Tag: community

Fridays Much Ado About Nothings

25 September 2026

Disclaimer: I do occasionally use AI, but almost never in any of the text for these Friday updates.

Matthew 10:16 tells us something most politicians can’t be accused of including probably myself too much of the time, but if it comes from God then it must be true: “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves”.

Well, well, what about it then. The government has decided to hold off on their Council amalgamation decision until after the election, instead of announcing it this month as originally planned. So I guess instead of scaring the horses at this inopportune moment, they must really want to win this to-the-wire election instead. So touché, bravo and well played Prime Minister Luxon, and I have to admit not seeing that one coming but in hindsight it makes a lot of sense. Politics is a ruthless human game after all, and it takes ruthless types to excel.

Apart from that, what did we have on at Council this week? Nothing! For the first time in quite a while Elected Members had a whole week off, no meetings or workshops or anything at all! I took it as a very welcome break after some of the recent few months tumultuations, and yesterday even managed a bluebird day in the snow. Because this role can suck it out of you at times, and its not for the fainthearted if you want to stay true. Next week is looking a little busier though, and I will rattle off a few of the more important things below:

Northern Access Workshop: Next Tuesday we have the first of our Long Term Plan (LTP) Capital Programme Workshops starting at 10am, where the Northern Access project is scheduled to be discussed (that’s the $80M project for the new Waikato river bridge). It was originally supposed to happen this week, but for undisclosed reasons was deferred. Yes I do have a grievance because just like the Joint Management Agreement and countless other things that happened last term, this Council’s behind-closed-doors modus operandi makes things more complicated than they need to be. Anyway I expect to be finally able to properly table my idea for a three-lane bridge and Waikato Street connection which has been playing on my mind since 2022. Because $80M is a lot of money and its the biggest LTP capital item by far, and guess who’s paying for it: You. By the way anybody in the transport profession like me who have practiced in cities are basically socialists by profession – who do you think decides that for the betterment of everybody, people need to get on buses?

Publicity but only for those more equal than others: Next Tuesday at the monthly Council meeting (read the agenda HERE) I am tabling a Notice of Motion item 5.10 that Council funded media include some coverage for Elected Members. For example you may recall the Councillor Korero inserts which used to be in the Taupo & Turangi Times? They took a required pause during the local government elections of 2025 but still haven’t been reinstated, just why that is the case is still not clear. Not every constituent is digitally inclined or even tunes in to Duncandoestaupo.com, so I think it is important that you get to hear how Elected Members are thinking whether they feel like talking or not. There is also the question of political messaging: I figure that because Councils are political organisations and “politician” happens to be our job description then you are entitled to hear our views, but that is contrary to the previous Taupo District Council guidelines which said “no political messaging”. I want those guidelines changed because if its okay for Mayor John Funnell to espouse on Council media his own political messages, then it should be okay for the rest of us too.

Here’s the solution but where’s the problem? Item 5.4 at the Council meeting is to do with powers of attorney, and like anything legal its convoluted but here my antennae are up. I don’t take anything to do with this Council for granted anymore, and I note my favourite Deputy Mayor gets special mention in this piece. People say in this business we should be free of personal angst, but in a place where accountability is in short supply – what really else is there? Anyway it is what it is, and I have my suspicions. Anybody who is a lawyer out there is welcome to contact and allay my concerns.

Apart from that, what else do we have?

What about that bypass? I forgot to mention one thing from my meeting at last weeks Waikato Regional Council (WRC) Transport Committee meeting in Hamilton – the Taupo to Turangi Bypass running between Hatepe and Motuoapa. This was a project scoped out back in 2017 at quite some expense as you can see with this SH1 Taupo to Waiouru Indicative Business Case (IBC). However the NZTA web page on the close to $1B project more or less sums it up: “has not progressed due to changes in priorities and funding”. But what a great thing when it does get to happen (will be a toll road most likely), estimated to save 14 min drive time and then we get a lakeside road for meandering tourist traffic only (a downside is that Taupo District Council gets to own and maintain it)

Not what they said it would be: Well the Local Government Improvement Bill just got past its third reading, but the Taxpayer’s Union (TU) isn’t too happy because they claim it only strengthens a Council Chief Executives hand to hold on to information that Elected Members seek. Watch HERE for the interview with Minister Simon Watts. Last week I shared a submission of mine to this bill, but I clearly misunderstood because its far too late for that – and if they won’t listen to TU then they wouldn’t have listened to me anyway.

