Fridays Fabulous Blockbuster

8 May 2026

Acts 4:1-5: “But a certain man named Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession. And he kept back part of the proceeds, his wife also being aware of it, and brought a certain part and laid it at the apostles’ feet. But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back part of the price of the land for yourself? While it remained, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was it not in your own control? Why have you conceived this thing in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” Then Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed his last. So great fear came upon all those who heard these things. And the young men arose and wrapped him up, carried him out, and buried him”

A little harsh isn’t it? Poor Ananias was giving to the church but decided to keep a small portion back for himself, and for that he gets struck down? There aren’t many examples of things like this happening in the Bible after Jesus came to earth, in fact I can’t think of another single one. But it just goes to show that it wasn’t the act that condemned, it was the lie. I don’t think anybody can get through life without a few lies being told, but some lies are more damaging than others. God is watching.

Wow, what a week! No more Taupo District Council after 2028! So says the minister of local government Simon Watts on Tuesday in this official announcement which says that unless you are a Unitary Council already you must amalgamate with at least one other Council. I suppose Labour could always try and reverse it if they get into power this November general election, but we haven’t heard any peeps from them yet so my assumption is that it is full steam ahead. And my reaction? About bleeding time – but tempered by my recognition that bigger is not always better; the devil will be in the detail; and based on the Auckland example some wheels will inevitably fall off. Okay so we could have gone the Switzerland route and instead of going bigger gone smaller, but we are not being asked and it is out of our hands anyway.

I think a fairly good analogy of what we can expect is the Auckland Super City amalgamation which happened in 2010. My experiences of it as an Auckland Council staffer back then: Big promises and big expectations, but a quite a few disappointments all round.  The purported efficiency gains of reduced staff numbers were only temporary (which you can read about HERE), and in my neck of the woods only saw additional layers of management being added with reduced responsibilities for lower echelon staff. Local community influence was lessened, and the bureaucrats in Auckland Council and Auckland Transport gained the upper hand over elected representatives. Mayor Wayne Brown seems to have been successful in peeling some of that back recently, but it took all of 15 years to get there. Because I was still contracting for them, I was able to see that it took about a decade for Auckland Council to settle down into some new sense of normalcy. And if the Auckland example is anything go by, we will also be having a lot fewer elected members (Councillors reduced from over 100 to just 20).

So I foresee in two years time there will be no more Taupo District Council, and I won’t miss it so much – at least a bigger Council would undoubtedly have avoided some of the past dubious and daft decisions around here. My own experience with big restructures (both Councils and corporate) is that the doers on staff generally need not fear for their jobs, it is usually management and administration which take the hit. But we are being given only three months to decide who to buddy up with, so who will it be? Rotorua, South Waikato, Tauranga, or even what about Chatham Islands? This is going to be a very interesting time, and I think its quite a good thing we went it alone on the water services thing because those Councils which didn’t will probably feel entwined in those partnerships – but its not too late to unwind.

On local matters, this week we had the first of our community connect groups kick off this week in Taupo central and Mangakino. These were both audio-visual recorded and as at the moment only the Taupo one is available and viewable HERE. I personally don’t recommend it as very watchable unless you mainly want to hear about Chairperson Councillor Rachel Cameron’s view of the world and very little of anybody else’s (I did a transcript analysis, and Rachel did 49% of the talking – yes really). I did get a couple of chances to interject or inform, but was early on advised to basically clam up! (Watch that bit HERE if you like). Anyway my apologies to those who did attend (there were about 15 members of the public), I will try to get things sorted before next time.

