Fridays Fairy Troubleshooting

11 September 2026

A well known quote from George Bernhard Shaw (1856 – 1950) which seems quite pertinent to recent happenings:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

Councillor Duncan once again on Friday to make your life more interesting. This week Council was mostly just fluff which I make a few notes on below, but I’ll talk first about the rift I appear to have caused with my latest assertions about the conduct of some of my fellow Elected Members followed up with some support from my Aunty. Now I am generally a straight talking kind of guy from West Auckland, and realise not all appreciate that approach down here in the provinces. However I am also somebody who believes in due process, and Council’s Standing Orders expressly require open, transparent and democratically accountable decision-making, while our Code of Conduct requires members to work constructively and transparently, make decisions on merit, and expressly protects robust debate. Where a substantive motion(s) is defeated without a single member of the majority articulating the reasons for opposing as happened on 25 August, the public is entitled to ask how those principles of transparent and accountable decision-making have been satisfied. In that instance nobody can claim it happened, so I say this is dangerous and that’s why I am making such a fuss.

But from this some interesting things also came out of the woodwork, like local blogger/investigator Sophie M Smith’s pushback with her article HERE accusing me for “losing the room”. I find it quite extraordinary that someone like her who advocates for transparency and accountability, not only decides to castigate me for only insisting that it happens, but as a Facebook group admin also block censored me from posting my responses! Now Sophie has written some excellent articles in the past so I don’t want to give her too hard a time, but I really hope she uses this episode to rethink what she is about. Councillors like me get paid to do a job which people vote us in for, why doesn’t she instead start asking about the ones who say nothing at all?

There was also an interesting question regarding my general conduct which was put to the Mayor and his Deputy at the Kinloch Councillor Connect session which I didn’t attend but got a tip-off (watch HERE). The member of the public who asked didn’t identify himself, but he did make an interesting observation which I will paraphrase: How come I am getting away with being so disruptive? The answer friends, is that Council Chambers are not like Cabinet in Parliament, and there is no “collective responsibility” which applies for us to acquiesce with decisions we don’t agree – although it certainly gets strongly implied. Instead you should think of us as a Parliament, and just as you wouldn’t expect Te Pati Maori to shut up about Act’s latest musings about the Treaty of Waitangi you shouldn’t expect us to remain quiet. That’s if we are doing our job of politicians of course – and a lot of them aren’t. They are instead being conned it is like a rugby game, that it’s all about teamwork and for the greater good you had better toe the line.

That is a recipe for every minority view to get squashed whatever its merits, and for the status quo to remain. I bet the All Blacks (when they win anyway), are more astute than that.

Apart from all that carry on, what else?

Staff first: We had a few Councillor Connect Forums in Kinloch and Acaia Bay which I didn’t attend because I also happen to be a working man, and also the Owen Delaney sports hub opening. On that note I have several times over the years brought up the topic of Council meetings which seem to nearly always suit the calendars of Council staff than the public at large. At Councils I have previously been employed Chamber meetings were nearly always in the evenings so that not just unemployed or retirees could attend. Then again I suppose if more public came along, that might be more open and transparent right? And we can’t have Council staff missing out on their evenings at the gym.

A lot of money not voted on: There are some workshops scheduled in the near future on significant infrastructure projects, the first at 10am on Tuesday 22 September is for the Northern AccessTransport Project (est. $70M) (public included, I presume). People this project is quite close to my heart, and in fact the origin of my ruptures with the rest of Elected Members last term. In 2023 I was elected on the basis of my engineering knowledge especially transport, and I can’t help it if I am most probably the most qualified in the district by a country mile. But the transport study which happened 2023/24 I was completely excluded from contributing to and on no stated grounds at all – and let me tell you that I was a heck of a lot more accommodating back then than now. Imagine if a Maori ward councillor was excluded from anything to do with Maori – yes I consider it really was that bad. But personal grievances aside, I have put together this special page with timelines and some info along with my suggested option which still has never yet been tabled. People we are talking about a $70M line item in our Long Term Plan (LTP), which has never been properly scrutinised, debated or discussed! Now we have staff spending $150K this financial year carrying it on, when the question has not even been properly addressed of: Do we really need a second bridge?

Ratepayers, or Iwi interests first? Five Mile Bay came up in our backroom conversations Tuesday, and a current theme for Taupo District Council getting involved at all seems to be around public communication versus institutional risk and convenience. Its true that Council cannot directly force Te Kotahitanga o Ngāti Tūwharetoa (TKNT) to honour their Treaty obligation to manage the public reserve portions properly, but in my mind clearly we could be advocating on behalf of the public who wish to enter. As for the building and regulatory breaches which are apparently also happening, it seems all of that gets discussed in the backroom of the backroom and Elected Members like me will not be seeing anything much of it. Its all about “relationships” you see, because we cannot possibly risk our Iwi partners getting offended.

Factchecker checkmates themselves: Not really Council related but since it concerns Selwyn Councillor Elizabeth Mundt whom I am acquainted with, I’ll mention this factcheck article on late term abortions in New Zealand. If its a topic you’re not interested in then give it a miss, but I think it is quite ironic that the fairly cynical factchecker at least did a competent job of proving Elizabeth largely right.

Not quite what I expected: Our Chief Ombudsman John Allen gives an impassioned speech at Turangawaewae watch HERE. Not sure in his position where in the spectrum of politics he thinks that he should be, but this guy certainly gave it all and perhaps we might yet see him in parliament.

Wouldn’t happen here: Councillor Mesh Macdonald gives a useful insight of the mechanics of Hamilton City Council which you can watch HERE This is about reallocation of $415K of a cancelled project which their elected members got to vote what to do with. At Taupo District Council this is unlikely to ever happen, because anything under $500K is at the Delegated Authority of the Chief Executive to more or less distribute as they please to anything else on the programme. I did an AI examination of the financial policies with the differences quite telling as per below, and symptomatic I think of the new regime in place there this term. In essence: Hamilton keeps much more “operational” level spending decisions with Elected Members, whilst Taupo delegates them to staff.

Speed bumps for safety: Hamilton has quite a few more nowadays which you can read about HERE. I was fairly influential in starting off the trend in Auckland a while back, and especially at roundabouts to save both money and lives. Hasn’t caught on in Taupo yet, but if amalgamation happens it might.

Never happens here? Maxim Institute discusses the issue of voting fraud watch HERE which I attempted to investigate in the 2025 local body election but was stifled by our electoral officer who would not provide any double-up voting data which might have provided evidence of fraud. Did I have any evidence or suspicion? Not at all, but that not really the point, is it?

Nuclear option: Bryan Leyland is an experienced power generation engineer I am acquainted with, and he just put out this submission to Engineering NZ which is the professional body which people like me are members of. This is following a discussion briefing to new Ministers which the organisation is putting together, and to which Bryan is quite at odds and challenging any members to contradict his assertions. My own experience with Engineering NZ is that they have been quite politically captured, so good luck with that.

Fridays lesson on how to nicely make an impact, should I start dressing up too?