Today on Politics Friday John MacDonald was joined by National’s Hamish Campbell and Labour’s Duncan Webb to discuss some of the biggest stories of the week.

The Government will soon be issuing fines to parents of repeatedly absent students – will this work? Is it a new idea?

Campbell almost manages to explain the RMA changes in one sentence, but what do they mean for New Zealanders?

And is there a place for more dairy cows in Canterbury, along with a passenger rail?

LISTEN ABOVE

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I can’t find an exact figure but from what I have seen online, I’m pretty confident in saying that there are hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid fines in New Zealand, and that figure is about to rise even further.

Because the Government is dreaming if it thinks people fined for not sending their kids to school are going to suddenly start sending their kids to school, and that they're even going to bother paying the fines.

They won’t. They’ll just ignore them. They won’t pay up.

Because if they don’t feel bad about not sending their kids to school, they won’t feel bad about getting a fine. And they won’t feel bad about not paying it either.

A fortnight ago, Associate Education Minister David Seymour announced that the Government is going to spend $140 million over the next four years with one aim: getting more kids to turn up at school regularly.

And I said at the time that we’ll wait and see, but it seemed that he had stopped banging the drum about fining parents whose kids don’t go to school. And I said, we’ll see, because leopard and their spots, and all that.

And it turns out I was right to be doubtful, because the leopard hasn’t changed its spots and today, he’s telling these parents that the Government is out to get them.

But it won't make one bit of difference.

And I've said before that I think starting school later is an idea worth considering because I want us to get creative when it comes to truancy. There’s no evidence to show that fining parents works. In fact, there’s evidence to show that it doesn’t work.

In the United States, for example, Texas, Pennsylvania, and California went through periods where parents could be heavily fined if their kids were repeatedly absent.

Parents were fined $500 for every absence. Some states even used ankle bracelets for kids who were repeat truants. It didn't work because it created mistrust in the system and in authorities and the truancy rates got even worse.

So what might work, if fining parents isn’t going to work?

Well this is where Sweden comes into the conversation.

I’m not a fan of any sort of financial penalty because, as far as I’m concerned, anything that takes money away from families isn’t good because that affects the kids themselves.

But if you want a financial penalty approach, in Sweden if a parent is on a benefit of any sort, their payments get cut if they don’t send their kids to school.

Apparently it’s had a positive impact. And I think the reason it works way better than fining parents is that it takes money away without these parents having any choice.

Whereas if they get a fine, it’s still their choice whether they pay it or not.

Plus, here in New Zealand, I think there’s a culture where some people just don’t give a damn about fines – that’s why so many just don't get paid.

Which is why I think that the Government’s plan to fine parents who don’t send their kids to school won't make one bit of difference.

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I hope Environment Canterbury isn’t bothering listening to Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey.

He’s not impressed that the regional council is going to spend money doing a business case for a rail passenger service between Rangiora, Christchurch, and Rolleston.

Matt Doocey says it’s nothing more than a pie-in-the-sky idea and, given we’re in a cost-of-living crisis, he says ECAN should stick to its knitting and focus on getting costs down and reducing rates.

But what Matt Doocey should be doing —instead of criticising ECAN— is praising it for showing some initiative.

He should be praising it for showing that it’s prepared to do the kind of big sky, big picture thinking that local government hasn’t been doing, and which we’ve been saying it should be doing.

I think Doocey isn’t reading the room, and I suspect that there will be a lot of excitement about ECAN pushing this rail idea. What’s more, ECAN has put some money aside for a possible rail project.

Plus, it’s talking about not just limiting this rail passenger idea to Rangiora, Christchurch, and Rolleston. It’s saying that, once up and running, the service could be extended to places like Amberley, Ashburton, Timaru, and even further south into Otago and Southland.

I’m loving the idea. I’m also loving the fact that ECAN is prepared to put some skin in the game. To spend some money and find out once-and-for-all how much of a goer this could be.

ECAN is onto something because if there’s a common complaint about how the earthquake rebuild played out, it would be the fact that, despite all the talk that Christchurch was going to be the most modern city in the country, it’s not. Because we’ve just stuck to the same old, same old when it comes to things like transport.

And local government has to carry some of the blame for that. But now, ECAN wants to make good on that.

What this comes down to for me is this: what do expect of local government?

Do we just expect it to stick to its knitting and do the basic boring stuff? Or do we expect our councils to be the big picture thinkers?

If you’re like me and you want to see councils doing the big picture stuff, then you’ll agree that we’ve lost the ability to think big.

Mark my words, there’ll be no shortage of people running in the local body elections later this year banging-on about sticking to the basics.

Whereas ECAN is showing that it’s thinking about the future, which is exactly the kind of thing I want to see not just from ECAN, but all our councils.

Tell that to Waimakariri MP Matt Doocey, though.

He’s saying today: ‘Rather than coming up with pie in the sky motions, ECAN should focus on reducing rates which have rapidly increased - putting more pressure on ratepayers in a cost-of-living crisis.’’

Compare that to the likes of ECAN councillor Joe Davies who is saying we can’t wait 20 or 30 years, and we need a solution in the next five to ten years.

He says: ‘There’s a corridor already in place so there would be significantly lower set-up costs and this is an opportunity to link Rangiora and Rolleston to the city.’’

So he sees opportunity. Matt Doocey sees obstacles.

ECAN sees opportunity and is doing something about it, which is the approach I want to see a lot more of from our local councils.

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