Fridays Thereabout

27 February 2026

In Thessalonians 5:16 Apostle Paul says:

“Rejoice always, without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”.

Joy in all circumstances, yes it really says that – and that means both in times of pleasure and play, but also death and desertion. How can such a thing be possible? You need to know that its greatly about gratitude – for what you have and the people around you, even when they seem pretty miserable.

I was next going to try and say that some of the happiest people live in the materially poorest places on earth, but the below Gallop poll map seems to undermine that argument somewhat. It turns out that material prosperity does make a difference after all.

Perhaps I haven’t expressed it much before, but I do recognise the privilege being a Councillor for Taupo District Council. How on earth I managed to get elected being quite an outsider with relatively few connections in this provincial town still gets me (we migrated here from West Auckland in 2016).

BUT, and it is a big BUT – what is the point of having elections if staff effectively run the place anyway? Which would be fine if staff were perfect and always make the right decisions – BUT we all know that they don’t. Our new Mayor Funnell got elected on a platform of change, BUT I haven’t seen too much of that happening yet. Transparency and accountability are nice bywords, BUT to mean something they need to be followed up by actions. There is at least some of that starting to happen for the Waikato Rivers Joint Management Agreement (JMA), but in some other areas like freedom of expression for Elected members we seem to be going backwards.

The below illustration based on Lord of The Rings was forwarded to me by a constituent that seems to illustrate the situation. Anybody have a wizards staff handy?

This week we did have some Council happenings, notably a lengthy full Council meeting on Tuesday where a few items of interest popped up and which you can watch Part one HEREand Part two HERE, with minutes and agendas available HERE. Like a broken record I took opportunity to again challenge the Mayor about political messaging in Council agendas (watch HERE) and also the absence of free expression for Elected Members (watch HERE and HERE). I am advocating to re-introduce the slot for general items which was deleted two years ago by the previous and nefarious Mayor David Trewavas to shut down opportunities for dissent, and to which I have previously written to Mayor John about on 2 February.

On that last note I have at times been accused of grandstanding for the purpose of self-elevation, which I find a ridiculous claim. Council Chambers is supposed to be a place where Elected Members can express alternative views in a public setting – because what on earth is the point of having elections if members of the public get a greater say like they do now? I should be allowed to talk about the state of the Nation for a few minutes if I want to, or even the state of Council catered lunches. You elected us as politicians, and there are times we need to be able to say political things.

However, on the matter of political messaging I can announce a small win. My concern was about the agenda messaging inaccurately reflecting statutory obligations with regard to Maori Engagement. The Mayor gratefully undertook a review, and the wording will now be amended to more closely align with legislation and clarify Council’s position. I appreciate that response, and respect that governance is often about incremental improvement rather than dramatic gestures.

The current wording (introduced in 2021 as far as I can tell):

“Taupō District Council is committed to meeting its statutory Tiriti o Waitangi obligations and acknowledges partnership as the basis of Te Tiriti. This requires both parties to treat and work with each other in good faith and show good will to reflect the partnership relationship. We acknowledge these responsibilities are distinct from the Crown’s Treaty obligations and lie within a Taupō District Council context”.

The proposed revised wording, not exactly what I was asking for but an improvement nonetheless, to clarify about partnership and that Council is not a Treaty partner:

“Taupō District Council is committed to meeting its statutory obligations including in relation to Te Tiriti o Waitangi/Treaty of Waitangi principles, consideration of Māori interests and meaningful engagement with Māori.  In meeting its statutory obligations, Council is committed to acting reasonably and in good faith and consistently with a partnership-based approach. Te Tiriti/Treaty principles include but are not limited to active protection of Māori interests, informed decision-making and enabling effective Māori participation in Council processes”.

Okay what about some other stuff?

JMA saga continues: In the second of the Waikato River Joint Management Agreement (JMA) workshops of a number to come, on Tuesday we had one titled: “Outline of Mandatory Matters” (you can watch it HERE), which went smoothly enough except for some minor disquiet caused by a few comments of my own that I will restate below. However, we did at least get presented with this helpful map to demonstrate the area this JMA is obliged to cover (noting that it doesn’t include Lake Taupo):

My first point was that we needn’t be here at all and could probably have been sorted out well over 12 months ago, if elected members from the last term had simply just decided to keep things simple and stick to the mandatory requirements. Instead there was a vote by slim majority in September 2024 to include the bone of contention extras, with Cr Kevin Taylor & Cr Yvonne Westerman being the two still present who voted for the extras but declined my request for a public explanation.

I also said that corporate Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) is an entity that Council should only be warily entering into any significant partnership deal beyond that which is absolutely necessary. At least Councils have the Local Government Act which forces a minimum level of transparency and accountability, but these trust boards do not have the same guard rails to ensure they will act in the best interests of our district or even its own members. And if we are looking at examples of good governance, I don’t think the management of Five Mile Bay Recreational Reserve which has now been under occupation for over 5 years is a very shining example of why we should be entangling with outside entities like this any more than strictly necessary.

In a wider context and after my experience of the past three years, I say that a tragedy of the current Council process is that workshops like these are staff presentations only and with usually quite limited opportunity for questions. Once it comes to a full Council meeting for the decision making to actually happen, any serious debate is often quenched on the basis that it has already been worked through. I do hope that Mayor John Funnell will not let that happen this time round, and that he will push for background submitted questions by both Elected Members and the public to be properly responded to – which often enough in the past has not always happened.

Community engagement, or just stage management? On Tuesday we also had an item which has caused something of a furore in the Turangi and Mangakino sides of town (what is it about these small close-knit communities?) which managed to retain their current committee structures instead of the promoted less formal format – many people out that way are even asking: what was the problem in the first place? I personally won’t miss the stuffiness of the former Kinloch committee which saw boatloads of staff hauling out there for an afternoon every two months or so (they will soon be getting a less formal format), but Taupo Ward will be getting some new meet-up sessions which they haven’t had before or seemed to even want (what is it with these larger more disconnected communities?).

However in my mind at least, this whole exercise has been something of a red herring. Because the issue isn’t so much about public engagement – although that is still important – it is whether or not Council chooses to listen to what the public have to say and bend their will to it. I think there have been plenty of major decisions in the past where the public have been excluded (including the Taupo Town Transformation Project), but also where the public have been included but patently ignored. The Pukenamu Roundabout Project I hold up as a classic example of that, where the community engagement was actually very good and even perhaps a little over the top. But the almost universal request of Pukenamu Road residents to remain unconnected to the proposed new roundabout was rejected, seemingly on the very dubious basis that Council is not acting illegally. Why don’t we let the lawyers run Council and see how that ends up, eh? Anyway, there is still time to change our minds about that particular decision because it hasn’t been built yet.

Reporting back or not at all? At the end of Tuesdays meeting (watch HERE) I raised the issue of Elected Members attending outside conferences or events but not being formally required to report back. In my experience in the private sector this is virtually unheard of, and one outfit I worked it was mandatory to be presenting one of the conference papers to even be allowed to attend. Last term I put a Notice of Motion for mandatory 250 word summaries (preferably also for public consumption), not only for information dissemination but also to justify the attendance and expense. Unfortunately there was not any more appetite for such transparency and accountability this time round either.

Waikato Waters continue to suffer: Councillor Hope Woodward is still banging on about the dire water quality of Waikato headwater lakes including Lakes Whakemaru and Maraetai, and she was motivated enough to recently undertake her own public survey and submit it to all sorts of agencies like Waikato Regional Council, Mercury Power Company and a host of others. You can read the survey results here, and it seems a lot of people are not very happy at all. The contents of Cr Woodwards letter is shown below:

Kia Ora Koutou, please find attached a report done in relation to a survey I initiated throughout relevant communities regarding the water quality in the upper Waikato region. I initiated this survey independently following advice from WRC that formal engagement would need to wait until the next fiscal year, funding dependent. The strength and consistency of the responses indicated that this issue warrants immediate action. This report is not intended to assign blame. It reflects community sentiment and lived experience. However, the scale of the responses makes it clear that residents and public expect coordinated leadership, transparent monitoring, and tangible action. I ask that this report is taken seriously and that agencies consider how proactive collaboration, communication and accountability can be strengthened going forward. Our lakes are central to the wellbeing and viability of our communities, particularly here in Mangakino and Whakamaru. Please confirm acknowledgement of this email and report. I look forward to further clarity regarding how this matter will be progressed. Ngā Mihi, Kaunihera/Councillor Hope Woodward Mangakino-Pouakani Ward

Maori Purpose Zones: Council is consulting on a couple of planning changes including this one which I did a brief item in August last year that you can read HERE which includes a link to the recorded staff presentation on the topic. The intention of these is to make it easier for communally owned Maori land to get developed, which is not a bad thing at all. The caption at right just reflect my thoughts at the time because I felt it was being foisted upon Elected Members without debate.

Anybody like Don Brash? Former leader of the National Party and a few years later, I think a reread of his at the time controversial Orewa speech of 2004 is a worthwhile exercise to see how very right he was on quite a few points. Hindsight can be a wonderful thing, but I wish more Kiwi’s were able to comprehend in real time.

Loyal but only to a point: On Sunday evening I attended a Loyal Party small gathering at Ploughman’s restaurant and met the forthright leader Kevin Alp along with his deputy John Alcock. I really like their idea of a universal 1% transaction tax and the abolition of all the other taxes (apparently the maths stacks up for it to work), but I am quite sceptical that enough New Zealander’s are so open-minded to put their vote Loyal’s way. I reckon it would just about take something like the French Revolution for that to happen very soon, and with the average Kiwi’s approach to life being roughly akin to our namesake bird – we will probably all go the way of the Dodo bird before that ever happens.

It can’t happen like that here: Napier Deputy Mayor gets the sack, but interestingly the Standing Orders at Taupo District Council are such that our Mayor is not able to unilaterally do that without majority support of the other elected members (snippet below). It needs majority support to get our own Deputy Mayor demoted and whether or not the Mayor agrees, and I don’t feel that enough of us are up for that quite yet.

Chaos reigns in South Waikato: Mayor Gary Petley of South Waikato District Council called time out on a full Council meeting yesterday because he didn’t want 73 yr old member of the public Bruce Simpson to video record the proceedings from the public gallery. Bruce runs his own youtube channel, and is insisting upon making his own recording because of confirmed incidents where segments of the Councils own recordings have been purposely deleted in the past (you can watch his 12 min explanation HERE). So the entire meeting was postponed for another time and with a full gallery of public present keen to listen in too. Ugh, what a drop-kick of a Mayor they have in South Waikato and no wonder there were catcalls of ‘chicken‘. Some politicians are such feeble people, why on earth do people vote for them?

Good on ya Bruce, and thank goodness Taupo District Council isn’t as seedy and untransparent as them. And by the way, there is nothing to stop members of the public making their own recordings in a TDC Council meeting – although technically you are supposed to first ask, and below is the relevant clause from our Standing Orders (I can only imagine that the circumstances to justify a directive to stop recording should be extraordinary – yet another unfortunate loophole that could potentially be pounced upon):

Cash may be king but not at Taupo Landfill: In Public Form on Tuesday constituent Tristan Baynham spoke out against the staff induced change of policy last year to mean that cash is no longer accepted at the Taupo Landfill for apparent Health and Safety reasons (watch HERE). Tristan put forth that this is a great inconvenience for some people and asked a fairly basic question that received no good answer – what was the problem in the first place? I am not sure if there will be serious consideration to reverting back, but I stuck my oar in for it.

