First-time minister Kieran McAnulty has picked up most of the local government workload, minus the title. He spoke to political editor Jo Moir while on the road in Southland as he makes his way around 55 rural councils in the coming months.
So far, Labour’s Wairarapa MP and newly minted minister Kieran McAnulty has visited seven rural councils and by the end of the week he will have tripled that number.
It’s something not many ministers have done, in fact for some of the smaller rural councils it’s the first time they’ve seen a local government minister in the flesh on their turf.
The Associate Minister for Local Government and Transport (regional) and Minister for Emergency Management and Racing is on a mission to visit all 55 rural local authorities by the end of September, ahead of the local government elections in October.
McAnulty says he’s taking a different approach to the local government portfolio and rather than engaging through the rural provincial sector groups within Local Government NZ, he’s kicking off by visiting each one and meeting face-to-face.
In the future he expects he will use the sector groups to communicate with councils but because he’s never been a minister, he said it was important for him to understand the issues on the ground.
“It’s the fact that this is a unique set of circumstances for me, coming in partway through the second term of this government, with a large delegation within local government, but also that combination of regional transport and emergency management.
“I just thought it was the best way to go about it, was to go and visit them face-to-face,’’ McAnulty told Newsroom.
Three Waters reforms don’t come under McAnulty’s delegations – that is one of the main components of the local government delegations that Minister Nanaia Mahuta has held onto – but inevitably McAnulty gets asked about it.
He says it’s not in his portfolio “technically’’ but he’s happy to listen to concerns.
“It has come up but equally there’s been councils where it hasn’t come up at all. Councils in the Bay of Plenty, for example, one of them talked about transport the whole time, the other talked about emergency management the whole time.
“I think that just reflects the nature of their district,’’ McAnulty says.
When it comes to Three Waters, he says it’s not his job to sell the policy to councils, but he’ll answer any question put to him.
“I make it really clear from the start that it’s in their hands what they want to talk about and how they want to run it.
“But it wouldn’t be a sincere attempt to get an understanding of the issues facing rural councils if I was going down there with a preconceived intention of selling one particular policy.’’
McAnulty says he’s upfront about his views if asked though, and that he fully supports the "absolutely necessary" reforms.
“Even those councils that have been very public in their opposition to Three Waters have said they recognise reform is necessary.
“The reality is there is only two options on the table, there’s what the Government is proposing, and the Opposition has said they’ll repeal and reverse, there’s no alternative, it’s just the status quo.’’
“I’ve been very clear that I love racing and I’m a passionate supporter of it, but they have to maintain the highest level of animal welfare and that’s the challenge in front of greyhound racing.'' – Kieran McAnulty
McAnulty says he expects to have robust meetings over the coming weeks and months but that doesn’t mean there won’t be takeaways.
“From my experience as an electorate MP, even when you meet with a constituent who fundamentally has different views to you on a topic, there’s always something you can take away.’’
He says the meetings he’s had so far have not been “hostile’’ in any way.
“It’s definitely not been that tense; I’ve found it to be really constructive.
“One of the council’s, the mayor took part in a protest the week before I turned up, and they made it very clear they weren’t supportive of Three Waters. But I felt very welcomed, and we had a really engaging conversation and lots of laughs.’’
Preparing for severe weather
McAnulty says the crossover of emergency management and transport means he can often deal with all his portfolios in one meeting.
One issue he’s looking into is the structures that exist for helping rural councils deal with severe weather events.
“We’ve got one example of this in my electorate at the moment where a community has been severely impacted by a natural weather event but it doesn’t meet the threshold for government funding unless there’s an application from the council for emergency assistance.
“This has come up a bit and I’m keen to dive into whether the current structure is fit for purpose or whether there’s some wriggle room there, because this stuff isn’t going away, it will happen more and more,’’ he says.
One thing in the emergency management portfolio that surprised him was in his first week in the job he was charged with opening the new 24/7 monitoring centre in Wellington.
“It’s quite extraordinary to think that an agency that is so well respected like Civil Defence and has served New Zealand so well, has up until now relied on a small group of staff being on call while they slept at home and not had a 24/7 monitoring centre.
“It’s quite extraordinary,’’ he told Newsroom.
After being made Labour Party whip on day two of arriving at Parliament in 2017, he’s spent the last four years thinking about his job through that lens.
“The one thing that took me a wee while to get my head around is that I’m not a whip anymore, and I have to think about the job as a minister. I’ve got there now but that took a day or two,’’ he laughs.
Ministerial work also takes him away from his electorate and he says it’s an adjustment not being on the ground in Wairarapa as much as he’d like to be and having to balance his time there with the ministerial workload.
When the Prime Minister called him and asked him to go to her office last month, he assumed it was related to his chief whip role, which regularly involves chats with the boss.
“Then she sprung this big boy on me, and I was like, crikey, okay, here we go,’’ he said.
Success for McAnulty by the end of this term will be setting up emergency management to succeed for the next 30 years and not become a political football in the process.
He also has a big job ahead in six months’ time reviewing the work the greyhound industry has done to meet new animal welfare expectations.
McAnulty’s own dog is a rescued greyhound, and he says the industry is “on notice’’.
“They’ve got six months to demonstrate they’ve made significant changes to the industry so they can maintain their social licence.
“If they don’t meet that challenge then they may well force my hand and I may have to propose to Cabinet that they consider a ban, but I don’t want to pre-empt that.’’
That would be an interesting position for the former TAB bookie to find himself in.
“I’ve been very clear that I love racing and I’m a passionate supporter of it, but they have to maintain the highest level of animal welfare and that’s the challenge in front of greyhound racing,’’ he says.
