Extract

Government reforms: ensuring good intentions become good practice

• The country has gone into COVID-19 Alert Level 4 lockdown again, which completely changes the way we live our lives. And even though lockdown is a massive interruption, all the normal functions of government are still at work.
• There are currently two major central government policies that directly impact local government.
• The National Policy Statement on Urban Development (NPS-UD) and the Three Waters Reform propose two massive changes to the way local governments operate.
• The impact from these reforms is going to be in the billions of dollars and across multiple generations. Therefore, it’s absolutely necessary we get this right
• While it is still somewhat early days, both central and local government are working hard to determine how the proposed reforms will work in practice and what the costs and benefits are likely to be. ...

August 2021