Track made easier: To those lovers of nature like me and who also like a bit of a challenge, walking/climbing up Mt Tauhara just got a little easier. Somebody has dug deep, and constructed a new easy grade track for the first (and steepest) section to encourage those less inclined to mountain climbing and more just into the walking. So whoever you are, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude because now we will get even more people up this wonderful place for solitude, reflection, and strengthening of the body.

Fridays out there: I struggled to think up something to poignantly end this week, so how about this quality investigative piece on education in the modern age:

Fridays Fuming Foibles

20 February 2026

Ecclesiastes – a book of the Old Testament of the Bible still as relevant today as the rest, and one of my favourite books in the Bible. I highly recommend it as a good read for anybody trying to tackle this world on its own terms. Widely attributed authorship by King Solomon who was blessed with a Wisdom beyond any human comparison before or since, although even he was not infallible enough to avoid having several hundred wives (how wise is that?). But if you want to read about the difference between foolishness and wisdom and why it matters, this is the book for you. It is one of the only books in the Bible where God gets scant mention – and with good reason I think – and reason abounds in these writings of Ecclesiastes.

Which brings me to my main topic of today – doesn’t it stand to reason that one of the coldest regions in the country as we are here, should be making better use of the abundant heat beneath our very feet? Your elected members were yesterday hosted by local economic agency Amplify for a day tour of some geothermal sites around Taupo including GNS Science laboratories in Wairakei, Contact Energy’s Tauhara Geothermal Power Station, and in Rotokawa the Natures Flame wood pellet production facility and Te Ahi Eco Business Park commercial development. It was all quite impressive, though I must say the industrial atmosphere is one thing I never wanted to experience full time which is why I chose civil engineering as a trade rather than something which could end me up in places like these – and I was right. But if you want to live in a provincial place like Taupo and put into practice some very high qualifications like PhDs (and there are quite a few of them in this industry), this surely is the golden opportunity for this region at least. At the moment, the geothermal industry apparently employs around 1000 people in the Taupo district, second only to the dairy industry.

Contact Energy produces around 20% of the nations electricity, and over 90% of it is classed as ‘renewable’ with a significant portion contributed by geothermal, and in the Taupo region it operates some of the most productive wells in the world (note: figures I am quoting are anecdotal only but roughly accurate), and if you believe the spiel from the scientists – we are leading edge stuff here in little old Taupo and sitting on a goldmine of opportunity. But therein lies the catch – opportunity. Although the main thrust of geothermal exploration and activities go towards electricity production (and it still isn’t as cheap as coal, even with all the carbon subsidies and penalties), virtually untapped is the direct use of geothermal heated water for industrial and home heating. Sure we have AC Baths and a scattering of other individuals doing this, but nothing like Iceland and Northern Europe who do this on a grand scale. You see, at the moment in New Zealand geothermal is really all about tapping into the hot water under the ground (sometimes a few km’s deep) and piping it up to the surface to generate electricity with steam turbines to then re-inject it back a km or so distant (those are all the silver pipes you see around the place, and at around $10M per km they don’t come cheap). But it is fairly obvious to me anyway, that if a significant portion of that electricity is only to go towards heating of household airpumps as it must do in the chilly North Island Central Plateau during winter, then this must be very wasteful. And some of the GNS scientists agree.

So what then is the holdup? Apparently and not unsurprisingly, and the scientists and practitioners all fairly agree – it is a combination of bureaucracy and widespread ignorance. That is not to say direct geothermal heating is not going on – because that is exactly what the fairly unique He Ahi development in Rotokawa is basing itself on, and in conjunction with Contact Energy have a setup allowing convenient direct connections to tenants wanting this facility. But things like that are all too rare in a place with such abundant heat beneath our feet -and I have yet to figure out if the bureaucrats are mostly in Wellington – but certainly more can be done, and Taupo District Council could be leading the way on this if it so chooses. Because apart from a few spots up in Northland and down south, we are sitting in the epicentre of this countries geothermal activity and therefore opportunity. The question is – are we in the Taupo region going to take advantage or it? Shane Jones Minister of Resources wants to double geothermal energy production by 2040 – which is fine – but he is probably only thinking in terms of electricity generation. We can do more than just that.

As an aside, I do think if this country had simply invested in nuclear energy a long time ago then we wouldn’t be in the pickle we are now (if only former prime minister Robert Muldoon could have Thinked Bigger). As a clean green option it just can’t be beat, and if just a portion of the $70B this country spent on the Covid response had been put towards a few nuclear reactors (they come at around $10 – 20 B each) we would be sitting very pretty indeed. And the last governments ban on oil and gas exploration has crippled us for a very long time. But at least we are being pushed towards exploring other avenues, and becoming a world leader in geothermal electricity production can’t be an entirely bad thing.

Okay so what about other stuff?

JMA saga continues: In the next exciting chapter of this political hot potatoe that scurried our last Mayor to the dustbin of history, we will just have to see how it fares this time round. This Tuesday 24 February 11am we have the second public-invited workshop on the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) which tackles the question of: What exactly are the mandatory matters? A very basic question, and one that has been so shrouded in a fog of misinformation which I say Taupo District Council has done much to contribute. For one thing, how did Lake Taupo slip into a ‘Waikato Waters’ JMA? For a clearer picture of what areas of waterways are included, I suggest reference to the map below (and referenced here) which was provided not by Council, but a member of the public.

And how about the idea of doing a deal with Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) anyway? They haven’t exactly demonstrated responsible guardianship of Five Mile Bay Public Reserves, and I am far from convinced that their governance is anything like as accountable to its members as even this Council which at least has the Local Government Act to force some level of transparency (I have previously written a small piece on TMTB here).

The Chief Executive has also promised in advance of this workshop a point-by-point response from (I say biased) Council engaged Treaty lawyer Paul Beverley to these assertions about mandatory matters which were forwarded by the Taupo Ratepayer Group (TRG) before Christmas. It contains 20 assertions which seem to make good sense to me, and it is fairly crucial that we properly set our starting point here and now. Apart from that, how much is all of this going to cost the ratepayer?

As an aside, here is a snippet from my JMA for Dummies article of July 2025 that gives a clue as to why we ended up in the totally preventable place we are now:

To put it plainly: This JMA agreement could have been signed, sealed and delivered back in July of 2025 perhaps even earlier, if only your elected members of the time had decided to keep things simple instead of including all the optional extras to only end up compromising the whole thing. Your current sitting Councillors Kevin Taylor and Yvonne Westerman were among those who voted for the extra items to be included, so part of the blame must squarely sit with them.

On that note: Legal Council Franks Ogilvie have been offering free 30 minute consultations to elected members around the country, these are the guys which provided advice to Kaipara District Council (KDC) regarding Local Government Obligations to Māori (which are quite lesser than widely proclaimed). Of course they are only seeking to expand their business, but one of these days I may be giving them a call. Franks Ogilvie lawyer Stephen Franks gives his brief take on Council Treaty obligations in this Platform interview here.

And further on that note: I sent this letter to Mayor Funnell today to formally request that the Council templates be changed to contain neutral and statutory obligations only, and not political statements like below:

I’m not challenging Treaty obligations, I’m challenging the inclusion of a contested political interpretation as neutral agenda framing. This is about template neutrality and statutory accuracy, not ideology. If we had been including ACT Party slogans, I think this would have been picked up long before now. So let’s see what happens.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take your job: I have been using Chatgpt for nearly a year and now find it an almost essential tool for all sorts of things, with a notable exception (thus far) being in my own profession. I quite quickly did recognise its limitations though, especially for the written word. It is great for dealing with bureaucratese and legalese, but quite hopeless for stuff you want to make a personal impact and I never use it to write these Friday updates. But AI is certainly making an impact to some industries and career paths as this article well illustrates. If you are already enrolled in a course for graphic design for example, it may be worth switching now.

Those damned electric wheeled thingies: Did you know that a lot of those electric thingies zipping around on our roads and footpaths are actually illegal? Yes, really. In New Zealand, if an electric scooter is <300W power output then it gets classed just like a bicycle and doesn’t need to be registered as a motor vehicle, but unlike a bicycle is permitted to ride on a footpath. The laws in New Zealand around this topic are currently pretty convoluted and were not drafted with electric personal mobility in mind at all, but I can tell you that there are a lot of >300W electric mobility devices which are not registered as motor vehicles as they are supposed to be, and riding on footpaths too. Some other countries like the United Kingdom are cracking down on them a lot more (including confiscation and disposal like here) and Singapore where jail time is on offer for those who ride E-scooters on the footpath. But as a transport professional I like the idea of E-mobility, and am glad we live in a more liberal place than those.

While we are on about Transport…Recall that last week I mentioned about a submission to Waikato Regional Council regarding Public Transport and Total Mobility? Well read here for my submission sent on behalf of Taupo District Council in advance of the next meeting of the Waikato Regional Council Public Transport sub-committee on 9 March. Some of the things being requested would cost money to implement, so that means ratepayers would have to foot the bill. By how much is really the question, and on 9 March I hope to be making some headway to getting some answers.

Elections area coming sooner than you think: These guys are in town Sunday evening if anybody wants to catch up. I have once met John Alcock the Deputy leader of Loyal party and he is an interesting character who also ran for the Auckland mayoralty. If you want to talk alternative ideas like say, no income tax or GST, then I might see you at Ploughmans restaurant this Sunday 22nd Feb 5pm.

Northland takes dog control seriously: Sometimes it takes a fatality to bring about change, and that seems to be no exception up in Northland of late. I have heard anecdotal stories around here of dog misdemeanors going unpunished, more so in the likes of Turangi. But nothing like I experienced on a recent trip up Whakatane way where a bunch of angry dogs chased our car for several hundred metres down the street – we were really off the beaten path.

Turns out the covid vaccines probably weren’t a good idea: as this article by Dr Raphael Lataster in Daily Sceptic outlines. I didn’t do it myself, but know of a few people close to me no longer with us whom I attribute this to their early departure. I just hope they made it to a better place.

What about that tree in Turangi: Just beautiful ain’t it?

Fridays Free Advice for the Filthy: This is something an engineer colleague and myself wrote up a couple of years ago. I think it helps to have a cynical nature to be an engineer, don’t you?

Fridays Black Who’s for the Sack?

13 February 2026

Pride – the worst and the essence of all sins. It is also the hardest of all sins to detect in oneself, and I count myself as no exception. As Proverbs 16:18 puts it: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (New King James Version). I think it is more than just a strange coincidence that a movement is so bold to label themselves after it, but perhaps they are only being the most transparent. This country called New Zealand is rife with it, and it will be our downfall – correction – it is our downfall.

