As part of the Morning Show's coverage of the 2022 Local Elections, Aaron will be interviewing candidates standing for positions on the Raglan Community Board as well as the Waikato District and Regional Councils. Below is a transcript of Aaron's interview with Aksel Bech.
“Community -led is really important. The next thing that goes with it is some powers. Community boards …. can actually be formally delegated powers and that's what I'm trying to work through now,” he said.
(Listen to the full interview below:)
Aaron: I've got Deputy Mayor Aksel Bech back in the studio. Morning Aksel.
Aksel Bech: Good morning. How are you?
Aaron: Doing good and you're running for mayor. Why would you do a thing like that?
Aksel Bech: Yeah, you'd have to be, I don't know, have some sort of a small head injury or something.
Aaron: [laughs]
Aksel Bech: I guess it’s a particularly difficult time. There's lots of changes, quite complex times and with a built-in apologist role for the government it seems at the minute. I guess ultimately, we think about communities, we think about the difference that we can make at any one time. It takes lots of people to put their shoulder to the wheel and I guess I feel like I'm in a position right now where it's my turn to step up.
Aaron: Was it a hard decision, a complicated one? I'm slightly out of touch, but I thought I heard you were running, then you weren't running, then you were running. That might have just been rumors. But was it a hard decision to make in that way? Was there a lot to think about, because it affects your life quite heavily?
Aksel Bech: Yes, and it's a decision for the whole family. I've got a couple of teenage kids at home still, one at uni, and my wife obviously, Susan. So as a family we discussed it, because they all get dragged partially into the limelight as well. That was probably the hardest part of it. But no, I was out early. I was the first one to announce and I guess I just really wanted to make it clear. Not to have the swirls and the rumors. But just to say I'm running, and I'm running for mayor only, and that's where I stand.
Aaron: So why that decision?
Aksel Bech: I've had six years as councillor for Tamahere. I'm terrifically proud of what we've been able to achieve locally. Three years as deputy mayor, which has enabled me to lift my eyes to the wider district. I'm pretty excited about that. I feel like I can apply myself to the district rather than the ward. And quite frankly, to run unsuccessfully and then slip back into the ward councillor role under somebody else’s vision and leadership, probably didn't sit that comfortably with me.
Aaron: We were talking off the air about how you've got the word progressive on the side of your car and on your hoardings and things, and we were talking about the exact meaning of that. So, do you want to tell me what you're meaning by the use of that word.?
Aksel Bech: I guess I was saying that I am actually pleased and proud of what we've done as a team, in the last period. We refreshed our vision five years ago and really tried to put communities back at the heart of the council. For me, it was trying to catch up to the developers. We're actually running behind developers, and they are calling the tunes. You've seen that here in Raglan, as much as anything, where all of a sudden the shape of the community you are in starts to get changed in the way you weren't actually consulted about. It's just sort of happening. You know, with masses of new developments and houses coming in. That's a good thing in a lot of ways, it's a positive power to be harnessed, but it also changes the very thing that people are coming for. You know, Raglan becomes different in the process, as does Te Kauwhata, Pokeno, some of those other fast-growing communities. So we needed to not only catch up to developers and the growth, but we needed to get ahead. Hence the blueprint work, that master planning for communities, and actually trying to capture their voices, the existing communities’ voices and let that shape and guide the new ones coming in, to fit in with that.
Aaron: So the idea is that when you need a new subdivision, for arguments sake, you go to the blueprint and it says here's what the community already thinks?
Aksel Bech: Yes, because there's very few tools. The RMA is an effects-based piece of legislation. So if you're not doing any harm, essentially you should be permitted to do it, right? I'm not agreeing with that: I'm saying that's the reality. As opposed to the Town and Country Planning Act, which we came out of, which the UK still has, which says: Hey, if you build 5 houses, that's cool, but if you build 10, you have to think about contributing to a local park. If you build a 100, where’s the library going to go? Where's the new school going to go? We don't have that anymore, we went to an effects-based system and developers come in, not all developers obviously, but a lot of developers come in and think about yield. How many sections can I squeeze out?
Aaron: Well, there's a lot of money at stake, so that shouldn't surprise us.
