The Kawerau mayor has likened the Government’s council amalgamation orders to being threatened with a bat.

Kawerau District Council became the last of the three Eastern Bay councils to accept an outline proposal for a unitary authority combining Ōpōtiki, Whakatāne and Kawerau at an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday.

“The decision to amalgamate or not is not being made by this council. It is not ours to make,” Kawerau Mayor Faylene Tunui said at the meeting.

She referred to comments made by Minister of RMA Reform Chris Bishop in announcing the Head Start pathway for Simplifying Local Government in May – “lead your own reform, or we will do it for you”.

“The decision being made today is whether we have an influence over the amalgamation plans – the relentless plans that this current Government of the day appear to have,” Tunui said.

“It’s like someone’s holding a bat, and [saying] ‘I’m going to beat you’ ... ‘Either you decide if you’re going to take the bat and beat yourself or I will beat you with it’.”

The meeting was an emotional one, with lengthy speeches from the mayor and all eight councillors, some of whom Tunui said were attending despite being unwell, due to the importance of the decision.

A box of tissues circulated the council table, as much for tears as for coughs and sniffles.

The Ōpōtiki and Whakatāne councils both approved the proposal at meetings on Tuesday.

The three councils had pulled together the proposal over the past 90 days due to tight timelines given to them by central government.

The proposal needed to be submitted to the Ministry of Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport (MCERT) by August 9.

The three mayors, Whakatāne’s Nandor Tanczos, Ōpōtiki’s David Moore and Tunui, travelled to Wellington today to submit the outline proposal in person.

When announcing the plan to amalgamate councils, Bishop said the purpose of the process was to create “larger, more efficient unitary authorities that streamline functions, reduce duplication, and improve decision-making”.

LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.