But there is also a thing called dignity, and this week in Chambers I think it was demonstrated there is not enough of that going round. Recall last week that I was refused a Public Forum showing on the topic of financial delegations? (for the record, here is my complaint to the Ombudsman about that episode) Getting Elected Members to take more direct responsibility for major decisions is something I reckon could shave $M each year, and I know the Mayor and many of the other elected members do want to hear about it – but virtually none of them wish for my 10 min presentation to be audio-video recorded and on public record. The given reasons: it would set a new precedent for an Elected Member to be given such a platform, and could be seen as official endorsement of viewpoints which are mine alone. Another reason not mentioned but I strongly suspect: a few of the old-hand Elected Members don’t wish for it to be highlighted that in November 2021 they recklessly handed over all fiscal responsibility to the Chief Executive when they really shouldn’t have.

I am refusing to bow down to such intransigence and hypocrisy, because I believe that transparency is not just a word and it actually does mean something. So I will instead be putting together a video release for public consumption which the other Elected Members can view just like anybody else. It is a shame that their responses will not be collected for public record, but that is on them. If nothing at all else, this little episode should highlight to you all just who actually runs the shop of Council, and even though they could be it certainly ain’t this current batch of Elected Members. And for goodness sakes, why on earth do the opinions of Council staff get held up as so much more authoritive and objective than anybody else?

But honestly in the bigger picture and for all the ill feeling this has caused between myself and the Mayor who can by executive decree make it happen, wouldn’t it have been so much easier to just give me my damned five minutes last week?

One other cause of angst between myself and most of the other Elected Members: my once again refusal to adhere with proposed one-hour code of silence sessions on our regular Tuesday catchups. This has come up before and I thought we had dealt with it, but the Mayor once again went around the room to get virtually everybody else’s support in order to pressure me into acceding. I tell you people, this role has hardened me and I am no longer the nice guy I once was. Three years ago I probably would have folded, or if I didn’t would have been sweating it big time. This time round though, its like water off a ducks back for me and I know they can’t do a damned thing about it. I will not put up with any more small town small-mindedness, because Taupo is too pretty for that.

As a sidenote to the above unsavoury conversation and at my prompting for past examples of confidential information being unduly shared, Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor recycled up an incident from 2023 where I apparently did breach the Code of Conduct. Some of you may recall the John Hall building consent fraud case which I won’t bother you with all the details, but will show my quite firm rebuttal at the time:

29 June 2023

Dear Mayor, CEO et al,

As elected Councillor I reject the allegation of breach of code of conduct with respect to sharing of confidential information as stated at a closed councillor meeting on the morning of 27 June 2023, on the following grounds:

  • As an elected official I have a fiduciary duty to the people of Taupo District, and by that I have an obligation to seek independent sources of information, and not just from the CEO and council staff.
  • I am a Chartered Engineer and did seek advice from both Engineering NZ and fellow Chartered Engineer Mr John Scarry.  The intentions of my questions were mainly around potential council liability with regard to the situation of Producer Statement fraud, but also to get a better understanding of the Producer Statement process.  I did not divulge the name of any individuals involved or any financial or commercial sensitivities, and to the best of my knowledge there is no possibility of any personal gain to myself from these enquiries.  Izaac Sugrue of Engineering NZ informed me that they were already well aware of the issue through previous discussions with Taupo District Council. 
  • Mr Scarry is a structural engineer with extensive experience in the industry who has informed me that he has no prior knowledge of this fraud case in the Central North Island.   What we talked about was strictly within the bounds of one professional engineer seeking advice, in confidence, from another professional engineering colleague, regarding engineering matters of very great importance to the public.  I believe it would actually have been unethical for myself as a professional engineer, not to have sought such a discussion.  Mr Scarry gave me helpful background information on the various types of Producer Statements and their standing in relation to the Building Act, Building Code and the building consent process, and from this I was indirectly able to gain some impressions of potential council liability and responsibilities. 
  • The identity of the accused fraudster appears to be quite well known amongst the building industry in Taupo, and indeed in the past five or six weeks I have heard the case mentioned by several people in passing well before we had our meeting in confidence about it last week.  It would be a strange situation indeed if elected representatives are unable to exercise due diligence when any other member of the public is able to, and especially at this point in time with an apparently similar availability of local information.

I therefore would appreciate a redaction of the alleged breach of code of conduct please. 

Thankyou,

Duncan Campbell ME (Hns) CPEng IntPE(NZ)

To the above I never did receive any reply, except that the Chief Executive subsequently contracted an expensive lawyer from Hamilton for an hour or so training session to help me understand that ‘this is not how we do things around here’, and from then on because I was still unrepentant did sense a labelling as somebody who cannot really be trusted. As to my original concerns about the above building consent fraud case, I never did get satisfactory answers to affirm that Council staff had not been sloppy in their vetting of consent applications or even that the process has since been improved – this is also on my list of things to bring up in the nearish future.

Alright enough of all my people problem bleating – and politics is all about people problems – what about some of the other stuff going on?

We have all f….ed up: Mangakino ward Councilor Hope Woodward gets herself in the mainstream news with a tirade about the condition of her part of the Waikato River and wants something done before “it turns into something from the third world”. Waikato Regional Council get most of the blast but Taupo District Council does not get completely unscathed, and Mercury’s use of the chemical diquot to kill hornwort further upstream is said to be adding to the problem. It has apparently gotten so bad that some residents are selling up and summertime visitors are deciding to holiday elsewhere. However, I do think it is ironic that a labelled baddy the chief operating officer of Mercury goes by the same namesake as our esteemed Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor. So watch this space.

Cemetery update – Some of you may recall that from a Facebook post by a member of the public before Christmas I said that I would look into this Council’s policy around cemetery decorations. Well from brief tours of Taupo & Turangi cemeteries I have identified that there certainly are some questions with respect to even-handedness. So I still have unanswered questions about how the policy on lawn cemeteries is put into practice, and also how a change in policy was slipped past us in Chambers when it was revised just a couple of years ago – and I do say that with a degree of conviction because although I don’t always pay attention to every detail, I am fairly sure that if that change had been pointed out I would have had something to say. Anyway, I have been told that we are going to be looking at Cemetery Management Plans in the next 12 months and that will be an opportunity to revisit. The issue is really all about cost-effective grounds maintenance, but I think there should be opportunity for people who want to decorate atop the grave in designated areas if they wish to pay a little more. Pasifika people in particular know how to turn a place of the dead into a place of joy, and if Auckland allows for it then why can’t we?

Growth assumptions or stabbing in the dark? Yesterday we had a workshop where Council number crunchers shared their predictions of population increase for the district, along with the currently designated and anticipated areas where residential housing will happen. You can watch the one hour presentation here. I am not 100% convinced that these people have got it all right, but we have to start somewhere otherwise bad things can happen. We need to plan for future water and wastewater infrastructure, and absence of that will throttle development. Likewise, if we overestimate growth and build bigger infrastructure than actually needed it could bankrupt the district if the expected increase in residential rates intake doesn’t eventuate. I have heard anecdotal stories of just that happening to a smaller Council in 2006 which so overstretched themselves they were forced to amalgamate with a bigger entity just to stay afloat – so these things do matter. Of note it was also pointed out the rapid increase in Kinloch residential housing in the past 10 years compared to other areas, but I am already hearing some rumblings from the Kinloch quarter that Council is getting it completely wrong by saying it will flatten. Says one member of the public observer of this workshop:

“In that entire room, there seems to be a lack of understanding of where growth comes from. Its like they think it ‘just happens’ all by itself.  Because of this lack of understanding there is a feeble effort to promote and attract growth. Growth is nearly always created by the private sector.   I realise this is political, because a lot of people don’t want growth, they want it to stay the nice little Taupo that ( in their minds) it used to be. But they do want better shops, better hospitals, better schools, and more jobs that any growth brings”.

Just tell us how much: We also had a staff presented workshop on Tuesday where Elected Members were asked the burning question: How much do we want rates to increase for their Long Term Plan (LTP) calculations? The next LTP is due out in about 17 months time, and given the government intentions of rates capping to inflation to kick in 2029 they were seeking some direction. I can tell you that no such firm direction was given, and I see scant chance that your 2026/27 rates bill will be anything less than the 6.7% increase already set out in the 2024/34 LTP. My own commentary included that rate capping to inflation is not to be relied upon as a government imposition because future governments could scrap it altogether, and I would much prefer that rates-capping to inflation become not only a voter expectation but an outright demand. You can watch the one hour workshop here. I also foresee that a new rate capping regime will force the hand of not only Councils but organisations like Ironman NZ and Supercars to seek alternative funding than just the hapless ratepayer, and which seems to become a competition amongst Councils – and that won’t be such a bad thing at all.

Zoran the Zorro of Selwyn: On that note, I think this submission by Zoran Rakovic during the Public Forum of a Selwyn District Council meeting in December is well worth a listen. Zoran didn’t manage to get elected himself, but he is very engaged with the way his Council operates and even went so far to prepare a Notice of Motion for Councillors to use if they so wish, in order to demonstrate their public commitment to keeping rate rises at bay. I reckon that such a Motion would go a long way to letting Council staff know just what is expected of them, something currently missing at Taupo District Council. I wonder if they would have let Zoran speak so openly and in a Public Forum if he were a Councillor?  

Shopping elsewhere next time please: Here is a copy of my complaint to the Minister of Local Government about our contracted electoral provider Electionz.com, who I felt was unnecessarily intransigent in their response to my questions about the data collected. I was only doing my due diligence to try and affirm that no election fraud might have been happening in this district similar to what happened in Manukau, and their employee Warwick Lampp steadfastly refused to respond. I also tried to find out how much we paid for their services, but that request was turned down by Council staff on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. Wow, whatever we did pay I say it was an absolute ripoff.

Buses and disabled take note: As your representative member of the Waikato Regional Transport Committee, I have until 20 February to make a submission around what we would like Public Transport and Total Mobility to look like in the future for our region. So I am coming to you for ideas. Public transport is handled by Waikato Regional Council (i.e. NOT Taupo District Council) and a portion of your Regional rates gets put toward this.  By Total Mobility we are talking about: “Assisting eligible people with long-term impairments to access appropriate transport to meet their daily needs and enhance their community participation. This assistance is provided in the form of subsidised door to door transport services wherever scheme transport providers operate” (for a fuller description see the NZTA website here). I also posted this request for public feedback on Facebook a few days ago and some of the responses are already quite informative, so feel free to put any comments there.

Zero rates rise for Northland so why can’t we? Northland Regional Council chairman Pita Tipene believes a 0% increase in rates take is achievable for the upcoming financial year, I wonder how they can manage but we can’t?

Lake Okareka locals take gold clams seriously so why can’t we? Isn’t it interesting that some people are taking the gold clam threat a lot more seriously than here in Taupo, like say Lake Okareka locals including Te Arawa Lakes Trust who are imposing all kinds of restrictions like warranted officers and community volunteers manning boat ramps to check those entering have followed the “Clean, Check, Dry” procedures. Food for thought there, and I don’t mean gold clam soup.

Almost free entry for youth: Hastings District Council has just introduced a scheme whereby youth get $1 entry into Hastings District Council-public pools and Hastings Sports Centre has been launched in a bid to encourage young people to be more active. Available to all young people living in Heretaunga Hastings aged 12 to 24, and interesting that with all their challenges from last year’s big storm it is reckoned as affordable. I say if youth don’t keep themselves occupied they can only cause more trouble for the rest of us, so I would like to know why we can’t do such a thing here too.

