12 September 2025
Councillor Duncan reporting in with the past weeks Council happenings, or at least the ones I noticed anyway.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk isn’t exactly of local news relevance – or is it? In my view the tolerance to hear someone else’s views, or even to let others hear them, has waned quite significantly since around 2019. Violence has been a way of solving problems for a very long time, and against those in leadership roles especially. Are we so far off from having the same happen here? I am not so sure.
This week we have:
In case you missed them: my candidate 90 sec interview, and I also put out some information on my campaign priority #1 – Restore Democracy. Next week will be #2 – Take Back Control of Council.
Rotary rhetoric, or are they just relics? The Rotary event on Monday 8 September was well attended, and if you have two hours on your hands to hear a little more about candidates you can watch here. Otherwise, to the question: “Describe the purpose of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and how it affects your local government role?” this was my 70 second response. I did also prepare answers to several other questions about Rates Caps, Local Waters done Well, the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) and Maori wards, and you can find my written responses to those here.
There seemed to be a fixation on questions about Maori wards which I found a little odd given it is a public referendum question to decide in October, and the strict Y/N format of the questions at the end deteriorated things a little. Overall I think it wasn’t too bad an effort by Rotary who put it all on, and it would have been challenging to cater for so many candidates. But a couple of things did stick out for me: first that I am in a very small minority who openly say they would breach confidentiality – I think new candidates need to appreciate in matters of greater public interest that justifiable exceptions can be made, and also to challenge every time something is being held as confidential. And Cr Loughlin’s mentioning that staff could go to jail if they fail to adhere to legislation – I have not heard of that happening before in New Zealand, ever.
Mirror on the wall: Robert Lee mayoral candidate for Rotorua poses an interesting question about the Treaty of Waitangi, and what it means for Councils. Like me, he says: not very much at all. Having said that, the Kaipara District Council legal opinion which downplays Treaty obligations to Councils was recently rejected by a South Island Mayor
Why aren’t they signing? The Taxpayer Union pledge isn’t attracting signatures from too many Taupo ward candidates as you can see here, although for some reason they haven’t included Maori ward candidate responses (if you are in one of the other wards, you need to ask here). I find it a little strange that two of the front running mayoral candidates will sign, but only a few of us others. I am reading that as a bit of a disconnect to actually getting rates down, because any time you give The Council Machine an inch it will always take a mile.
Joint Management Agreement refresher: To piece together all my posts and info on the JMA, I have put together a special JMA page here. On that note, have a listen to Shane Jones inferring that some kind of woke virus has infected regional councils including our own Waikato one.
Race-based or just r**ist? New Plymouth Councillor censored for stating that a race-based procurement policy is r**ist. I am not sure if TDC have a similar policy for preferential treatment, but one of these days I intend to ask.
Why do we need Councils anyway? So says this guy, but I think it’s probably easier to run away in a housebus.
Works in progress but we are just about there now: Here are my candidate statements to Policy.nz, which don’t quite match the three campaign priorities I am putting out now because these were submitted several weeks ago.
Legal costs mounting? I reckon an interesting metric to compare Councils would be legal costs per ratepayer (including payouts), because I have a sneaking suspicion that Taupo District Council could be near top of the list. Just looking back to the John Hall debacle of 2023 where hundreds of building consent producer statements got signed off fraudulently over a several-year timeframe, I never did get satisfactory answers to my questions at the time. Like say: how many of these were simply vetted for quality purposes (because sloppy engineering practice is a much bigger problem than fraud)? Or even: have the processes since been improved to prevent it happening again? But the walls of The Council Machine went up very quickly with self-preservation at No.1, so I gave up trying.
Power back to the people: Auckland Transport to be stripped of most of its powers, with Minister of Transport Chris Bishop saying: “These changes mean that Auckland Council’s elected members will be directly accountable to the public for most transport decisions that affect the daily lives of Aucklanders”. I reckon the same needs to happen for elected members in Taupo, who for too long have been treated as tick-boxers for significant transport issues affecting the entire district. We just need the right leadership to get elected in.
Friday insider peek at… TRAFFESSIONALS, your local shop for traffic engineering advice:
duncandoestaupo.com 