12 September 2025
These are my written responses to the five questions prepared for the 8 September Rotary event:
- Do you believe rates should be capped to the rate of inflation? If so, why and how?
Yes I do, because the fact of the matter is that if we don’t then retirees on fixed incomes will be forced to sell their homes as I am sure is happening even now.
Okay that is the most obvious why, and what about the how? A better question might be: how did we get into this mess in the first place? I say that the rot started in the 1989 amalgamations when these Council Corporations were set up under a single Chief Executive, the Town Engineer who used to keep things in check was downgraded to middle management, and the idea of a Public Service went out the window.
Since then no-one has since been motivated enough to push back against the mission creep of unreasonable legislation, and the millions of road cones all around us speak volumes to that.
To date the only limit has been the tolerance of Kiwi voters, who have just taken it on the chin and moaned about it afterwards. So yes, now that people are alerted it is high time to introduce some limits and on ratepayer terms – because after all they are the customer. We just have to do things smarter, and it needs to become the new normal.
- Did you agree or disagree with the recent decision by TDC regarding Local Water Done Well – and why or why not? How does the TDC budget for “over capacity for water pipes and sewage in view of the increase in residential and industrial construction and the increased numbers through tourism?
I am on record as the only dissenting Councillor who voted against it, so I will paraphrase what I attempted to say at the time but got shut down by our despotic Council leadership:
At this Council we are often presented with decisions pre-deliberated, framed to funnel consensus agreement, and starved of comparative data – and Local Waters Done Well was no exception. Despite months of workshop presentations and even though this was the most consequential restructure of Council in decades, the flow of information did not allow for proper scrutiny at the appropriate times.
That is why I quite clearly saw the chosen in-house option as a continuation of this institutionalised powerlessness of elected members who essentially get treated as rubber stampers, and why I tried to put forth that a well- designed Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) might be more transparent and accountable.
As to the second part of the question, catering for growth is why we have engineers and planners, and debt financing. It would be nice to try for things like getting the GST component of our rates back or instigate a Bed Tax on temporary accommodation, but those things are largely out of our control.
- Describe the purpose of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and how it affects your local Government role?
I first stuck this in Council planning documents stating that we apparently acknowledge partnership as the basis of Te Teriti, and I have since come to appreciate how it does impact your rates if I may quote a few examples:
1/ $500K each year set aside for “maintaining Iwi relations”.
2/ Acquiescence to a $20M land disposal option for the Turangi Wastewater Plant, which is effectively a cultural project being portrayed to the public as an environmental necessity.
3/ Tacit endorsement by staff and most elected members of the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) all throughout the process, even though things were getting thrown in which were way beyond its legislated requirement, and a Maori Ward Councillor declaring no conflicted interest even though he is a significant party on both sides of the agreement.
So we should be glad that the Mayor of Kaipara was kind enough to release their independent legal opinion which clarifies that Treaty of Waitangi obligations should have very little to do with Local Government, and hopefully we will see a change of outlook or at least a review of how we do things here as well.
- Regarding the recent controversy over the Joint Management Agreement, what is your view of the decision to extend the scope to cover Taupo Moana? Please explain
Firstly I will correct the asker of this question – there has never been any decision to extend the scope to cover Taupo Moana. That was something slipped into the agreement by staff without any formal decision making of elected members, when it really should have. Quite a significant sleight of hand actually, and I think quite representative of how this Council operates and which needs to change.
Elected members often get material put in front of them in a pre-packaged format, and despite the Local Government Act requiring that all practicable options be presented, that is unfortunately treated around here as an optional extra. Staff know they can get away with this, because only after a decision has been made can it really be put under the microscope, via something called a judicial review which can only happen at extraordinary effort and expense. In other words – only by the wealthy.
This is exactly why we need a sweeping change of guard in the election this October, to take back control from Council staff who have been running the shop as they please for way too long.
- Do you support retaining Māori wards as a way to uphold Te Tiriti o Waitangi and ensure tangata whenua representation, and if not, what alternative approach would you propose?”
I don’t see anything in the Treaty of Waitangi requiring us to have separate race based seats or wards, only that Maori get to be treated as equal as anyone else. The parliament seats were instigated in the 19th century for the very practical reason of enabling non- landowning Maori menfolk to be able to vote, and in fact that put them at an advantage to European men at the time who didn’t own land.
Nowadays as best I can tell, these Maori wards in local government are being used as second-rate alternative to people actually turning up to vote on election day, and in this district it seems to me that Maori are hardly a small minority that should require special representation. No disrespect to the current Maori ward councillors, but I would like to know what positive outcomes have come about that couldn’t have happened anyway.
As to an alternative approach, I think it is really very simple: elections are all about participation both as voters and candidates. It is a basic fact of life that anything taken for granted doesn’t get appreciated, and democracy for Maori voters is no exception to that.
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