Like this guys style?  This guy Geoff Upson is a sitting member on Rodney Community Board up in Auckland, and he is already casting himself as the Opposition! I have thought of myself the same way for quite some time now, but never thought of actually labeling myself that. Perhaps I need to start talking more straightforwardly like Geoff.

Fridays Freak’in Fantastic: Amazing photo taken up Mount Tauhara on early Christmas morning of 2025, and believe it or not the silhouette in the middle of the rainbow is me. Rain or shine, that wonderful place is always stimulating.

Fridays February We’re Back!

6 February 2026

Okay folks, I’m back and to explain my absence: we have our first Council meeting of the year just yesterday, and until now there really haven’t been any Council happenings worth reporting on since Christmas. Basically over summer your Elected Members had around six weeks off with virtually nothing on our calendars. That is not to say that none of us did community stuff in that period, only that we aren’t called on to debate or decide anything.

Now for the bad news: I do believe our new Mayor is a dud, and I’m calling him out now.

Just like the Mayor before, and just like the past twelve years.

To explain myself:

Some of you may recall my 2025 election #1 priority to Restore Democracy which included to cease and desist the cynical use of Standing Orders to shut down debate and discussion. I can tell you that nothing has changed on that front and it was demonstrated quite clearly at yesterdays Council meeting, when my application to appear in the public forum to give a five-minute presentation was refused by Mayor Funnell – in direct breach of Standing Orders and under the artless claim that ‘an elected member is not a member of the public’.  You can watch the video recording here if you like, and it took several times longer to debate than it would have to simply hear me out. Pitiful, un-necessary, and all of it total bullshit. Basically in order to people please some others, Mayor Funnell decided to squash on me. I was hoping that the Mayor would get the idea after I wrote him this recent letter on freedom of expression for Elected Members, but it obviously didn’t register.

My #2 campaign priority was to Take Back Control of Council, and that means doing transparency for real by making sure that important discussions of Elected Members be audio-visual recorded for public record. Because so many times have I experienced the dark hole of that place, that I now count anything not done in the public arena simply doesn’t matter. The topic of my presentation: Delegated Authority of Elected Members. The current setting at Taupo District Council is that the Chief Executive has almost total unfettered control of financial expenditure with little accountability to Elected Members – and that is just mental. But they didn’t want you to hear about it, nor of the change made in 2021 which you never heard about to make it so. You see, they simply don’t want to be embarrassed by the fact that probably hundreds of dollars could have been shaved off your annual rates bill, if responsible fiscal oversight hadn’t been just willingly given away in a debate which probably lasted all of three minutes.

What has Mayor Funnell got to do with all this, you ask? Because he is the one who been delaying and deferring about my offered presentation on this topic since before Christmas, and he almost certainly doesn’t want it aired in public view. This is despite his campaign pledge for transparency and accountability, and along with his commitment to tie rates to inflation (which won’t be happening any time soon) – I do believe we are experiencing just another windbag politician. I was really hoping these next three years weren’t going to be a repetition of the last – and to be fair, we have some spirited newly elects who won’t let that entirely happen – but without firm and wise leadership at the helm I am already seeing the writing on the wall. Leadership isn’t taking a vote on every decision under the sun which is within the Mayor’s authority to make (as happened yesterday with the public forum) – instead that is a recipe for the continued tyranny of the majority. Just. Like. Before. And if we can’t even get the democratic institution of Council Chambers working properly where Elected Members are able to talk freely or even be granted equivalent speaking rights of an attending member of the public – there really isn’t any point of having elections at all. Making any worthwhile changes to the current direction set by the Chief Executive simply becomes impossible.

However I do believe in Miracles and make no claim to 100% know the future, and perhaps this post will help push for drastic change and very soon.

Okay apart from all that which was quite regrettable to have to write, what else do we have going on?

Community Forums/ Committees / Representative Groups / or Whatever: You may be aware that a bunch of talkfests have been happening the month of January about the way Council engages with communities going forward, and I turned up to a few of these myself. To be honest I haven’t taken great interest in this issue, because I believe that the mechanism of community engagement is a moot point if Council always just does what it wants to do anyway and irrespective of what the community say – and there are so many examples of that in recent history around here. But it is always good to get out and about every now and then, and I did get to visit the wonderful Waitahanui community hall and meet some of the people there (for one thing, I reckon they could do with a new basketball court). And I was reminded of the No.1 concern for Wairakei people which is their landlocked state with regard to walking and cycling.

Planning Bill Submission is there any point: We did discuss another couple of items on Thursdays meeting, and one of these was Councils submission to the two bills set to replace the Resource Management Act (RMA): the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill (read the minutes here, and watch the recording here from 17 min). I have to say that my own impression of any changes to the consenting process regime can be secondary to the manner it gets applied. In my own profession of transport engineering I have been involved in resource consent process for around 30 years – same RMA as back then, but a great shift in the way Councils have become much more of a hindrance than the help they used to be.  For example I can think of a time when Council officers had to find some very good reasons to justify to management why they want to decline. Now, the situation seems to have flipped 180 degrees so that the applicant has to justify why they deserve to be approved. This may sound like an inconsequential difference, but let me tell you it is not.

Our submission also mentions some trepidation about the Retail Distribution effects, and that we could end up with large Box stores or Malls in the suburbs and the Taupo Town Centre will die (as per places like Rotorua). Until now I had not appreciated that for Taupo this was a concerted policy of the planners, but if I am right to assume that the politics of Taupo is a main bottleneck – then things won’t be changing very much in a hurry anyway.

Climate Change Really? On Thursday we also received a staff paper which was entitled Review of Climate Change Risks (watch here from 46 min). My own thoughts on this topic are that apart for the ski industry and perhaps the odd brush fire, colder climates present greater challenges for this district than warm – and that is just a reflection on human habitation globally which has always flourished more easily in warmer climates. And I do know enough about climatology that things will get colder sooner or later (perhaps much soon than anybody expects), so when that happens it will present a much greater challenge (ski industry excepted).

We were presented with some extrapolations of future flooding, but I do have to admit a degree of scepticism because of two things: 1/ Our blessing of free draining volcanic soils (which is also a curse for farming); and 2/ We have about the mildest weather in the whole of the North Island, and as someone who likes a nice storm every now and then I do so miss the more exciting stuff they get on the Coast. We also confusingly heard that annual rainfall and number of heavy rainfall events are not predicted to increase, so that would mean many more sunny days and I can’t see that as a very bad thing.

Capping Rates Yeah Right: Yesterday we also had a workshop entitled Annual Plan: Initial Budgeting and Direction where staff gave us a heads up opportunity to influence the setting of budgets for the upcoming financial year (the workshop was audio-visual recorded so when that becomes available you can watch it here). I gave it my best shot to advocate that we stick to capping things off to the government imposed maximum of 4.0% even if it won’t be mandatory until 2029, and I am hoping the staff will present us with a decent set of scenarios to make that happen (we are talking around $3M of operational spend reductions). But I am clearly in a very small minority of Councillors prepared to even consider that notion, so it looks like we going to get lumped with the 6.7% as set out in the 2024-2034 Long Term Plan (LTP) and not a smidgen less.

Is this bias or what? Some of you may recall that during our Joint Management Agreement (JMA) workshop in December, I challenged the presenting lawyer, Paul Beverley, over his previous statements that “Māori have a deep and innate relationship with natural resources”, which to me suggests an assumption of environmental authority that not everyone would accept. At the time, he advised this position is reflected in legislation and offered to provide examples. I couldn’t turn down that offer, and a few days ago received the follow-up response from Paul, which you can read here.

After reviewing the material provided, I remain unconvinced that legislation establishes any inherent or exclusive environmental authority. The references cited recognise Māori cultural relationships with the environment, which councils must respect, but they do not require governance concessions beyond statutory obligations.

As elected members, we are expected to rely heavily on professional advice, which makes it even more important that such advice is carefully examined and openly tested. Given the long-term implications of a JMA, it would be prudent to ensure advice is tested from multiple governance perspectives, rather than relying on a single adviser whose philosophical framing and cultural premises may shape outcomes in subtle but significant ways. This JMA will therefore require very careful scrutiny to ensure it remains fair, proportionate, and accountable to all residents of our district. I encourage residents to read the material themselves and stay engaged as this agreement develops.

Speaking of consultants: One of my things to do under my #2 campaign pledge to Take Back Control of Council was for Elected Members to be able get independent opinions for all sorts of things from legal to engineering, and was thinking an annual budget of say $10K per Councillor could be set aside for this purpose. I don’t know of any Councils which have that policy already, but Wellington Mayor Andrew Little apparently did commit to this in his election campaign:“Give Councillors the ability to test the Council’s legal advice through a $50,000 per annum contestable legal advice fund.”I am told that in the last term Wellington had a lot of problems with Council officers telling Councillors they couldn’t do things “due to legal advice”, and sometimes even refusing to even provide Councillors with that advice.  I’m telling ya, this thing is a live issue around the country.

And what about the staff? Yesterday Elected Members also had a staff led training session about the Councils Procurement process, which is pretty much as dry a subject as it sounds. But I took the opportunity to express what I see as its biggest achilles heel and especially as it relates to a provincial town as Taupo: staff qualifications and experience, or lack thereof. Because staff are the ones who set the context and framework of any awarded contracts, so it can totally depend on what they do or don’t know, including what they are unaware of to even know to seek advice on. I have seen this so often in my professional engineering career it is just an assumed thing of the industry, and there is no way it doesn’t also apply here in Taupo.

Wayne Brown doesn’t have manners: Apparently leadership has many different faces, and it isn’t always pretty. Threatening to rearrange a journalists face is not exactly model behaviour from the Dummies Guide to Being a Mayor, but he did it.

JONESIE awards due 12th February 2026: For those who reckon Council wastes a lot of your money on stupid stuff, you only have another week to make a submission for the Taxpayer Union Jonesie Awards for wasteful government expenditure. You need to get specific examples with a full back story to have a chance of winning, I did have one lined up for submitting but as there is still a chance it won’t happen so might save it for next year. However for anybody out there who does have something I do encourage you to send it in.

Waitangi Day: Oh yes its Waitangi Day.

Fridays Finish Finale Finaali : Even though I have never been there, Canada and Canadians strike me as so similar to New Zealand and New Zealanders just without the sunny beaches. So sit back and enjoy this wonderful piece from my favourite Canadian poet/singer Leonard Cohen with a message to all those with hearts to hear and bear it:

Fridays Here See Ya Next Year

19 December 2025

Last post of 2025 from me Councillor Duncan, as Council Chambers has a well earned break until February. I think the newly elected will have had a taste now of the flavour of things to come, and given the challenges already being lined up I am reasonably confident a few are already wondering what they have let themselves in for. My urgent advice for the newly elects:

Try to get along with the others as best you can, but don’t compromise your reason for being there and if you are not sure of that quite yet then please contemplate over the break.

To be fair, it probably took me at least 12 months to figure out just what I was there for.