Just good business? Watch HERE for Duncan Garner talking about the trebling of Taupo District Councils rental arrangement with Tuwharetoa which most of us have already heard about, but he is also quite incensed about a culture of information clasping which I can absolutely attest to. Information is generally only released on a “need to know” basis, and this has been one of my major frustrations the past four years. Is it perhaps just a coincidence that our Deputy Mayor is an ex-senior policeman, and that happens to also be the attitude of NZ Police?

Anyway it has stimulated myself to ask some questions, because as far as I was aware the building lease was already a done deal by the time I arrived as an Elected Member in 2022 (and it wasn’t on my radar list of priorities anyway). But I now have suspicions that it actually wasn’t a done deal: What if it was an option to not go through with, but never tabled? It has certainly happened before alright, but back in 2022 I was too green to have a clue.

Because we say so: Far North Councillor Davina Smolders recently put out an interesting post about confidentiality which you can read HERE. As an Elected Member the first thing I always challenge is the need for confidentiality in the first place, because that decision itself can be subjective. The Council staff response can be legitimate, but too often is effectively just: “because we say so”. In addition, some documents are held electronically not shareable including those not deemed “classified”, so feeding it through AI for advice is that much harder – I had a lot of problem with that last term, so far this term things are somewhat better.

Fridays sci-fi premonition of the week: Council Daisy in 2027?

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?

Fridays Worm Turning

4 September 2026

Disclaimer: I do occasionally use AI, but very rarely in any of the text for these Friday updates.

Ecclesiastes 3 1-3 is about death and life and turning things around, things we need to do almost every day: “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, And a time to die; A time to plant, And a time to pluck what is planted; A time to kill, And a time to heal; A time to break down, And a time to build up;”

Hi all its Councillor Duncan calling again, and this week in Council not so much went on – oh we did have a Water Services Committee on Tuesday which you can watch HERE but there isn’t much to report as no decisions were made and the talk was fairly idle. But we did have a few things of interest being put out by some politicians, like Prime Minister Chris Luxon last week now saying that they perhaps won’t force any Councils to amalgamate – which is completely contrary to the previous messaging put out by his Ministers Chris Bishop and Simon Watts. I think National are possibly now thinking that getting re-elected now means everything, and anything they said before might count for less. But we won’t have long to wait and see if that’s true, because the amalgamation announcement is set to come out in just a few weeks time.

There is also now some confirmed and legislated rates capping being set in place, but they won’t apply until 2029 and Taupo Mayor John Funnell is already putting out some warning signals that public services will inevitably suffer. But his message comes without much explanation of how or where we are making any savings now, and of course the Annual Plan (AP) just recently signed off at just 0.1% less than forecast didn’t give many hints either. I recently put a list of specific questions about AP projects which still remain unanswered, and Mayor Funnell told me to not waste staff time! Water services are unfortunately excluded from rates capping, and as they make up roughly 40% of expenditure it is a moot point if ratepayers will much notice the difference anyway. We have a Water Services Committee which could dictate some capping on the basis of affordability, and a Water Services Strategy is currently being developed to be public consulted late this year which potentially could include that. But there is no willingness to include rates capping at present, so the pressure for it to happen will have to come from the public – that’s you. Until then, I guess Council Daisy will carry on with the high life as she’s been doing for so long.

I would have thought more informed decision making for Elected Members would be a key way forward to keeping costs down, yet when I tabled two items last week including to help make that happen Mayor Funnell and most of the other Councillors declined to even make comment before they voted against. After I pointed this out publicly as dummy behavior a few of them took offence, but not enough to yet explain themselves why they took that stance. Which is a shame for transparency to the public, whom from my social media responses seem to find it hard to discern between a convenient or wise silence. To that I say that dummies can still be dignified, but they are dummies all the same.

In other news:

You get to pay for our mistake: On Tuesday we did have an update around the Taupo Landfill resource consent saga, and I’m afraid its not looking good. The last time I reported on this was in May and the trajectory is roughly the same. To cut a long story short – the landfill is forecast to be full by end of 2027 with a new resource consent required to expand, and Taupo District Council have left things too late to get it for Environment Court hearings to be done and dusted in time if objections are received to drag things on – and it is looking like the working group which includes Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor and Councillor Wahine Murch haven’t been able to placate affected natives enough to stop that happening. Yes folks, that could mean up to around $4M or so a year additional costs to truck our waste out of district, and all because we didn’t start the consent process a few years earlier. I wonder if the Chief Executive should be chipping in out of her salary, who after all must be the one most responsible for letting this thing slip? Or perhaps it would be cheaper to pay some $$ to objectors for their inconvenience and make them go away (isn’t that what the Resource Management Act is all about)?

Chipping away: Hamilton Councillor Mesh MacDonald recently broadcast about a change she instigated for getting the more conservative contract estimates out of the mix. I don’t have a problem with staff putting in conservative estimates in a Long Term Plan and before a tender goes out, because as the staff say at least that means they know it can be afforded. The bigger issue is what is in that tender in the first place or even if it should be going out, and if just like in Taupo Elected Members aren’t able to properly influence that – then Houston we have a problem.

Heroes in the fold: I really admire Far North District Councillor Davina Smolders for being an Act party candidate up north, exposing her Council for what they actually are. If I ever thought my job here in Taupo is tough, then get a load of her. The latest is she got booted off a Council committee for only being contrary, but I think they only make themselves look even more stupid to the public and for the government to perhaps step in. So well done Agent Smolders, and maybe somebody should tell Mayor Moko Tepania that Council is not a rugby team, and that Councillors are not his players.

A little left field for me but I’ll say it anyway: New Zealand could be setting itself up for a big fall alright, hear about what is being lined up for the agricultural sector, and how we could be once again snatching for a defeat.

Fridays bit of nostalgia: Anybody remember the political worm which got Peter Dunne into Parliament?

Fridays Best and Worst of Times

28 August 2026

Disclaimer: I do occasionally use AI, but very rarely in any of the text for these Friday updates.

Charles Dickens in A Tale of Two Cities (1859), a book I once started and never had the patience to finish, and somehow it just resonates in the times of today: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way”.

I sometimes get accused of being too negative, yes really, and manage to somehow brass off somebody every week. But I can’t help how I come across at times, and I can’t understand how anybody can be motivated to fix something unless they first point out what’s broken. After I posted the video last Friday showing Dr John Campbells (no relation) breakdown of the white blood clots phenomenon, I was contacted by a local medical professional who berated me for broadcasting (my paraphrasing) unsubstantiated tripe . He also seems to think that politics is like say science and engineering, and that compelling truths are always liable to be accepted if only they are well presented..

My answer to the above: (i) The medical establishments reputation is thoroughly tarnished for its absence of ethical behaviour during covid, but I mostly blame the politicians who created this great divide in our society with the unwarranted vaccine mandates; (ii) Politics is not like science or engineering or law, where we like to think that most of the time truth and reason will prevail. Politics is about people: some who are truthful in the main, but enough who are devious and manipulative with their own often unspoken agenda; and (iii) as to the compelling argument idea – what if it isn’t even allowed to be presented? A Chairperson can politically intervene by simply excluding disagreeable voices from being heard, and some decisions come predetermined. In other words its a pretty rotten game, and I think we have enough local examples to go off.

