The Institute for Governance and Policy Studies, in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington’s Health and Wellbeing distinctiveness theme steering group, hosted a symposium on ‘The Four Wellbeings for Local Government’ on 26 February 2019. The symposium heard brief presentations from eight invitees from local government, central government, the private sector and NGOs: Justin Lester, Lyn Patterson, Karen Thomas, Peter McKinlay, Wayne Mulligan, Meg Williams, Danielle Shanahan and Suzy Morrissey. Inspired by these addresses and by the ensuing discussion, this article considers what the reintroduction of the ‘four well-beings’ into the Local Government Act might mean for local decision making.

This article explores the emergence of localism as a key concept in local governance. It distinguishes between devolution, subsidiarity and localism, and examines how current policy development in New Zealand still reflects a very top-down understanding of governance. It then argues that local government has all the powers required to put in place a radical practice of localism and explains how.

A Focus on the How not the Who: localism in Aotearoa through a community-led lens. Emerging localism discussions in Aotearoa must look further than a structured devolution of roles and responsibilities from central to local government. New operating models are needed that build from local wisdom and leadership to actively involve and empower local communities and iwi/Mäori as genuine partners in decision- and solution-making for their places. Taking a ‘learning by doing’ focus to incentivise and support local stakeholders to better work together is essential. Future localist success will require greater power sharing and concerted trust building at all levels.

Localism is widely supported as an antidote to what are seen as the adverse impacts of globalisation and one-size-fits-all, top-down central government. But interpretations of localism and views on how it should be practised vary greatly. This presents particular challenges for local government, which typically sees itself as the rightful beneficiary of a localism agenda focused on devolution and decentralisation, but must then confront difficult questions about its own institutional frameworks, its revenue base, and sharing power with local communities. While local government in New Zealand is exploring these issues through a national Localism project, its counterparts in Australia seem ill-prepared to follow suit.

The received view of state development in New Zealand is that the abolition of the ‘provincial system’ in 1876 set in motion the inexorable rise of centralised authority. The counter thesis presented in this article argues that until about 1940 central  politicians, irrespective of party, were consistently engaged in empowering rather than diminishing local government. There was ultimate respect for the idea of local self-government; therefore, in colonial society, of local control of local development. This independence weakened only as technological change rendered ‘small’ local government increasingly inefficient and unable to meet new challenges and opportunities, particularly with respect to highways, housing and welfare.