Yesterday 18 December we had the first Joint Management Agreement (JMA) workshop which you can watch here, and also the last Council meeting of 2025 on Tuesday 16 December which you can also watch here if you haven’t already (for the agenda see here). Tuesday was a fairly marathon session, and that wasn’t even counting the confidential items afterwards which took about another 90 minutes. A constituent came up to me afterwards saying it was the liveliest meeting he had watched in the past 12 months, and he has watched every single one – so that is certainly encouraging. Still a few teething problems with the video recording, but our good people are taking onboard the feedback and making the adjustments that they can. I will go through the issues of the week in a rough order of importance:

JMA Workshop or just a Public Relations Whizzbang? You tell me. I don’t think I really learned much about the JMA that I didn’t already know (and for what I do know you can read here), but the attending lawyer Paul Beverley was pleasant enough and at least we saved a few $$ by zooming him in instead of flying up from Wellington. But he hedged a few of the fielded questions alright, including the not trivial one of just what is mandatory and what is not, and the burning question of ‘how much is this really going to cost?’ we never managed to get to. I did hassle Paul about his on recorded statements that “Māori have a deep and innate relationship with natural resources” which to me implies that the rest of us do not, and I must say his response that it was ‘legislated and incontrovertible’ did catch me off guard – but he has offered to provide details and I am now awaiting his response. However what really strikes me about this whole JMA thing is that things are still so murky. I reckon it is about time we start referring to the Plain Language Act of 2022 which is designed exactly so that public agencies have to ‘improve the accessibility of certain documents that they make available to the public’. For one thing, I reckon we need a bunch of Case Studies so that people can better appreciate the real effects to the average person. Like what about Farmer Fred putting in a new paddock or septic tank, or Suburbanite Sarah living in the catchment area who wants to erect a new garage? To be continued in 2026…

MONEY, its a crime, share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie: Item 5.9 from Tuesday – Allocation of Taupō District Council’s Governance Remuneration Pool (watch here from 1:34:36): This will probably have been one of our more awkward debates of the term, because on one level it is all about elected members squabbling over their salaries. The gist of it is that the Remuneration Authority gives this district a fixed pool of $569, 734 for the 2025-26 financial year, which minus the $159,517 set aside for the Mayor, is subject to agreement of elected members as to how the rest gets shared around. Back in 2022 I recall this happened as smooth as butter, but a few of us old hands from that time are wiser now and saw this matter as much more important than meets the eye. My suggestion for any of the more well to do elected members to donate their salaries to the kitty was not taken up.

My own commentary on this item was regarding the Deputy Mayors piece of the pie, because that is the only difference between the three options we were presented with. My contention was that the proposed Options A & B (1.68 and 1.6 times the base Councillor salary respectively) unfairly overstates the Deputy Mayors roles and responsibilities and understates the rest of us, so I advocated for Option C at 1.4 times the base Councillor salary of around $40K(you can read a transcript of what I said here) – which still represents a substantial premium of $14K above the 2022 figure. When it came to voting on the recommended Option B, four of us objected (Crs Campbell, Rankin, Greenslade & Woodward) – possibly not all for the same reasons as described below – and the motion was passed.

During this debate Turangi Councillor Sandra Greenslade expressed quite vociferous opposition to a proposed community engagement structure which could see the disbanding of the Tongariro Representative Group, and Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward reiterated her concern with that same possibility for the Mangakino-Pouakani Representative Group as well (there were also two submitters during the public forum at the very beginning of the Tues meeting). What has this got to do with elected member remuneration, you may quite reasonably ask? Well it actually does affect salaries, because last term the Chairpersons of these committees did receive an additional $4k per annum for the additional responsibilities. Now there is a larger conversation still to be had as to the potentially revised format of these committees, because there is a feeling among staff and some Councillors that a less formal community engagement format could be more effective and less draining on staff resources. That discussion was originally intended to happen on Tuesday for leading into some community engagement during the month of January, but was scuppered after it was realised that elected members weren’t all on the same page about it.

So the cart seems to have got before the horse somewhat, and perhaps it would have been better to agree on salaries after this matter of community committees/forums got sorted out. The only opinion I have on this topic is regarding the Kinloch Representative Group which I have been involved with and reckon could do with some adjusting, and it also seems odd that no other community in the Taupo ward has an elected member and staff engagement committee except for them. Anyway it is probably quite healthy to bring attention to it now before any decisions get made early in the next year, and who am I to argue that early warning flags cannot influence the way things turn out?

However in the wider picture of things, there is not much doubt that elected members of this district who take their job to heart are quite underpaid for the good work that they do. With a base salary of just $40K and all the sweat and tears that can come with it, one really has to be a certain type to want to take it all on. And because I can be a bit of a numbers nerd at times, looking further afield I did make made quite an interesting discovery. It turns out that unless anything has drastically changed elsewhere, at a recently negotiated salary of $155,254 the Rotorua Deputy Mayor Sandra Kai Fong will be the second highest paid in the country, with only the Deputy Mayor of Super City Auckland getting paid more. So how on earth does little old Rotorua justify that? Good question. Maybe she has to fill in a lot for second term Mayor Tania Tapsell as she gallivants about the country promoting her district, or maybe its because Ms Kai Fong was a lawyer in her previous occupation and needs it to support her lifestyle?

Kinloch artistic opportunity or a blot on the landscape? Item 5.2 from Tuesday – Reclassification of Kinloch Reserve (watch here from 22:30): This is for the purpose of a new water reservoir to alleviate local water shortages in summer, and the item was passed unanimously. We did have several objectors, one via zoom who did submit quite a comprehensive objection on grounds that included visual amenity and loss of local habitat for wildlife. However this site was chosen by staff after some quite careful consideration, and we were unable to poke any holes in the logic behind its selection. I reckon it poses quite a good opportunity for local artwork if the Kinloch community so decide…

Political messaging in Council reports? Item 5.5 on Tuesday – My challenge to overt political messaging in Council documents (watch here from 1:04:12): The item was only relating to some new road names in the Kokomia subdivision to which nobody had any issue, but I used the opportunity to pop in a burning question which has been bothering me for quite some time. The following statement was first inserted into Council documents around the time of the 2021 Long Term Plan, and gets repeated in virtually every agenda item we get presented:.

A constituent recently challenged this terminology, and even passed on some feedback about it from Minister of Local Government Simon Watts. Diving into it a little deeper myself, it is quite apparent that the Local Government Act only mentions the Treaty of Waitangi and nothing about Te Tiriti, and there is certainly nothing about ‘partnerships‘ either. When I questioned this sort of thing a couple of years ago, the only response I received was: “go do some reading“. Well I can tell you that I have now done my reading, and it is fairly apparent to me that this is a form of political messaging which is every bit as misplaced as if we were repeatedly broadcasting Act Party slogans. I am a little curious how the language did get slipped in, but either way I will be requesting elected members to review – because to me the language implies a settled political position which does not reflect the full diversity of views within this Council or our wider community.

Don’t misbehave or else: Item 5.11 from Tuesday: My request for ALL workshops and committees to be audio-visual recorded during the term was quite well supported by other elected members (watch here from 1:51:46). This is not just for the purpose of tidy public record keeping, but also for the protection of those attending. I am aware of a few unsavoury incidents in the past 12 months involving both members of the public and elected members, and rather than just hearsay there deserves to be some measure of accountability which this could provide. In this day and age when all it takes is a phone and a tripod, there really is no excuse not to.

Apart from all that local stuff, just a few other things:

Can we do the same for Lake Taupo? Taranaki Lake Rotomanu is to be drained in an attempt for scientists to check it out after a gold clam infestation, but I don’t think that is an option here. Is it only a matter of time before a gold clam invasion eventuates? Because unless something is pointedly done to stop it happening, I can’t quite see it any other way.

Is the new Mayor of Napier misguided, or a bad boss, or what? Mayor Richard McGrath’s executive assistant has resigned, saying she can no longer work for him due to his “disregard for Treaty principles”. I wonder if she ever checked to see if that clause was in her employment contract?

See, bad things do happen: Voter fraud by theft of postal voting papers resulted in an electoral result for a Community Board being overturned in South Auckland. The numbers weren’t extraordinarily high, but the evidence that the fraud happened was apparently compelling. I am not sure how the instigator of the review made it happen, because when I made my own enquiries to simply affirm that the same was not happening in Taupo, our Electoral Officer told me to politely get stuffed and that he had legislated immunity to be able to do so. So next time around, I will be asking our Mayor to shop around for another electoral provider (they are a private enterprise) – and get a better contract.

Rates Capping coming in time to save us? Sort of, but not really. Government is allowing until 1 July 2029 for them to fully kick in, so until that happens I suppose that means that Councils like ours can continue to strip you naked with outrageous rate increases (perhaps we might get some slaps on the wrist though). However, an interesting question did pop up at a recent webinar with Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) – What about the Councils which have been diligent up until now (that is, if there are any), but are now requiring new infrastructure to cater for the growth they are now facing? Doesn’t that position them unfairly compared to the less disciplined Councils which already have their setting too high? The answer to that question according to DIA though, is that these are early days and that is a question for later down the track.

Not the panacea its made out to be: Recall that the Turangi Wastewater Plant is being lined up for a $20M land disposal solution instead of the current arrangement whereby the outflow goes back into Lake Taupo via wetlands? It turns out the land disposal option being currently used by Rotorua Lakes Council in Whakarewarewa Forest isn’t working out so well, and although the stated reasons in this article mention cultural I have heard from other sources it may also include nitrogen saturated soils. Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee is also saying this is being dealt with by yet another ‘secret unelected committee‘ – which I have gleaned are quite numerous over there.

Road cone hotline to close: The government instigated hotline to report road cone overuse is shutting down, as they are saying it has apparently served its purpose. However, Councils are not obliged to be fully compliant with the more reasonable and recently introduced NZTA guidelines until 1 July 2027, and I think we are still a long way from taking a good long hard look at things. If we added up how much this country spends on traffic management, I reckon we could well be into the 10’s of $M for every saved life or seriously injured road worker – because after all, that is the point of traffic management. Unless we discover a few more gold mines to plunder, things need to change.

$100B is a lot, isn’t it? Geoff Parker says the $100B Maori economy is a misnomer, and he makes a pretty good case I reckon with remarks such as: “The suggestion that New Zealand must treat Māori as ‘true partners’ in planning, investment, and infrastructure is a political claim disguised as an economic one”. I am certainly not the most financially literate person around, but I do know that book value is not equivalent to productivity or even prosperity – and what really is the ‘Maori economy’ anyway?

Reality check to climate scaredy-cats I didn’t attend myself, but I am sure this 105 min presentation at local Suncourt Hotel by visiting US scientist William Harper will have been very interesting. For others like me who missed it, you can watch it here.

Fridays fire up your imagination: Remember that the reason for the season isn’t somebody called Santa Claus, and please don’t disturb me when I’m writing up these:

Fridays Smokin’ Gun

12 Dec 2025

Councilor Duncan here again, and although it has got a little cooler outside in the last 24 hours it hasn’t much in Council Chambers. Less than one week to go before we break until February, I know Council stuff can get pretty tiresome and a lot of you are already tuning out with Christmas nearly upon us, but here it is anyway.

We have the last full Council Meeting at 1pm next Tuesday 16 December, and you can have a look at the agenda here. The only thing I have spotted of much interest is Item 5.9 being the approval of elected members salaries (and only the Mayors is a set number, the rest are subject to negotiation with the only limit being that the total must equal our mandated pool of $569,734) – because until we do that we won’t be getting any money in our bank accounts for the good work we do. But there are also a couple of other things happening next week which may be of interest.

