Angry councillors blast mayors

Angry Environment Canterbury (ECan) councillors are accusing Canterbury's mayors of trying to break up the region.

The future of the embattled council is in the balance after last week's Creech Report recommended councillors be sacked and replaced with a commission.

Councillors emerged circumspect from talks with Environment Minister Nick Smith and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide on Wednesday.

However, the full council meeting yesterday erupted with accusations the region's mayors wanted to do away with the regional council and replace it with unitary authorities, similar to Auckland's supercity.

The inquiry into ECan's performance, led by former National deputy prime minister Wyatt Creech, was prompted by a letter of complaint from Canterbury's 10 mayors to Hide.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker, who is chairman of the Canterbury Mayoral Forum, gave conditional endorsement to the unitary authority idea yesterday.

"It [the mayors' letter] was not about pushing unitary authorities; it was about putting concerns around the performance of a major provincial institution into the public arena."

At yesterday's meeting Cr Jo Kane said territorial authorities were "putting the borax in" and the mayors "haven't done the decent thing".

"We do our dirty laundry right here in this room – they didn't," she said. "We need to go on the front foot and ask them, `What is it you want?'."

Kane demanded ECan chairman Alec Neill stop meeting mayors individually and get them to front up at their next meeting with the reason for their anti-ECan campaign.

"If it's unitary, let's go down that road – let's see what the wider community wants, not just one sector, not just the mayors, but our community."

Neill said he raised concerns about the reaction of Canterbury's mayors to the Creech Report during Monday's mayoral forum, but was asked no questions and could not get eye contact with any mayor.

Neill rejected a suggestion ECan should abandon the mayoral forum, saying strong links with mayors were "essential".

Cr Jane Demeter said councillors were willing to fight for their jobs, and sacking councillors would "undermine democracy".

Cr Bob Kirk said appointing a commission would mean more than 500,000 South Islanders would not have a say on water management in their region.

"I'm astonished that the people in Canterbury are not outraged by the idea."

Former chairman Sir Kerry Burke said the mayors' agenda was to break up the region into unitary authorities, adding: "It needs to be a fight in public, not privately thought."

However, Cr Pat Harrow said councillors should be sacked in favour of a commission.

"We need action on storage and irrigation schemes," he said.

"Maybe it's a golden opportunity to look at a unitary authority – one based in Christchurch and one based in Timaru."

Neill accused Parker of managing the media response to the Creech Report by sending the region's mayors an email last Friday stating what they "could and couldn't" say to the media.

Parker said he sent suggestions so the mayors could "speak with one voice" on the "sensitive" issues, but each mayor finally determined what they would say.

- © Fairfax NZ News