We had our monthly Council meeting on Tuesday, and it was a lengthy one. As always you can find the agenda here, and for the entire over three-hour meeting you can watch HERE. There were quite a few items of interest this time, and incredibly I was still perky enough at the end (and sitting through all this guff is not like a real job). I will rattle through the main items as per below in their respective order:

Lakeside troubles linger: We had two members of the public make their submissions about the proposed new roundabout about to start construction at Maunganamu Drive/ Lake Terrace near Wharewaka, (watch from HERE). The first was Dean Stockwell of Pukenamu Road with a well presented summary of events which you can read HERE, as well as the Council produced community engagement summary which spells it all out loud and clear – 91% of the 55 surveyed Lakeside people don’t want to be connected. This issue seems somewhat convoluted and I also gave a report to it last week, but in short the Council’s position to connect Pukenamu Road has always hinged on this one opinion of a lawyer regarding a previously stated commitment of the Lakeside developers: “External legal advice provided to Council was that not proceeding would leave an unmet obligation and expose Council to legal and funding issues”. Personally, I don’t believe in putting lawyers in charge of running our streets, and indeed the Lakeside residents asked Council last year to support their case in Environment Court if there was any uncertainty (the answer: a resounding “no”). In any case, my recent questions to the Council lawyer look as if they will be going unanswered:

“Where has the Court determined that the particular configuration now proposed by staff is legally required? If the Court has made that determination, could you please point me to the relevant paragraph? Also when you identify said persons who would conceivably make a legal challenge, as well as an evaluation of their possible chances to succeed – please let me know”.

Immediately following was Murray McCallum from the Maunganamu side, whose main gripe was that he only received a few days notice of the construction happening. Murray spoke very well, and to be fair it sounds as if the things he is concerned about have since been addressed and in quite a short time. So I fear the main points could be lost: it is common decency to consult not just inform; and as the Road Controlling Authority this Council is still responsible to its residents even though a developer might be building it.

Maori plans change: Item 5.2 Plan changes including Maori Purpose Zones got the final tick (watch from HERE). I didn’t have anything much to say here, except about a year ago I did write a more cynical social media post that these were being foisted upon us without much discussion – but at least I accept the well intentions, so lets see what does result.

Pedaling backwards but we didn’t look cool: 5.4 Review of Annual Plan Projects (watch from HERE) where Mayor Funnell is attempting to make some savings with a relook at projects already approved for the next 9 months or so. But we didn’t get very far, and the expected list for closer inspection never actually was agreed to. Councillor Rachel Cameron used it as a chance to berate the Mayor for looking backwards, and I talked about my already submitted in list of projects a month ago along with specific questions – the Mayor responded last week telling me not to waste precious staff time!

But I also challenged Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor about his audacious behaviour last term, when he was directly responsible for inserting a $70M line item for a new Taupo township bridge and transport solution in the 2024-34 Long Term Plan (LTP) without any deliberation or debate. Kevin headed a Steering Group for the consultant $300K Northern AccessTransport Study which as far as I know has not seen the public light of day even two years later. In 2024 I felt strongly enough about this one matter that I refused to vote affirmative for the 2024-27 LTP, but the other Elected Members of the day were not so discerning. There is $150K set aside to continue this work in the next 9 months which I opposed going ahead until this gets revisited, but nobody took me up on that so I suppose will have to repeat myself about it. Oh yes, Kevin also mentioned that he managed to get this on the 2024-2054 Waikato Regional Land Transport Plan, but as No. 30 out of a total of 30 projects regionwide I can’t see that being of too much consequence. So what was the outcome of all this debating to and fro? Not much that I could tell, so somebody please wake me up in 2028 when this is all over.