Aksel Bech: No, that's right. But it's a commercial, let the market decide approach. Whereas, actually the experience built on 2000 years of civilization is that if you build cool places to live, with ways to walk around communities, with parks, with schools, places to linger, places to meet, actually those are better places to live and the sections are worth more anyway. So to me, it sort of ends up the same. But to come back to the question, I'm really happy with that work. There's more to do.
Aaron: Were you quite instrumental with the blueprint process, would you say?
Aksel Bech: Yes. We had a steering group that I was part of, along with the four councillor who led that work. It was quite unusual for council to have staff and councillor working together in that kind of workshop / steering group way, as opposed to a strict management and governance split, and we got a better result. I think the biggest turn out we had was here in Raglan, actually, in the hall. Lots of people came. There are nuances in every community, with the tricky one here being how does the blueprint sit with Raglan Naturally, which was so well developed and advanced in its own right, pre-existing.
Aaron: So I’m going to try and return to the question that you asked, which is: why progressive?
Aksel Bech: My point is that I'm not going to come in and try and break the system, and say everything is wrong. I'm actually convinced, in my own mind, that we are on the right track. We’ve got further to go and it's about providing leadership to progress, to further the direction we're already in. That was the implication of that, rather than it's all wrong, and it needs to change. Which is a legitimate alternative view, and if you're on the outside, that's probably what you would say:.” I'm going to bring something fresh, something different”. Well, I'm not that guy. I'm not the revolution guy. I'm the evolution guy.
Aaron: Having said that, Allen's been mayor for 12 years. You might be riding a revolution anyway. The ward boundaries have been completely reshaped. I think our ward is about the only one that's pretty much the way it used to be. There's two new Māori councillor coming in. There's the growth of the northern part of the district. It’s no longer a rurally-based district. In fact, it's a slightly schizophrenic one I feel. What's Raglan got to do with Tamahere, got to do with Huntly? And then there’s the north, or the rural areas that are still there. Are we going to see some kind of changes coming in the new term?
Aksel Bech: I think we'll see lots of changes coming. The two biggest pressures on our district right now. One is growth. Growth puts pressure everywhere, on all of the bits of the machine, if you like. I’ve had the privilege of leading the wastewater consultation here in Raglan for the last couple of years, mostly online, and the solutions we're coming up with are remarkably different now than where we started: which was discharges to the harbour that nobody wants, essentially just more of the same. Now we're coming up with some completely different solutions, but they also have to be affordable.
We’re not going to get straight to three waters right now, are we?
Aaron: We haven't got time to talk about three waters right now. That's a whole interview by itself!
Aksel Bech: The point is that with growth you get a lot of pressure on infrastructure. Infrastructure unlocks potential for development, and we really need more housing, right? There's no question that we have a housing crisis, and actually the market won't fix it, left to its own devices. Five to 10 per cent is that affordable housing, not the social, not the public, but the affordable housing.? There’s a whole big conversation about what affordable means, right? But the market does not deliver those. When we have big developments, they're not affordable. So that’s a key issue that we need to address, and infrastructure that unlocks that has to be affordable. So growth is a big issue. The other big issue is government change:, future local government reform, the three waters, the RMA reforms, as well as the polytechnics and the DHB and everything else. It's all coming at the same time and that will fundamentally change who we are and what we need to be.
Aaron: You might end up mayor of nothing at some point, perhaps? Your seat might be pulled out from under you, if you become mayor.
Aksel Bech: What a weird thing to put yourself in the public eye and the social media - which is quite a tough space for female candidates in particular actually at the moment, regrettably. You put yourself in that space and then a month after you get sworn in, the government tells you how your job description is changing. It's a very weird thing.
Aaron: Is that a constant thing that happens?
Aksel Bech: No, that's just this time.
Aaron: It’s literally that soon after the election?
Aksel Bech: One month after the election, the draft report of the future of the local government reform panel comes out: the biggest reform since 1989. They decided to delay it until just after the election. So, you don't actually know what you're swearing allegiance to.
Aaron: A big part of the discussion last night at the meet the candidates meeting was about the dysfunction of council and how it needs to run more like a business. Is there even any point in asking you about that at this point in time?
Aksel Bech: Well, somebody still has to do it, right? So the question is: Who will do it?
Aaron: And in fact, probably even if they do reform, it'll be years down the track from when it actually gets implemented won’t it?
Aksel Bech: There's some easy wins, which are logical and everyone agrees with, so obviously very unlikely to happen!. Things like going to a four-year term for example. You can just do that.
