By the time this is published, councils around New Zealand will have put in a Head Start proposal for amalgamation — or not. An instant flurry of activity followed the government’s announcement in May, that councils had three months to decide whether to put in their own proposals for amalgamation. The alternative? Waiting for the government to decide for us. In what has been likened to speed-dating, or a country hall dance, there was an immediate rush by councils to look at options for partners, and a flurry of “will they or won’t they” speculation. But that energy seemed to die away pretty quickly, as everyone found that potential partners were sisters or cousins — and they already knew every flaw in their makeup. Too much debt, future infrastructure costs, old grudges, too rural, too urban, too familiar, too hard. The initial energy began to drain away, and what had looked like the worst possible alternative — the government deciding — began to look like a more appealing option. (At least they would get the blame.) There also appeared the strange phenomena of wallflower councils, usually cities and large towns, snubbed by the rural councils that surround them. I cannot help but think that it was all being overthought. The government made it clear from the outset that it had a preference for single unitary authorities made up of all the councils in a region, with some leeway where an area was too large or too complex to fit that model. It seems very likely that the backstop is likely to cookie-cut exactly that design in 2029: so that might have been a logical starting place as councils looked at their options for Head Start, rather than trying every other potential dance partner first. In Southland we seemed to fall into that same trap. As I write this, it remains to be seen whether we can pull together to propose a Head Start amalgamation model at the last minute. When I look at the map, and consider our history, our population size, and the mutual dependency of our communities, it seems obvious to me that a single unitary authority for Southland is the glaringly obvious answer. Perhaps the most glaringly obvious in all of New Zealand. The single issue preventing that is the proposition that rural and urban folk are so different that they cannot work together. That despite 170 years of evidence that they have done, can do, and will inevitably have to continue to do into the future, given our geography. It may be that by the time you read this we will have actually put in a Head Start application. But if we haven’t, the ultimate destination of a single unitary authority is almost inevitable for Southland given what the government has already said. However, the Head Start path will be faster and smoother, and we will have been masters of our own destiny if we decide now, rather than leaving it to the cookie cutters in 2029.