Accountability yeah right: 5.5 Review of Chief Executives Delegated Financial Authority Limits (watch from HERE). Now this is where things get interesting. The staff item quite clearly identifies the problem, and even Deputy Mayor Taylor agrees – even though we decided on Tuesday to introduce a $1M limit to the Chief Executives signing authority, because Elected Members only get to see things at the very end of the process it will be a rubber stamping exercise only. So I now better understand why the spending limit was increased from $500K to unlimited two election cycles ago – they were just tickboxing then, just as we will be expected to tickbox now! So I brought along my suggested addition as per below, only for acting Chief Executive Sarah Matthews to point out it might be against the Local Government Act (LGA)! I still find it hard to comprehend what spanners get thrown my way, but anyway confusion then reigned so it will have to wait another day – probably until after our new elects get to see for themselves what rubber stamping really looks like. In the meantime, Council Daisy will continue to remain obliviously tipsy and at your expense. My suggested addition:

“That Council requests the Chief Executive to report back to Council on a pre-procurement governance gateway for significant projects, to ensure elected members have an opportunity to consider the project scope, practicable options, estimated costs and key strategic risks before the procurement process commences and before the project has substantially committed to a particular solution”.

Yay we get a binding referendum: 5.7 Electoral System for the 2028 and 2031 Triennial Elections (watch from HERE) where we agreed to a binding referendum to let you decide if we want First Past Post (FPP) as present versus the more interesting Single Transferrable Vote (STV). The referendum will be included in the 2028 local election papers so won’t cost much to make happen, and I am happy this will be a chance for Taupo residents to get a taste of some direct democracy action.

Silence of the lambs: 5.9 & 5.10 Notions of Motion (NoM) from myself to amend the standard staff report template for better informed decision-making, and also an item requesting a staff report on the New Years fireworks. Now the only thing of consequence from both of these which I think you should be aware – apart from some brief commentary from Councillor Hope Woodward who seconded, not a single other Elected Member had a word to say before voting to the negative. Watch the whole 20 min clip HERE to see for yourself, and although the camera unfortunately doesn’t show you can take it from me that during my presenting many of them were thoroughly engaged on their devices. I will probably do a special post next week to break this down further, but I’ll let you know in advance that I have fairly good reason to believe there was a conspiracy of silence going on. Because you know, being a team player is the main thing in Council chambers, right?

Apart from all that less than highly edifying business, what other tidbits are happening about the place?

In Rotorua money goes missing too: Sounds like over there they have some similar problems to us, and last week Councillor Robert Lee tried to get to the bottom of a $70M line item which managed to get slipped into their 2021 LTP going forward, but most of their elects weren’t interested in getting to the bottom of it. “Relitigating the past” some of them called it, but to me this sounds like they are just as bad as us at not wanting to learn from past mistakes. Watch the 28 min reel HERE if you like, I found it interesting.

Whistleblowers wanted: An interesting social media post appeared on the Taupo Noticeboard during the week from Daniel Gray who seems to know something the rest of us don’t. But anyway wish that I could help but I can’t, and good on him for asking because we absolutely need more people around here asking questions.

Who owns your child: Did you know what goes on behind closed doors in todays education? The idea that a school could connive with your child to take sex transitioning drugs and without parent consent is quite mind boggling, yet it is happening. Watch it HERE if you don’t believe me.

Fridays why we can’t do away with AI now that its an art:

Fridays Final Coming Up

17 July 2026

In times of chaos I find myself turning to my favourite book of the Bible Ecclesiastes 9:10-12: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going. I returned and saw under the sun that – The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all. For man also does not know his time: Like fish taken in a cruel net, Like birds caught in a snare, So the sons of men are snared in an evil time, When it falls suddenly upon them”.

Finals – I am talking about the soccer world cup on Monday of course, so who’s your pick Spain or Argentina? I myself don’t have a predetermined favourite, I just want to see a clean exciting game. A bit like this Council amalgamation thing going on right now really, but a problem is that the ground rules weren’t clear from the outset including goal and sidelines. And there isn’t even just one ball either, we are all just running around kicking about our own. And by the way if you hadn’t gleaned from recent social media messaging by some other Councillors, Taupo is very much headed towards the Backstop option of not submitting a Head Start proposal at all, because its all seeming just too hard. In some ways it would be nice to go back to the 850 or so borough councils that we used to have before 1989 (along with a decent Public Service), but we are way too far down the track to go back to that. So I am seeing this as a very great missed opportunity to do things a lot better.