The first is on Thurs Dec 18 from 10.30 am which is a 30 min presentation open to public viewing and being live recorded on the topic of the Joint Management Agreement (JMA). The presenter is one Paul Beverley, an experienced Treaty lawyer based in Wellington. I did a google research on Mr Beverley, and it seems that typical with this sort of thing, he is not exactly coming from a completely unbiased viewpoint as this article pointedly asserts (I have heard him described as just another lawyer on the Treaty gravy train).

I think one of the first things that needs to be established about this JMA, and which has previously been very muddied, is to establish what are the mandatory matters which Council has to sign up to, and what are the optional extras we don’t? On that point elected members were recently sent this very well put together two-page document from the Taupo Residents Group which makes some very reasonable assertions. However, my request to our Chief Executive to get a written response from Mr Beverley in advance of the meeting has been steadfastly refused, and it seems that flying him up from Wellington for what I suspect is intended as a 30 minute public relations exercise is more important instead. So my advice for this second round of the JMA saga going forward: Be prepared for more doses of spindoctoring. That way you won’t be disappointed, and can be pleasantly surprised if it goes any different.

Also on Thursday and immediately after the JMA session, elected members are having a workshop induction session on Procurement and Delegations (public excluded). This issue of elected members only getting cursory overview of significant financial and infrastructure decisions has been bugging me for a some time now (if any of you have noticed), and one of my 2025 campaign pledges to rectify is to take back control from staff via these Delegated Authorities (i.e. making elected members the signatory approvers of individual items). Because if we don’t get some more accountability of the spending to start happening, I see little hope in getting your rates bill down.

So I started to do a little research on how the current situation came to be, whereby the only real financial oversight we are granted is once a year during a rushed Annual or Long Term Plan exercise when there is never enough time to properly scrutinise even a fraction of the hundreds of line items run past our noses in the space of just a few weeks. And as it turns out, this current setting came about only not long before my inauguration in 2022! Because in item 4.9 of the Council meeting of 25 November 2021, the then elected members effectively handed financial oversight almost completely over to the Chief Executive! This is smoking gun evidence indeed, and if you find this hard to believe then I suggest you read the full item here. This was the adopted recommendation from 2021:

I must say they made it sound quite dandy that Council could be more efficient if staff have less paperwork justifying what they get up to, and only at the seemingly trivial expense of more comprehensive scrutiny by elected members. But the staff presented summary for that 2021 paper fairly well spells it out if you read between the lines, so I really cannot blame them:

So from that day onward the Chief Executive effectively gained almost complete control of expenditure, and now only has to check in with elected members if a line item exceeds $500K more than what was allocated for it in an Annual or Long Term Plan (and they can shuffle money around up to that figure, provided it does not exceed the total Council budgeted annual expenditure). Prior to November 2021, it looks as if any item over $500K was subject to at least some level of scrutiny by elected members because it required their official approval before it could happen, and although the Chief Executive had previously tried the same thing on in April 2018 (Item 5.14) elected members of that time only partially relented by increasing his spending limit from $250K to $500K).

I have also discovered that many Councils have what is called a Finance and Performance Committee, which means that any expenditure over a certain value and whether or not it is already approved on an Annual or Long Term Plan, must be run past that committee first (for example here is the Christchurch City Councils terms of reference document). But Taupo District Council has clearly headed in the completely opposite direction, with the concluding statement from November 2021 more or less stating that such scrutiny is an unnecessary burden:

“The suggested change increases organisational efficiency, makes efficient use of staff and Councillors’ time and enables the timely delivery of works”.

I say: What a load of complete codswallop. It is a simple fact of human nature that if you make people more directly responsible for something then you will get more scrutiny and accountability happening – and that applies to elected members just like anybody else. In my own professional area of traffic design, I have come across works which could have been done for a fraction of the price and be just as or nearly as effective. That alone gives me little confidence that unrestrained spending isn’t happening elsewhere, and speaking as an engineer/consultant/former Council staffer – I know there is little incentive in the machine of local government to do things cheaper or outside the square. Elected members need to get back in there and take back the reins from staff, and it simply has to happen if we are going see any meaningful reduction in unnecessary expenditure. So wish me luck next Thursday when this thing gets debated behind closed doors.

Apart from the above, I could only find a few of things worth mentioning:

Resource Management Act (RMA) getting scrapped: For all you need to know about the RMA reforms, this article from Crux is as good a guide as any. I don’t have any firm opinions on this, except as a practicing engineer who does dabble in consent applications from time to time, I must say it will make life a lot simpler when every Council doesn’t have its own bespoke District Plan to sift through like they do now. But Taupo District Councillor Wahine Murch also gives her fair enough summary here, and in particular how she perceives it might affect Tangata Whenua interests.

NZTA can do better: I attended the Waikato Regional Transport Committee Meeting in Hamilton on Monday where a few things got discussed including the revelation that improving State Highways only diminishes the competitiveness of rail freight, and next year we will be reviewing the six-year Regional Land Transport Plan (RTLP) – so this group might be able to help push local projects like improvements to the Turangi-Taupo SH1 connection if we can convince the other member Councils they will also benefit (which doesn’t seem a very easy thing to do). In the meantime, through our Regional Council rates we are all subsidising the Hamilton to Auckland rail commuter service to the effect of $30 per passenger every weekday that it operates (around a few hundred passengers a day for a 2.5hr trip each way).

But most substantially noticed was the unscheduled and unadvertised 50min complete stop for roadworks I experienced coming home in the late afternoon on SH1 just north of Oruanui Road. It seems to me that nowadays travelling on SH1 north of Taupo has become quite unpredictable in the roadworks summer seasons especially, and evidence is suggesting that more and more people are regularly settling on alternative routes on our local roads to avoid it.

The only people who can do anything about all this is NZTA because they control their works schedule, and even though they are are offering compensation to Councils for the damage these diversions cause to local road networks (exact figures were not mentioned), I think we as a Council could start considering Heavy Vehicle Restrictions on some of our local roads (relevant outside the times of complete SH1 closures). NZTA will also need to consider doing more of their works at night as happens like clockwork on the Auckland Motorways, and there is not much doubt that they need to vastly improve their communications to the public.

Motutere reverts back to before: Breaking news is that the 60 km/hr speed limit is going to be back at Motutere before Christmas as per this Herald report which includes a typo of 50 km/hr. I don’t think anybody is going to be very disappointed in that.

Financial debate of the century? Sounds like the mooted debate between Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Taxpayer Union’s ex-Finance Minister Ruth Richardson is getting tricky to arrange, but I do hope it goes ahead because it sounds as if it could be quite interesting.

Fridays nostalgic groove from a long way away and a long time ago:

Friday Summers Heating Up

5 December 2025

Councillor Duncan again with my view of things this Friday, and I must say that things are starting to get a little warmer and not just the weather. That old chestnut of controversy called ‘the JMA’ is now rearing its head, and a few other things like the Turangi Wastewater scheme and the Taupo Landfill were also recently discussed in Council Chambers that are stirring up thoughts in my own mind at least, of a few clues for this governments intent to smash up the Regional Councils. Whichever side of the fence you are on, there is no doubt that influences to some major infrastructure decisions are happening which have little to do with environmental science and everything to do with cultural preferences – and they don’t come for free. By the way these sessions were closed to public and not minuted either, so you will just have to get my version.

In the lighter side of things, it can at times feel like I am trying to defy gravity (again) with some of the stuff being presented in Chambers as the new Council takes shape. Like a little thing called ‘confidentiality’ for example, and I find myself explaining that we were not elected to be employees of Taupo District Council Inc, and so that means that floated ideas of weekly code of silence sessions are just not cricket. And the remuneration talks (still ongoing) remind that none of us are here for the money (around $40K for a Taupo District Council Councillor, unless you are the Deputy Mayor or chair one of the more important committees) – not unless you just want to be a tickboxing seat-warmer anyway.

And of course there was the governments announcement that rates caps of 2-4% (excluding water services) will soon be applied with a transition period until 2029 when the full model would be in place. I don’t exactly know what they were thinking to leave out the water services aspect, because although many Councils are behind their game and could do with catching up, places like Auckland can legitimately claim the same for transport (and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is already squealing).

Anyway, lets get down to it:

Joint Management Agreement (JMA) number is coming up: Some of you may have heard by now that Council is having an open to the public workshop on 18 December in Council Chambers (open for the public to watch but not participate). This is the first in a series of workshops planned, and the idea is to do them in a way that avoids the accusations of back door dealings which happened in July. I don’t know why we aren’t leaving all of this until next year, but this first session is apparently intended as a basic introduction to just what these JMA’s are all about and how they came to be. I have heard some musings that given the current make-up of elected members, the Waikato Rivers JMA could be passed in its current form straight away and that all of this talk (let alone public consultation) is a waste of time. That may possibly be correct, but I think for newly elects to vote for something as substantial as this before being briefed would be highly irresponsible, and would likely tear apart any semblance of a constructive way forward not to mention lose credibility with the public. I did also come across the below mention of it in a recent Hobsons Pledge newsletter, so it seems that the eyes of the rest of the country are also upon us.

$20M better spent elsewhere? On Tuesday elected members had a workshop introduction to the proposed wastewater solution for Turangi, which has been subject to investigations and negotiations for at least 8 years (!). Some info is available on the Council website here, but I must say it hasn’t ever been portrayed as straightforwardly as it could be. The consent has been expired since 2017, and the aim is to get a new one signed off by the Regional Council to carry us through far into the future. But that application process has been put on hold until we can sort out ourselves to decide what we really want to happen, and therein lies the uncertainty.

There are undoubtedly some historical grievances from both the original land acquisition and the resulting outflow directly into Lake Taupo (and realise that without a wastewater plant, we couldn’t have the town of Turangi), but the plant has been developed to such a degree with the latest technology that its output is apparently not far off from being drinkable. With the existing wetlands and its proposed expansion scheduled to happen in a few years time, its environmental effects are arguably quite minimal in real and relative terms. For example, the diagram below demonstrates its Nitrogen effect as relative to other polluters (and Nitrogen is one of the key measures).

But the negotiations of Council staff continue – and there is no scheduled date for them to ever finish – to find a ‘long term’ land disposal option, and to date the only thing that has been holding up that happening seems to be the inability to find a willing landowner and for the right price. Just to be clear, this land disposal option is primarily being sought for cultural reasons, and would cost in the order of $20M for infrastructure alone (plus operating costs which may be in the $00,000’s annually). A glimpse of the amount of work that has gone into this is shown in the diagram below, which illustrates all the different options that have been investigated to date.

Now I don’t wish to offend the locals who have been so impacted by all of this over its history, but now is surely the time to step back and think about what is really trying to be achieved here and that we are all going to end up paying for it. I can think of a lot more productive ways to spend $20M, can’t you?