One matter which did come up in that conversation was Five Mile Bay which you can watch from HERE. However we didn’t get very far with that discussion, because there is clearly an absence of understanding that there is a breach of the 2017 Treaty Settlement which has been going on since 2020 – the illegitimate blockade and occupation of the Recreational Reserve between SH1 and the lakefront. Maori ward Councillors Wahine Murch and Ngahuia Foreman don’t seem to understand this has caused significant strain on local relations and is a cause of so much mistrust – so why on earth should we consider partnering on a Joint Management Agreement (JMA) for the entire lake?? And all this after such a promising start in 2020 which you can read about HERE, but it seems that all it takes to ruin these things is a few disagreeable characters. This is the promise which was never kept:

On the brighter side, the Mangakino- Pouakani Representative Group was yesterday very ably chaired by Mangakino Councillor Hope Woodward on her first time at that role. There was a large turnout of locals (around 30 I reckon), and just goes to show that these smaller communities really do engage. The main chore of the day was to disperse $20K of community grant funding to $47K worth of applicants, and this was done quite amiably and in my opinion fairly. There was some discussion at the end about implications for the new super-sized Council, and one attendee expressed a negative to South Waikato for reasons unstated. The Waikato River Trails Trust applicant made an interesting comment regarding the recent footpath work done by Council in Mangakino which will apparently service their bike trails – the money spent on it could have funded 11 years of the work undertaken by their Trust (hope I got that right, but can’t check the audio-recording which is not yet up on youtube). Basically he was saying that Council built a flasher job when it needn’t, and the money could have been spent better elsewhere – he certainly isn’t the only Mangakino person thinking the same.

And on that note, I will just highlight a few recent articles about New Zealand’s propensity to overspend on Rolls Royce solutions versus the Toyota (and I would rather drive a Toyota across the Sahara desert anyway). There is Sean Sweeney former CEO of the Auckland City Rail Link (CEL) project who is saying that it could have been built for less than half the cost to save $2B, and that also applies to the latest stadium in Christchurch. The wealthy Danish apparently do things much better he reckons, with similar stations at about a quarter the cost – we all know that the rich hold tight to their money, so what does that make us? Then there is the rural bridge in Central Hawkes Bay which a contractor says he can build for a fraction of the $16M which his Council told him was needed to replace it. I tell ya folks, we need to get back to the No. 8 wire mentality which this country was built on – not always pretty, but it doesn’t send us broke.

A local example of recent infrastructure spending being questioned by a few is the roading improvements currently happening on Roberts Street and Titiraupenga Street in Taupo town central. I understand we are spending around $600K there and have asked to see any option reports that may have been done, because it seems to me that not a heck of a lot is being achieved for such an expense – but we will see. Probably more worthwhile than Christmas lights, but maybe not a few dinosaur sculptures. This sort of thing is the reason I think this Council needs a separate Financial Committee for elected members to have much better oversight of significant expenditure, instead of just tickboxing hundreds of items once a year at Annual Plan which is what happens now – so lets hope the new Council in 2028 has one of those. I have also taken the chance to point out that places like Auckland give out more detailed project information and sometimes even let constituents a chance to have their say before they happen, which is often not the case in Taupo with only minimal information going out.

And while we are on the topic of expenditure, the 2026 Taxpayer Unions Ratepayer Report is now out. So how does Taupo compare with the rest? Well you will have to look for yourself and we aren’t the worst, but we certainly aren’t anywhere near the best either. You can read a Taxpayers Union social media post summary here and a snippet below:

Notice that Christchurch refused to declare their consultant and contractor spend, which is something I have asked our Chief Executive about previously but also been declined – and this is a crucial figure for understanding if Council staffing levels are too high. Of significant note, Taupo District Council was one of only three provincial Councils which refused to provide this data (see HERE).

I will leave you to read for yourself our Chief Executives reasoning, if transparency is a very real thing around here. Note that a 2023 ratepayer report had indicated a $50M figure for the previous year for TDC, but I was never able to confirm.

Just one last thing:

On Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) membership: Waikato Regional Council did a vote which the Taxpayers Union president had some scathing things to say about, and he even calls LGNZ an immoral organisation (read the full article HERE). I can tell you that Taupo District Council has never had any vote on this in my time there including this year, and reading the room I wasn’t tempted to bother submitting a Notice if Motion for debate.

And that’s all folks I’m done. But I managed to get this one out for Friday, so I reckon that I’ve won.

Fridays tune for any trip or 70’s guitar nostalgia: