Let’s start with a simple premise. How would the entire region benefit from a merger of all Otago’s councils?

This is in effect what the Government’s amalgamation plans could allow us to do. Wouldn’t it be good to become economically stronger as a region?

Initially some of us felt that combining with Waitaki only was a workable option. But by looking at the region-wide picture there are much bigger opportunities, savings and efficiencies to be had.

These include lowering costs to run councils, keeping rate increases at or below CPI, maximising and better

co-ordinating the use of our regional assets, like Port Otago, roads, rail and airports, with the main winner being economic development.

Being able to govern and advocate at regional scale yields unprecedented opportunities for Otago (and potentially Southland with us) to improve the economic stability and wellbeing of our region — rather than simply sit by and watch others prosper.

In summary, working as a region, not within individual council silos that compete, has distinct advantages for Otago.

The challenge is to achieve all this without losing local community voice.

The obvious benefits include:

Lower cost structures and efficiencies for local government. The Mayoral forum has commissioned a report that says we can achieve up to a 7% cost saving by region-wide amalgamation. But this assumed there were no savings for Dunedin which we do not accept.

The report even indicated that Dunedin had a higher cost structure relative to others, and assumed that Dunedin was more ``complex’’ than others. We reject that assumption.

As just one example Dunedin has 1082 employees and similar-sized Palmerston North City Council has 690 and the smaller, unitary authority (combing regional and district council functions) of Nelson City Council has around 360.

Benefits of bigger scale. One example could be the extra purchasing power by creating a single entity to manage all the region’s waste, making us price takers not price makers.

There could be centralisation of key services such as corporate, marketing and communications, engineering, IT and customer services, and a reduction in the need for council building space. A detailed study would identify numerous savings.

Economic development. More collaborative planning, water services, roading infrastructure and public transport links would lead to better use of land for residential, business and industry alike.

One example is tourism, which contributed $379 million to Dunedin’s economy in 2024. We could grow that figure dramatically by using Dunedin airport much more effectively.

At present there is one international fight to the Gold Coast. With Queenstown’s huge tourism rebound from Covid it will soon return to 2019 levels where the airport was absolutely at capacity.

The proposed regional council can then provide incentives to have flights directed to Dunedin and for a regional air operator to provide a service from Dunedin to Queenstown which could potentially bring overnight stops to both centres instead of Christchurch.

The airports under one entity means we can offer incentives to airlines that benefit our combined tourist economy.

The overland route from Christchurch to Queenstown is literally at capacity for five months of the year and we can develop an alternative coastal route; also reintroduction of the coastal Otago train journey, potentially utilising Dunedin Railways, as a premium experience much like the Tranz Alpine.

There are hard questions to answer around retaining local voice and how we deal with rating differentials, plus current and future debt. We and LGNZ believe a solution is to ring fence historic costs and rating differentials to within existing boundaries.

To ensure local voice is retained, we could follow Auckland’s example with community boards for each area with a much higher level of autonomy and budgets than current community boards.

There is an obvious question — why hasn’t our council consulted with communities on this huge decision? We are more than 80 days into a 90 day period and as a council we have been kept out of the issue while a self appointed Otago mayoral forumpontificate and try to horse trade boundaries and communities, with minimal consultation.

We can only speak for ourselves and we apologise for this outrageous overreach. We are incredulous that our mayor has annnounced that she supports the Otago Mayors’ letter to government saying they will not participate in the head start process without consulting her council.

There has been no leadership shown on this issue, and if there was ever a time for leadership it is now, on this critical issue that will determine the future of Otago.

Unfortunately what we also have at present is a majority on council who also prefer to ignore the head start process and want go it alone, but assume the functions of the regional council.

But as we know, turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.

The status quo is not in the best interests of Dunedin, its ratepayers, or the region.

We can all see it’s not working.It is also in complete opposition to the current government’s direction and also Labour, which has not indicated opposition to the government’s plans.

The time has come for change.

Russell Lund and Jo Galer are Dunedin City councillors.