Taupos rubbish on trial : Yesterday we had a staff presented session on the Taupo landfill, which has also of late been a topic of discussion at a few local marae. The current consent expires in 2027 (when basically the hole will be full), and we need to get Stage 3 ticked off by the Regional Council to carry us through to 2058. As far as I can tell there are few if any environmental reasons the consent couldn’t get rolled over, and there are no disputes about land ownership as with the Turangi Wastewater plant because it was never subject to acquisition under the Public Works Act. But many local hapu are understandably not very happy about having a rubbish tip at the bottom of their precious Mount Tauhara, and that seems to be presenting a bit of a conundrum.

You see things seem to have been left a little too late in the piece to seriously consider other options like a different landfill location (and which is unlikely to be economically viable anyway) or alternative measures like incineration (which is very expensive). Apparently it can take up ten years to get a new site consented and up and running, so if it were truly ever a serious consideration then the ball on that should have got rolling long ago. The simple fact is that if this consent doesn’t get granted by 2027, we will need to start trucking household refuse to a place like Hampton Downs at an estimated additional annual cost of $270 per ratepayer. I don’t know how significantly the Regional Council takes cultural opposition in their consent calculations, but gather it will be diminished with the newly proposed government reforms – so to me, this whole exercise is seeming more about politics than anything else. In the meantime though, we will definitely be spending on a redevelopment of the existing site as shown below which will enable trucks to get their disgorged contents sorted instead of tipping straight into the hole as happens now – and is also a necessary if we need to start trucking it out.

Jonesie Awards coming up: Anybody not familiar with these, you can check them out here. Basically they are an annual awards ceremony headed by the Taxpayers Union to un-celebrate examples of wasteful spending by government agencies. Last years first place winner in the local government category was Hasting District Council which put a bunch of unelected teenagers in charge of Council for a time as a novel PR exercise. If anybody has some nominations for around here you are welcome to submit, I even have one in mind myself.

Chemtrails all hot air? This is not a topic I am very knowledgeable about at all, but I was sent this 97 minute documentary to enlighten and recommend it as worth a watch to bring yourself up to speed. I cannot confirm if any of it is true, but cloud seeding to influence the weather has been attempted since the 1940’s, and it is not very hard at all to imagine the same sort of thing being tried again to address global warming. However the question really is: Would those in authority really do this without our consent or even knowledge, as is being asserted here?

Only a few bad eggs, yeah right: It looks like the scandal involving the former top dogs of NZ Police Andrew Coster and Jevon McSkimming is already being subject to a thorough whitewashing, with the current Police Commissioner and Minister of Police trying to portray a black and white situation that it was only those two who ever did anything wrong, and Minister of Police Mark Mitchell ridiculously saying “If you’re asking me to condemn our 15,000 police officers – sworn and non-sworn staff – around the country, and judge them by the same standards of that previous police executive, I am not going to do that”. But I am hoping that the average New Zealander has a little more common sense than to swallow this nonsense, and that anyone should be able to see that if you get corrupt and calculating practices at the very top, then it is inevitable that the same behaviours could have been trickling down for quite some time.

What has this got to do with local government? Well I have said it before and I will say it again: New Zealand is not the bastion of un-corruption it claims to be. I am not saying that I know of any practices as blatant as that of convicted senior manager Murray Noone of Rodney District Council / Auckland Transport going on around here (whose renown was such that I hear every man and his dog contractor in North Auckland knew the only way to get contracts with Murray was through bribery), but I certainly perceive similar patterns of institutional self-protectionism as been exposed in the NZ Police, including the withholding of information on a need to know basis only.  Clearly this is being illuminated as not being a very healthy approach for the NZ Police, and it should have no place in Councils either. But it certainly does happen.

Ever heard of UNDRIP? Otherwise known as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If you want to come up to speed with one of the reasons this country has been headed the direction is has, this article by Dr Muriel Newman of NZPCR is quite informative. Whether you agree with the authors perspective or not, there is no doubt that when New Zealand was signed up to it in 2010 it happened in quite a surreptitious way. I had never been a great fan of former Prime Minister Helen Clark, but at least she saw what might be coming in a way that the fairly clueless succeeding Prime Minister John Key did not.

Beautiful roundabouts: I haven’t driven them more than a few times, but as a roundabout fan must acknowledge the new ones on Taharepa Road / A C Baths Ave and Taherepa Road / Crown Road. However, I do have a grumble about the cost required to make these happen, because in a small town like this we should be aiming for good-enough infrastructure and not the rolls-royce. We have a Chambers workshop coming up on December 18th to discuss Delegated Authorities, and it is exactly decisions like this I want to get in the hands of elected members and not just leave to the discretion of staff – because any engineer worth their salt will always prefer to build the rolls-royce.

Waterslide fun for summer: Anyone recall the waterslides we had several years ago in the Riverside Park (where the summer concert is held)? Well this year they are happening in Ngongotaha north of Rotorua, and I will be making enquiries with the operators if they might consider coming back to Taupo because I thought they were great fun.

Fridays fable to figure: I recently came across this extraordinary 13min short film entitled ‘Lost Face’ about the fate of a fur trader at the hands of a far northern American Indian tribe. Wouldn’t it be great if some New Zealand filmmakers could make something as gritty about our own colonial experiences?

Friday Whisperings of Change

28 November 2025

Hi folks its Councillor Duncan coming at you again for another Friday update, and you may have noticed I took a break last week. These Friday updates have become quite a habit since they started, and I have found that having a self-imposed editorial deadline is a great motivational tool to make them happen. But they can also be quite demanding if other things are going on (like working to feed the kids etc), and even at the best of times and even so rewarding, writing can at times be a painful act of creation (no AI used here). Now I don’t want to make any unkept promises, but I will commit to putting out these Council updates at least fortnightly until their usefulness fades or I really do get sick of them (except January when everything pretty much shuts down for New Zealand).

So starting with the biggest news of late – the governments proposed rejig of Regional Councils, and the possible future amalgamation of smaller ones like ours into larger Unitary Councils like happened in Auckland back in 2010. Minister of Local Government Chris Bishop says: “The government does not think local government is serving New Zealanders well and the time has come for reform”.

I have mixed views about this whole thing, because I have experienced the joys and the pains of local government in both this provincial small town and big city Auckland Unitary Council which is the direction this is definitely headed. Neither of them gets my first pick, and the old Waitakere City of which I used to be part or even the borough Councils before 1989 now seem a class above in terms of community representation and responsible spending. And despite repeated claims by the likes of Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor that ‘the funding model for local government is broken’, I say it has rather just been mismanaged. Not only that, but I strongly suspect the corruption and collusion recently exposed at the very top of the New Zealand Police Force (and quite possibly endemic throughout the higher ranks) is happening in a lot of other public institutions in this country – local government not excluded. My grandaddy who was the first chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1946 is probably rolling in his grave.

To elaborate further, I expect that cronyism (definition: giving jobs to friends rather than to independent people who have the necessary skills and experience) is far less prevalent in larger organisations, although I have heard this country described as one big small town before so it will never be completely absent. And I reckon isolated Councils like ours are far more likely to become mini fiefdoms of the senior staff, simply because their employees have fewer job opportunities to escape without having to leave town. On the other hand, large unwieldly bureaucracies like Auckland Council can be impersonal and intimidating for the average person to thread their way through, and the theoretical efficiencies of scale may not come to pass because additional layers of management seem to always get added. So I am torn both ways – on one hand we have civilisation and due process but all the bureaucracy that comes with it, and on the other some more flexibility but all the small town crap.

So if you want my honest opinion based on my past three years experience, I think we may have been better off under a Waikato Super City. Certainly some of the dumber decisions of the past might have been avoided, like demolishing a perfectly good Council building and rejigging the streets of Taupo township without thinking where the traffic will go. So whilst I am usually a fan of smaller and nimbler and every small town Council will have its quirky differences depending on the latest election, this place has not given me the greatest confidence. At least with a larger bureaucracy everybody is in the same boat and gets the same thing – just like living in a place like Auckland, and just like at McDonalds.

Apart from that, this week we also have:

Council meeting 25 November: Watch it all here on youtube and you can find the minutes here, nothing too exciting except the setting up of committees for the new triennium. There are a few subtle differences from last term, and I took the opportunity (from 5min 17) to express my reservations that without these committees having the appropriate Delegated Authorities elected members will not have sufficient opportunity to try and rein in costs – or even be held accountable (noting that Delegated Authorities are yet to be decided).  The deletion of an originally proposed Infrastructure Committee also removes potential oversight of anything other than just water services (which is to be covered by a separate Water Services Committee with independent chair) – so for example transportation projects get little coverage. In addition, I also noted the presence of a handful of un-elected representatives with granted voting rights – that is something I formerly campaign pledged against, so to be consistent with that I expressed my objection.

Pull the other karakia please: I recently made a bit of a fuss about the regimented format used in Council Chambers the past year or so, whereby everyone including visitors was expected to stand whilst the official Taupo District Council version gets recited in unison by elected members, and that the only permitted variations were in Te Reo. I never did get any satisfactory explanation as to how that all came about, and have for quite some time been concerned about its apparent exclusiveness. So after I submitted my own proposed way forward for karakias, last week we had a workshop presentation about it (unrecorded for public viewing of course) – and guess what? Here was me thinking all along that karakias are a spiritual thing, when all along they’re not!

We were told that karakias only became religious after Europeans hijacked them in their colonial way of doing things, and prior to that were never meant as prayers at all! Well blow me down if I found this all a bit hard to swallow, and from its very first line the Council opening karakia is hard to accept as just being secular: “Tuia ki te mauri o te whenua / Connect to the life essence of the land”.

Anyway to cut a long story short, it was decided by majority decree that going forward only the official Council (secular!) version will be recited, and we are thankfully dispensing with the obligatory standing. My own summation: This is at best a missed opportunity for openness to other belief systems, and at worst a cultural and spiritual imposition onto the rest of us. Somehow I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic partaking anymore, but I won’t be making any scenes like this Community Board member did in Whangamata.

We have some money in the bank, didn’t you know? After the electricity companies were sold off late last century, someone decided that Taupo District Council would look after the money on your behalf. It is otherwise know as the Taupo Electric Limited (TEL) fund, and here is Sophie M Smiths useful three-part series of what it is all about. My own simplified take: the $80M or so is a community owned fund, the dividends of which some other Councils gave away directly to their constituents early in the piece. Until very recently the TEL fund was tied down as a form of insurance against infrastructure (i.e. instead of paying premiums to insurance companies), but that obligation no longer applies. Yes there are some current policies in place to govern its application, but elected members could for example by majority vote change those settings and likewise give it all away if we wanted.

Sounds like a plan: If we copy Thames Coromandel who have set up a Mayoral taskforce aiming to cut rates in half, then because our current forecast is 6.7% we should be about bang on to capping it to inflation just as myself and our new Mayor have pledged. No word of any taskforce happening yet though.

That much, really? Taxpayer’s Union was recently harassing Christchurch City Council for allegedly spending $1.36M on Ngai Tahu consultancy services over a three-year period. That is less than Taupo District Council has set aside for the next ten years on that sort of thing, so I am guessing nobody has tipped them off about us yet.

Too many Council staff? A recent review by Deloitte suggests that Wellington City Council has 330 more staff than they need to, I wonder if we should get a quote from them to look over us too?

Now that would be an interesting conference: There is a Marxism conference happening in Melbourne April next year, which I think would be far more straight-talking and entertaining than a Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) bash. I don’t think I can convince our Mayor to send me along at your expense, but I recommend it to anybody who is interested in the future of this nation to attend – even if only for information gathering purposes.

