Local government is hard to defend. Rates are rising at more than three times inflation. Debt has doubled in less than a decade. Consents drag on while housing remains unaffordable.

Each generation of politicians has reached for the same fix for local government’s problems: bigger councils, fewer of them and more decisions made in Wellington. This centralising impulse treats local democracy as a management problem rather than a constitutional asset. The 1989 reorganisation cut local bodies from around 850 to 86. The 2010 Auckland reform put nearly 1.5 million people under a single council and 20 councillors.

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