Aaron: Do you think that's a good idea?
Aksel Bech: I think it's a great idea, actually. Three years comes up very, very quickly. More so when you’re in government.
Aaron: It's more fun for us here in the media, though. We'd like an election every year!
Aksel Bech: Yeah, that's right. Things take a long time to get through and to actually see things through, no matter your political flavor, I think you just need more time. We see that in central government as well.
Aaron: EspeicallyEspecially there
Aksel Bech: And then as we get sick of whatever lot is in at the moment. We think “arggh - should have a shorter term; can't leave them in there for longer”, but actually things just do take a long time to get through and that extra little bit of runway I think would be useful. What you could also do then is have the local government and central government elections together. A polling day type thing where you'd actually go into the booth for both, and you’d probably double the voter turnout in the local body elections overnight.
Aaron: Interesting. That’s definitely a concept I haven't thought much about, but we'll put it aside, though. I want to talk about the idea that council should be run more like a business. I've had the experience of working in the construction industry. It's so different. Things have to get done, and if they don't get done, you're out of business. So, it only works one way. It works well. It doesn't feel like that when projects are happening with council. Everyone’s complaining. Having said that council isn't a business, but we went through the 90s reforms to make councils more like a business. So I thought we were trying to run it like a business. How…
Aksel Bech: How's that going?
Aaron: Yeah, there's so many questions here. Do you acknowledge that there is dysfunction within the council? There's a lot of staff turnover. Maybe some changes needed to happen structurally inside? How much of a business can you make it before it stops functioning anyway?
Aksel Bech: Is it a business? I'm not sure it truly is a business in the sense that ultimately it pays for the bills with ratepayer money. So it can't go broke; technically can't go broke.
Aaron: Didn't they go broke up north?
Aksel Bech: No they didn't and that's the point. They had a financial crisis, but in theory you're broke if you don't have the ability to pay your bills; you’re technically insolvent. But the legislation allows you to turn that into rates, and as long as your view is long enough, you've always got the ability to pay, as long as you've got ratepayers. Which is a technical argument -and it's a rubbish one!.
Aaron: But it's there, nonetheless?
Aksel Bech: But it's there and what it does is put into the whole system a little bit of – so iit's not as sharp, it's not as focussed as a commercial business, which would fold if it stuffed something up to that scale. The Kaipara was horrible; it was many multi millions of dollars that ratepayers would never ever be able to repay.
Aaron: So the government had to bail them out.
Aksel Bech: They got a huge bailout in the end. But there are things which we do, which are in the manner of delivering things, like building roads, wastewater systems, parks, libraries, buildings, that sort of thing, and we maintain a lot of things. But actually what we do, and I think it's the right way, is because we have that little bit of a different cultural mindset, we aren't necessarily the best at that. That's why we try not to be in that space as much as possible. Waikato District Council now, as much as possible is a contract manager. We tender work out, others deliver it, and we oversee those to make sure that they're run in accordance with the principles of the contract. For a lot of councils roading and three-waters is probably two-thirds of their business. Both of those we don't do directly. We've got an Aalliance delivering our roading, and that's on a cost–gain share basis, and as of two years ago, Watercare look after all of our three-waters assets. So we own the assets. The consents are on our name. But they are the physical operators of that system, and 28 years from now, they must hand those assets back in the same or better condition than they got them two years ago. So we don't operate those anymore; recognising that we are not the sharpest, most commercial operator in town. We've actually let others do that. All of our maintenance, City Care. They are the ones who are out there mowing the lawns and fixing playground equipment etc.
Aaron: Isn't there a bit of an irony that Christchurch City Council's council-controlled organisation is running the stuff in our district? Does it matter?
Aksel Bech: It does matter actually, and we've given a lot of thought to the merits around social procurement. You know where the money can go around to, three, four times in the local community, because the guy who looks after the playground lives locally, buys petrol locally, whatever profit he makes get reinvested.
Aaron: It makes a really big difference to the local economy that sort of thing. It’s huge.
Aksel Bech: Absolutely it does. So, there is a real push around, particularly in that maintenance space, in looking after our facilities. There's an extra bit of love that you get for free, when you've got somebody local who's doing the work.
Aaron: We have a local lawn company doing our lawns here.
