What does Rangitikei know that Wanganui doesn't?

Plans to reduce councillor numbers and merge wards to allow Bob "The Basher" Buchanan to exercise a Mickey-like command of neighbouring Rangitikei have met with resounding opposition from local residents, who all seem to have woken up to the fact that not only will it reduce the level of representation they receive, but that it won't in fact save them so much as a single cent.

But aside from a querellous column from Randhir Dhaya and a few mutterings from Don McGregor, it seems Wanganui's councillors are getting their rubber stamps ready to once again endorse a Mayoral brainwave, allowing themselves to be bullied against acting according to their own conscience (which is, after all, what they were elected to exercise) by raucous insistence that this is "the will of the people" - overlooking the fact that said people were hoodwinked by being led to believe they were voting to cut expenditure.

Perhaps our elected representatives might care to ponder Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC) who wrote in Politics that:

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

In other words, the more people who participate in government, the better it is likely to be. But then that's just Aristotle... we have the word of Michael Laws, self-styled star of "good TV".

Meanwhile commenters debating the role of Councils in health might find a useful perspective presented in Core Business in Local Authorities: Three case studies by Graham B Sewell. That study concludes that while Council are charged with public health - sewerage, water and the like - their role in provision of medical-type health is usually limited purely to advocacy. Unless they take a decision to invest in establishing or improving local health facilities.

It's rare that they do so, but the relatively tiny Hurunui District Council evidently decided to do exactly that:

Paddy Clifford (General Manager) advised, "... we take up advocacy on all sorts of things, not least of which was our CHE’s thinking of pulling out of the medical facility in Cheviot. We got really involved in that and coincidently perhaps the government at the time (about 15 months ago) introduced a community funding scheme so that some urban health demands could be transferred to community trusts or in this case Council on suspensory loan."

The HDC Strategic Plan, under the heading 'Community Health', included the goal, "To encourage the provision of health services to meet the needs of District residents." The desired outcome was "Adequate provision of health services in the District."

The HDC and the local authorities which preceded the 1989 amalgamation have been involved with the provision of local community medical centres and attracting doctors to practice in them. Mayor Chaffey noted that in his recollection no one had ever raised the issue of whether the Council should be involved in this way with health services to the community.

Mayor Chaffey advised, "Local government here has been involved with the provision of health services since the 1930’s. It is nothing unusual to this district. It might be unusual for New Zealand but not to us. It is done for the same reason now as it was back then, because of the scarcity of rural doctors and the difficulties of retaining them."

In other words, Hurunui saw a problem and took action to address it. They didn't just write a column and pass onto to the next issue du jour. So, we'll ask here what we've already asked in comments, without receiving a coherent response from the Mayor or his supporters: Does the latest headline-grabbing statement on Wanganui's struggling health services signal Michael Laws' intention to stop squandering on swimming pools and begin investing in health? Or was it merely hollow grandstanding?

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