Which brings me to describe what I believe is going on here: a Collective Action Problem whereby everyone acting in their own perceived interest produces an outcome that is worse for everyone collectively. Another analogy along the same lines: Prisoners Dilemma. You see, I have been talking to a handful of Councillors in the Waikato region, and the thinking is more or less the same – Hamilton doesn’t really want to get shackled with rural problems, and almost everybody else doesn’t want to get dominated by the electoral demographics of big place Hamilton. Fair enough you might say, because your district Councillors are after all only elected to represent their own local communities. But the problem is that Hamilton does actually subsidise the rest of the region when it comes to Regional Council responsibilities. So although Councillors aren’t acting irrationally, the problem is that they can be behaving against theirs and ours best overall interest. It also won’t help that many Councils like ours have staff leading the process, who can’t help but want to keep their jobs close to where they live now. By the way Federated Farmers have a preferred model for amalgamation which you can read about HERE – and they pointedly aren’t happy and want to separate rural district Unitaries from the urban.

Much of the debate surrounding local government reform has focused on what communities might lose, and this is understandable because Councils are elected to protect the interests of their own communities. However, this can make it difficult to consider opportunities that may benefit the wider region while still protecting local identity and democratic voice – that was really the role of the Regional Councillors whose role by October 2028 will be defunct. The challenge is therefore not simply whether reform should occur, but whether it can be designed well enough that communities have confidence they will not lose the things that matter most to them. We are talking urban versus rural, small towns versus big, and not forgetting Maori interests too.

One of the strongest arguments in favour of larger Unitary councils is their ability to engage more effectively with central government on matters of regional significance. Since Auckland’s amalgamation in 2010, the city has been able to present a single strategic voice when negotiating major infrastructure and investment projects with Wellington. The most notable example is the City Rail Link, a jointly funded multi-billion-dollar partnership between Auckland Council and the Crown, supported through a formal governance and funding agreement. Auckland has also been able to negotiate integrated transport planning, housing initiatives and, more recently, New Zealand’s first City Deal with central government. While larger size alone does not guarantee better local outcomes, it can provide greater strategic influence, stronger negotiating capability and improved access to nationally significant investment opportunities. These are genuine advantages that any future Waikato or Central North Island unitary authority could seek to capture, while ensuring that strong local representation and community decision-making are not diminished. It also makes more sense for dealing with region-wide environmental issues.

But could a large Unitary address the aforementioned trepidations around different community and area interests to still reap the big size benefits? There are definitely means and ways of doing it which I won’t go into now, but it certainly is looking as if it will be up to the government after 9 August to decide for Taupo. In the meantime a link to the excellent Lower Hutt Mayors proposal put out last week (read the full proposal HERE) which includes things like a first principle of subsidiarity (a big word which basically means local voice), legacy debt ringfencing, and careful delegated decision-making for Community Councils as below.

In addition, below is a clearer copy of the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) suggestion which I posted last week, and under that another sample model they developed.

Backstopping with no proposal at all and an attached letter of complaint to the Minister as this Council is most probably headed, to me does not correspond to a positive way forward or valid form of resistance which I expect it will be framed. It is basically saying that the status quo is just fine, which if you read my posts should know by now it most certainly ain’t. Recent talk in Chambers has been around us being more financially secure than any of our prospective partners – to which there are some grains of truth – but it has all been at your expense, so do remember that. And as for being kept properly informed about the Head Start process as we go, compare what you have been able to access about Taupo, say compared to these analyses in Northland and Wairarapa. But it isn’t quite over yet.