Aksel Bech: We are looking more and more at that, because there is that balance between the ratepayer saying you're paying too much for something, why can't you be more efficient about it, versus maybe spending an extra dollar or two, but that dollar goes around and around in your local community, and actually stays in that community, rather than going to Christchurch or wherever.
Aaron: Let's go back to part of the question I was asking: there is a strong public perception that council is dysfunctional at what it does. I personally think a lot of that is not well considered, but I also think there is genuine grounds for criticism as well. What can you as a new mayor do about that?
Aksel Bech: There's no doubt that in the last couple of years, probably in the last 10 years, we have been overly ambitious in terms of what we thought we could deliver. So put Covid to one side. We all understand that there's been restrictions around labour and materials and so on. But even in normal times, council has not been good at delivering what it said it was going to deliver.
There's a problem with that, because you collect the rates based on paying for the thing you said you were going to deliver in the timeframe you were going to deliver it. So effectively, some of it is loan funded and you don't draw the loan until you do it, but some of it is rates that's been collected too early, and you haven't delivered on it. Then you've got what we call carry forwards; at the end of the year, you then say we need to bring that project into the next year, because we haven't done it yet, or we haven't finished.
There's been too many. Communities have waited too long. There's no question about that. I think we need to go more to that better contract management model, rather than add more people and try and do it ourselves. I'm still not convinced that from a business efficiency point of view we are the best in delivering large-scale infrastructure, for example. The other model that you may be interested in is for roads and underground services for new subdivisions. That's council's responsibility, because it has to be to the standard that will serve the community going forward. But the developer pays for that. Growth pays for growth. It's not existing ratepayers that pay for that. We've switched to a model now where the developer themselves do that, deliver that, and then vest it in council at the end of it, and their DC [Development Contribution]direct costs are reduced. So again, they take the risk.
Aaron: Is someone observing the work to make sure it’s done?
Aksel Bech: Yes, to the right standard. Everything has to be done to the right standard, the right durability, there has to 50-year life for an underground pipe or whatever. So, there's no cost cutting. But at the same time, if there's over-runs or it goes badly or whatever, that's on them. It's not on the existing ratepayers to pick up. So that efficiency has been left with the developer.
Aaron: You'd see more farming out of the work?
Aksel Bech: Essentially, yes. For those that want the commercial upside: it’s developers, let them take the risk that goes with development. Why should the ratepayer take the risk for somebody else’s gain?
Aaron: The other question I wanted to ask was: does a new mayor need a new CEO? And then that flows down to the staff. Do you need to rebuild the internal system to suit you as a potential new mayor?
Aksel Bech: It is a fair question in the sense that the council, the elected members, only actually employ one person, and that's the CEO. The CEO then employs everybody else. That CEO’s contract cycle is a five-year term, that's set by legislation, and can be extended by mutual agreement, I think for two years maximum. But to answer your question, the CEO actually will finish in November next year. That’s the end of his contract term.
Aaron: He’s decided to finish?
Aksel Bech: His contract arrangement comes to an end in November next year. It's up to him, of course, whether he chooses to re-apply. But it will be advertised and it will be an openly advertised search for a CEO to fill that position. Twenty-one years I think he will have done at that stage, so I guess he's got some thinking to do too.
Aaron: People listening will be saying: “Go on Aaron. Ask him specifically what he thinks about the CEO.” But I know that’s a waste of time. You wouldn’t have got this far in local body politics if you had that level of bluntness.
Aksel Bech: What I can say in reference both to Mayor Allen, who's retiring and finishing after 12 years, and the CEO who's actually been in that job a similar length of time in total – as counsellor and mayor, and as an employee of the council – is that actually Waikato District’s done well! This is not a district that's broke or where everything is not being delivered or people aren't happy or whatever. We've got issues, we've got challenges, there's some real exciting opportunities for us to grab, but we're not broken. I really want to acknowledge those two guys, in particular, for their leadership through this last couple of decades.
Aaron: OK. Devolution of council powers to community boards. We had a visit from people from Thames–Coromandel District Council. I think it was when your predecessor was at Tamahere. I think Wally brought them across. People are very excited about devolving powers to the community board. No powers have been devolved [yet], they just have control over the discretionary fund and it's kind of up to them if they can build a good relationship with the rest of council, I think to be effective. A lot of us really liked what we saw at Thames–Coromandel. It's kind of similar to here, in that there’s separate little communities all over the place. This is not to bag staff, but I can see if staff don't live out here, they don't make as good decisions as staff who do live out here. That's just a fact of life. You can't possibly know as much about our town if you don't live here. Are you supportive of devolving powers to community boards before the government rips it all up anyway?
