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National laws and their impact
Councils do not act solely on the basis of Parliament’s periodic decisions to review local government legislation. Councils have to act on the basis of many laws. As well as the dominant Local Government Act 2002, and the Resource Management Act, councils have to observe many other laws created perhaps for them, and perhaps for some other purpose. There is electoral law, and rating law. There are laws related to the conduct of meetings, to the use of official information, and to the conduct of directors of council-controlled organisations.
There are judgements to be made by directors and management about the relative significance to them of laws related to local government, to directors, to companies and trusts, and perhaps to ports and other infrastructure assets in which councils have investments.
Knowledge about such laws is freely found in websites such as the Parliamentary Counsel’s www.legislation.govt.nz, and at a cost from lawyers. Citizens occasionally find the need to resort to the law to protect and advance their rights, and to seek a legal interpretation or a court ruling on what the law in question might mean, and perhaps how one law conflicts with another.
For New Zealand residents interested in the impact of national law on local government, a history of the first 150 years of New Zealand’s Parliament, The House, provides the backdrop of reference. National laws substantially spring from Parliament, so when councils and citizens want to understand issues from changing the building code to legalising prostitution, they need to understand how Parliament has worked over time, and might work in the future.
When citizens read The House, they are better equipped to understand those specialists who take the will of Parliament, and work to interpret or implement it. The book reminds that laws are made by men and women on the basis of a mix of political preference and pragmatism, topic by topic, from time to time. The cumulative impact is what shapes the environment in which citizens, and councils given delegated authority by Parliament, live. This pattern of law making, interpreted in various ways by the judiciary from time to time, produces results that are not always tidy and consistent.
The House was published by Dunmore Press in association with Parliamentary Service, Office of the Clerk and The History Group, Ministry for Culture and Heritage.