Maybe the time has come for the idea of localism in New Zealand? I am not sure what appetite the current government has for it, but LGNZ launched its Localism Project at its 2018 conference and has a localism discussion paper due in July this year. The NZ Initiative, an independent public policy think-tank, has also recently released #LocalismNZ, a paper aimed to encourage the concept.
But if the concept is accepted into mainstream thinking the implementation would require significant changes to the current law applicable to local government.