In other news:

Backpedalling to look cool: Mayor John Funnell put out a statement this week about having a relook at the Annual Plan (AP) just signed off a few weeks ago, because I think he has worked out that some other Mayors like Waitomo and Wellington took their election promises more seriously than he. Waitomo mayor John Robertson said he instructed the council’s Chief Executive to ensure rates rises kept in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is pretty much the most basic Key Performance Indicator (KPI) I think there should be. The main reason I refused to vote my agreement to the AP is the absence of regular and proper scrutiny by governance of Council spending including capital works, and going back afterwards to double-check after they have been approved like this is a very poor substitute.

Recall my numerous attempts in Chambers from Christmas onwards to discuss the revision of financial delegations from the current setting whereby the Chief Executive has virtually unlimited spend discretion? That would mean proper reporting on large items over $500K, and the recent Roberts St / Titiraupenga St works are a classic example of works never justified to elected members before they happened. Mayor John was so disinterested in that topic of delegations that he would not allocate any time in our induction sessions or even allow me to present 5 min in a public forum! So to me this is sounding very much like a hindsight act of desperation and the words sound very hollow indeed. I will have a quick look to see if I can find any potential savings, but the above spreadsheet snippet is an example of the sum total of information we are now being given – “line by line”!

Taupo dodged a bullet too: Far North Councillor Davina Smolders points out some home truths about some un-costed co-governance deals her Council up there is attempting to push through the back door. Just as well we have whistleblowers like her prepared to do the hard yards, remember last years Joint Management Agreement (JMA) and who saved you then? That one ain’t over yet either, but I am guessing it will kick back up soon.

Sam Neil died in vain or vein? Knowledgeable Guy Hatchard has some very un-mainstream views about the death of well-known actor Sam Neil and hopes it will draw attention to the medical mishap at play. Worth a good read if you aren’t up with the play.

Fridays people pushing back hard: Here we have some Council bureaucrats in the United States trying to push their narrative down resident throats, but they just ain’t having it. People of Taupo, you have been getting this done to you for such a long time.

Fridays Council Blood and Guts

10 July 2026

So says the Prophet Isaiah to the exiled Israelites in Babylon in Isaiah 43:19 which is relevant to anybody who seeks a new beginning (makes me think of the Council mayhem now):

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland”.

Some Councils have it simple like Hamilton & Waikato, they have few neighbours and their options are relatively few. Some like in the Wairarapa have even been talking about it for over a decade. Here in Taupo on the other hand, we are in the middle of eight neighbours (or is it nine?) with it never having come up before, yet in a total of just three months we are being asked to drop everything and come up with something new. Mission fairly impossible it has seemed to me from the very beginning, because not only have we got to decide but also to co-ordinate with our budding partners. For example South Waikato is putting out the option on left which includes Taupo but doesn’t match with any of our own options – however they didn’t bother asking us first (it is still a viable option, and I note they haven’t included the Backstop option as we have). Contrast that approach with Waikato and Hamilton City Councils which are more or less proposing the same. That doesn’t mean this process is impossible for us – in fact I think it presents quite an opportunity for positive change – but there is a distinct possibility we could get to the due date of 9 August with absolutely nothing to show for it. That’s not my preferred outcome and I will be somewhat disappointed if we end that way, but I’m just giving you the heads up. By the way, intrepid local reporter Bronson Perich wrote up a tidy article last week following our 30 June meeting to decide options, which you can read HERE.

The Labour party have finally come out and apparently said at a recent Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) committee meeting, that they are not advocating for any forced amalgamation of Councils. What that means if elected into power this October is anybody’s guess because they are of course politicians, so that’s not really news to speak of. But I have heard the Head Start process of amalgamation described as akin to taking a sledgehammer to fix a nut sized problem. I think we aren’t really the nut being targeted anyway because it was always more about the Regional Councils, but we still have in the form of Taupo District Council a pretty big nut that could do with cracking.