What has The Treaty got to do with school anyway? On the most recent consternations being thrown around after the government threw out obligations to The Treaty of Waitangi out of the NZ School Curriculum, I think Sean Rush’s letter to his local Roseneath School Board stands out as a reasoned argument that schools should stick to their knitting which is to educate kids and to stay out of politics.

Climate Education or Misinformation? Nowadays it’s hard to tell, but if local esteemed scientist Dr Dick Reaney’s recommendation is anything to go by, then visiting professor William Happer of Princeton University will be worth listening to at this FREE event next Sat Dec 6th as per below. You will need to RSVP dickreaney@outlook.com to secure your place.

Fridays roundabout revelry: Four bendy-buses trapped themselves and others into a stalemate situation for about ten minutes recently at a roundabout in Alexander Kiellands Plass in Norway (right-click translate to English if you don’t speak Norwegian). One bystander: “I don’t know what I’m most impressed by: That they managed to get into the situation, or that they got out of it”.

Fridays on the Brink

14 Nov 2025

Councillor Duncan coming at you again on this Friday, now with a clearer insight that our new Council is fast slipping back into the party line of the status quo, and that I could be wasting my time for the next three years. But I do hope I’m wrong, and I have been wrong before.

How can I speak so soon, you say? Well perhaps you can call it my more finely tuned political senses, but when everything from strategic Chamber seating arrangements to loaded prospective committee engagements, to just the way key information is starting to be ambushed upon us – one could be forgiven for mistaking that Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor had won the election instead of John Funnell.

I really wish the elected member induction sessions the past few weeks could have been audio-visual recorded, because they could be educational for both the public and newly elects should they wish to go back and rewatch. These included what must have been a very expensive four-hour session with a lawyer flown in from Wellington, who talked about things from how local government works to conflicts of interest (and yes, the JMA incident did get passing mention).

Taupo District Council has been the most dysfunctional Council I have ever been associated with in my 25 years plus of experience in local government, and I am not saying that just to be mean. I do not mean dysfunctional in the way of some other Councils which aren’t even able to make major decisions, but that it currently functions to serve its staff first and then only afterward constituents, and that the decision-making process is fundamentally flawed with any voices of dissent systematically getting bypassed or ignored. I did not get to communicate this in person to the other elected members, because despite our supposed ability to ‘free and frankly discuss’ in these sessions and our (kindergarten style) prompt cards intended to help us get along, true to form I never got to finish.

Okay enough complaining, so how do we actually fix these things? Like I set out in my three campaign priority pledges, things have to start happening from the ground up. That includes stuff as simple as ensuring things get put in writing all of the time, and handing some of the Delegated Authorities from staff to elected members as I submitted to them just yesterday (and the referenced sample here). I also believe that for transparency’s sake, a default setting should be that any meeting of elected members in formal Council meetings, Workshops or Committees will get audio-visual recorded (the only exceptions being by justified exclusion).  

So right now it seems to me that the circus is on the brink of setting up to carry on largely as before, and anybody with any brains in my position would quite probably want to get the heck out of it as soon as they possibly can. But these are still very early days and I don’t want to be too pessimistic, and of course as a Christian I still do believe in Miracles.

Apart from all that, this week we have:

Fires galore but whose to blame? Well after last week’s devasting local fires and heroic efforts, I am quite interested if the raging fires in Tongariro National Park could have been prevented. Surely there are some lessons to be learned, and were perhaps any previous warnings being ignored? I am no expert in this field, but it is fairly obvious to me that fires can start from any number of means and are only to be expected to happen sooner or later. So let’s see if we get a decent debrief, or (yawn) if it will simply be down to finger pointing at the nefarious person who might have started it.

But at least the Turangi airfield seems to have loudly demonstrated its community usefulness after all, as per this LifeFM report with comments from airfield operator Mike Fransham. This follows the controversy following Taupo District Councils abrupt withdrawal of support last Christmas, when I do not recall this aspect of its potential benefits being very significantly flagged.

Lakeside landgrab? #2…   I reckon it is a universal truth everywhere that having deep pockets can avert getting run over by the wheels of bureaucracy, and also grease it in your favour.  But is that really what is going on with the Te Kopua Street reserve in Acacia Bay? Media coverage of this issue is ongoing with this latest LakeFM piece, and I am still somewhat perturbed how it came to be. So far all I can get out of staff is a promise that this will be relooked at next year along with a whole bunch of other encroachments, which doesn’t come across as very satisfactory to me.

Elected members needing protection? So says this item about a couple of wahine Maori elected members feeling insecure and receiving threats But I say it isn’t just wahine Maori who are feeling uncomfortable, and I believe that we are at a certain point of time in New Zealand society when some things are starting to come to a head. I think the Renumeration Authorities offer on Councils behalf of $4500 plus $1000 annual maintenance to pay for home security is a little high though, because my own didn’t cost nearly that much – perhaps I should seek an upgrade? I remember as a teenager receiving bomb threats from political activists on the family telephone, that is a story for another day but it did help me realise that public figures do sometimes attract unwanted attention.

My advice to elected members or anyone feeling vulnerable: 1/ Get your address out of the White Pages asap; 2/ install security lighting; 3/ install camera surveillance; 4/ consider worst case scenario of home invasion and what means you have at your disposal to immediately respond. Online haters can be blocked easily enough, and realise that people may say a lot of things on a keyboard they would never say in person (just like alcohol does). In South Africa people get used to living in wire fenced fortresses, I don’t want that to happen for New Zealand but we are definitely heading in that direction. 

Whipping it good: New Hamilton Mayor and former deputy school principal Tim Macindoe apparently isn’t taking any prisoners with the way he wants to run his Council, as this report in the Waikato Times sets out.  I can tell you that is not the way things the new Mayor of Taupo is running things – nor would I particularly want him to – but who knows, perhaps he may change his mind over time. I still remember one of my intermediate schoolteachers fresh out of teacher training, whose demeanor was vastly different at the end of the school year when detentions became as common as the lollies she originally handed out.

What does this have to do with Council? I say that the latest scandal involving NZ Police has everything to do with local government, and I am not just saying that because we have an ex-senior policeman as our Deputy Mayor. In this report author Bryce Edwards argues that repeated abuses of office are not only systemic, but that the ramifications of the revealed corruption and collusion will extend well beyond just the NZ Police. I really hope they do, because this countries reputation as one of the least corrupt places in the world is in my opinion quite misguided. One journalists interesting observation:

Even men and women of apparent integrity found themselves along for the ride in 1930’s Germany, and they were people not so different from us. So the warning is clear – don’t just follow the programme because everybody else is.

I reckon that for Councils, one symptom of malaise is a lack of transparency and accountability. For Taupo, I say the demolishing of a perfectly good Council building and the appalling treatment of Council staff who refused the Covid-19 jab were very big mistakes to which we never heard any official acknowledgement. Because to truly learn from a mistake, acknowledgement first needs to happen.

Inspiring speakers influence: Young politician William Wood of Palmerston North recently gave an inspired speech at a Council debate to speak against the presence of un-elected representatives on Council committees (his argument won the day), something which both myself and Mayor John Funnell also pledged against. I must say though, William speaks as if he were in the house of Parliament than just little old Palmerston North City Council, and I expect he will go far in politics. Interesting sidenote: Unlike at Taupo District Council, elected members there are apparently permitted to attend and vote on committees even if they are not official members.

Friday quiz about a man with nothing left to lose: Marvyn Heemeyer – was he a villain or a hero?

NOTE: I probably won’t be doing the next Fri update until week after next

Fridays Flying Fancy

7 Nov 2025

Councillor Duncan reporting in again, this time it’s a much shorter piece because I have been distracted elsewhere. In terms of the new Council we really are only just starting out as elected members go through a few months of induction sessions to educate and remind what Council is all about. These induction sessions are quite important, not least because we also have a new Mayor who is fresh to local government – so I don’t think we will be making any major decisions before Christmas. It also offers a chance to start afresh with some new perspectives and throw out some of the old. I recognise that Taupo District Council has some dysfunction in terms of its transparency and democratic representation, so I want some things to be set right from the outset as much as possible (even the format of Karakia’s are getting a look in). My professional engineering knowledge was a big reason people voted for me in 2022, and I am still angry to have been sidelined from substantially contributing along those lines for the past three years – entirely due to the very small-town stuff of not pleasing the right people.

We are also in the throes of allocating elected members to various committees and working groups. In 2022 this was sorted out in less than an hour, but this time it is being evaluated whether we need new committees or even if some of the former committees should exist at all. So along with the quite special induction session we had the week before last, this time round the newly elected are getting quite a different experience. And by the way although a few of the committees are compulsory (like Risk & Assurance with an independent chair), many of the others are not and will depend upon local politics. For example in Auckland where transportation is a No.1 hot topic there will probably be armfuls of committees dedicated to transportation alone, but here in Taupo it will probably get lumped in with a bunch of other stuff like water pipes.

But some things remain the same, as the Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) induction day in Rotorua on Monday did remind. Although some of the presenters were good enough and the chance to meet elected members of surrounding districts is always appreciated, the clear political bias of LGNZ still shone through with a very one-side presentation relating to the Treaty of Waitangi obligations of local government. Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee even had the microphone taken off him before he could ask a few challenging questions that one of the presenters (a staff member of Rotorua Lakes Council) clearly knew was coming. So my desire for this Council to remain affiliated to that particular club is quite muted, and there is good reason that around half the country (by population) decline to partake.

This week and there isn’t much:

Lakeside landgrab? By now many of you will have heard about local agitator Jane Arnotts attempt to highlight a reserve encroachment on Te Kopua Street in Acacia Bay, if not you can read about it here in this Waikato Times article and listen to Jane’s 8 min radio interview here. I still haven’t got to the bottom of how it all came about, but it appears that despite community consultation several years back about a proposed land swap which was rejected, Council staff subsequently and in practical terms let it happen anyway. I have visited the site myself and met Jane in person, and she doesn’t seem the type to give up very easily – so this story hasn’t ended yet.

Making a point about something: These Dunedin newly elects weren’t just wearing scarves to keep out the southerly wind chill, because their swearing in all happened indoors. Any guesses to which team they support?

Unelected representation: This Invercargill Councillor also tried to make his point by opposing the presence of unelected Manua Whenua representations to Council at their inaugural meeting. The presence of unelected members to Council committees or working groups also has relevance here, because even though they might not have delegated decision-making authority these committees can still significantly influence the Council decision making process. Given my own campaign pledge to oppose this sort of thing (i.e. unelected appointments to Council committees with financial or regulatory powers), I am now at least questioning the eligibility for voting – and this does not just apply to Manua Whenua, but all sorts of outside representatives.

Because nobody spoke for the trees: A streetload of trees on suburban Wylie Street in Rotorua got the big chop and despite local objections and afterward furore (see pics before on L and after on R). Although we have had a few mishaps in Turangi the past year or so, I would like to think that in Taupo this sort of significant decision would involve elected members – which did not happen there.

Fridays politically correct message: This is the sort of thing that we see in some of our institutes of higher learning nowadays, one can only imagine what someone time transported from 1970 would think.