Aksel Bech: Yeah, shout out to Wally too. The two last councillor for Tamahere were both called Wally, so I am the new Wally for Tamahere -that was something I had to shed for the start of my term! Yes, absolutely and the blueprint work really started the whole thinking on that. By the time you've captured that local voice, you realise that the local voice is much more nuanced than anything you can see from Ngāruawāhia or Tamahere or Pokeno or wherever. You need to be local to actually see and understand the context. So yes, I'm all about that. You would have heard me say last night that the move to local governance, as opposed to local government, is very much at the core of where I see things. I'm Danish, as I think we touched on. So I was born and raised in Denmark, came here as a young teenager, 14 year old. In my head, the Kommune, as it's called over there, looks after police, health, education.
Aaron: That's the word for local government.
Aksel Bech: Yes, local government. So, it's not a hippy commune1 But actually, the word has the same origin. The Nordic version of a ‘togetherness council’ is a “fællesskab” community type model that’s much more encompassing in terms of local responsibility, local duties. I'm on that page. That's the context in which I grew up and my world views formed.
So absolutely. And we've got the new CAB budget, one of those lovely acronyms - community aspirations and blueprint money. We've taken a lot of the discretionary funding out of the various buckets, some of which were overflowing and some of which were completely empty, but you couldn't apply unless it fit the right bucket. And we’re moving that back to community boards to distribute in a way that's aligned with community aspirations and blueprints. So that's the framework you have to be in. You can't just say: All of the current community board all love 10-pin bowling: We're going to build a spend all of our money on a 10-pin bowling facility. It actually has to align with the community voice that came through the blueprint. For a very small rural community where they didn't have a blueprint, it has to align with their aspirations that have come through some sort of peer review process. Let's say, where the community itself has vetted those ideas, not one or two people having taken it over.
So that's money, right? And money is important because money allows you to do stuff. We all know, with all due respects to council, if you give you 100 bucks to the community board, they're going to make it go a lot further than the council.
Aaron: Yes, totally. I run an organisation like that. We run on the smell of an oily rag.
Aksel Bech: Exactly! And you get volunteers who step up and people donate things, and all the rest of it, which they wouldn't if it was a council-led thing. So community-led is really important. The next thing that goes with it is some powers and that's something I'm spending a lot of time thinking about at the minute. The mayor actually has remarkably little power in our system. But one of the things that you do, although you don't actually decide by yourself, is you recommend to the new elected members the delegations. Who decides what? And you can delegate, not so much to community committees because they're not formal structures, but community boards are in effect a subcommittee of council. They are sworn in and have a conflict of interest register, and all that sort of stuff. They can actually be formally delegated powers and that's what I'm trying to work through now.
Aaron: I've got to interrupt because we're running completely out of time. Quickly touch on your career in the past before you entered local body politics; the stuff that's relevant to wanting to be mayor.
Aksel Bech: It's all relevant. It's one long journey. The real quick version. I was born in Denmark, came here as a teenager, studied psychology at university. So I've got a Bachelor of Science and Microbiology and Psychology, and then I went on to do a Master’s in Industrial and Organisational Psychology. That led me into human resources. I worked in the private sector as an HR manager for quite some time, and then morphed into sales and marketing, which to me is kind of the same thing in that it's about relationships with people.
As I was saying to you earlier, I sat opposite Clint Baddley, back in the day, when he was in the engineers’ union and I represented NDA Engineering, which was one of the companies I became an owner of. We had a management buyout. It was a large stainless-steel fabricator based in Hamilton. I was lucky enough to sell my shares just before the global financial crisis, which enabled me to spend 10 years or so focusing around the family and doing cool things with them. Being there, not just for the big end-of-year assembly, but all the little end-of-week assemblies or the little parent help things. That sort of morphed into being on school boards of trustees and on volunteer things, and nek minute I'm on the Tamahere Community Committee and then counsellor. That’s the real fast version.
Aaron: We're out of time. So thank you for coming. I’ve been talking to Aksel Bech, who's the current deputy mayor, counsellor for Tamahere, and running for mayor. Good luck with the rest of your campaign.
Aksel Bech: Thanks very much.