membersand employees present a determined opposition to local government reform, the second and less direct method is habitually employed.

It is impossible, as things arc, to present a convincing case against centralisation. Local bodies operate over such small areas and their staffing is so unsatisfactory that to entrust them with important functions which might be entrusted to State departments is to prefer inefficiency to efficiency. Yet it must be admitted that the destruction of local government in New Zealand is depriving the country of a most valuable clement in its political life.

The English form of democracy grew out of local government and local government is sti 11 one of its essential features. No country in which power is completely concentrated at the centre can be regarded as truly democra tic.

Local government will not be preserved, however, merely because everyone believes it is a good thing. In the long run it must justify itself as an efficient instrument of government; and in New Zealand it is failing signally to do this. It can only be hoped that the encroachments on the authority of local bodies which are now taking place will show them that by opposing reform they are compassing their own doom.