On that note there was a very good report just released on 30 June by the NZ Initiative entitled “Head Start Done Right” which you can read HERE and listen to the podcast about it HERE . This is a must read for anybody interested in local government, and a real slap on the wrist to the way this government is going about things. I think one of their statements is quite perceptive: “The core argument is that New Zealand does not have a local government problem. It has a centralisation problem, and the standard reform response, fewer councils with narrower functions, has been making the underlying disease worse. The Head Start pathway sits in that tradition. Unless the architecture is designed deliberately, the pathway will produce larger councils with the same problems but on a larger scale”. The report instead advocates for an alternative principle of subsidiarity, which is basically that any function gets exercised at the lowest tier of government capable of carrying it out i.e. local decisions made locally, which seems to be what most people are worried about. This is practised far more effectively in places like Switzerland and Germany, and New Zealand seems to be headed the opposite way. I don’t disagree with much anything stated in this report, but I still see this Head Start process as a way of designing it in, even if we get to become part of a Council much bigger. This is an opportunity for change, and I believe it can be done.

So how do we do a better Head Start for Taupo?

On Tuesday we had a very interesting presentation from Waikato Regional Council (WRC) where they also presented a suggested version for a Super Unitary Council which matches the Taupo District Council Option A.

The decision for which option to proceed will be made on 21 July, and at present there is little enthusiasm in Chambers for Option A. The main perception is a loss of local representation, however I for one quite like the sound of it. It’s not the Auckland Council version WRC have in mind, quite different actually. But only if we get strong local boards (or wards as WRC refers them) with decent financial delegations and ring-fenced whatnot. You can watch the full one hour presentation HERE, and for the WRC Unitary model watch from the 35:30 mark.

As I see it the main potential benefits of being part of a much larger entity are:

(1) Increased professionalism – because we simply don’t get enough of that in a provincial Council like ours; and

(2) A bigger voice to Wellington – because size really does matter in that regard and Supercity Auckland is an example of that.

It feels strange for me to be advocating for this because the reason I left Auckland 10 years ago was to escape the Supercity Council, but there you are and I have also worked out that Waipa District Council are favouring it too. This is an opportunity of a generation to make Council better and we want to get it right, so is this the best path forward? I believe it really could be, if its done right.

Below is the WRC suggested model. Basically we would get lumped in the Southern Local Area (SLA) along with Waipa, Otorohunga and Waitomo, where Taupo would get 4 out of 12 Councillors deciding what happens for our part of the district. Bigger decisions affecting the entire Unitary would be made at the Council wide level where our SLA interests would be represented by 2 Councillors out of 8. I did also ask the question about a single entity like TDC becoming its own Unitary Council which Rotorua already flagging it may want to go down that path – and the answer was it could be costly. As an aside if you want an example of the things a Unitary Council gets up to, this interview on the Platform with the Mayor of Gisborne gives a clue.

Ok so what else in the news?

Dinosaur expectations: For a read about last weeks Annual Plan rates hike you can again refer to this Lake FM article well written up by Bronson Perich. I think Mayor John Funnell is somewhat missing the point with this statement: “However, the unpalatable truth is that it can’t be brought down further without deferring or cancelling essential work that we’re committed to delivering”. The fact is that the word “essential” is quite a subjective term in local government, and is about as subjective as the food you’ll decide for dinner.

Mangakino Pouakani connects marae style: there was a representative group meeting yesterday at Mokai Marae which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. It was convivial enough and the kai was good too, and being on a marae you can be assured that the committee meeting comprised much less than half the time of what we got up to.

Engagement costs you: On that note, a little while ago I submitted the following LGOIMA question to Council which you may be interested in: Can you please give me a breakdown of what the $0.5M set aside in the 2024 LTP for Iwi engagement was spent on 2024/25 and 2025/26 to date? You can read the full response HERE

Emissions cost you too: On that note again, the Minister of Climate Change Simon Watts has said that he wants councils to make climate-related decisions that are “proportionate, evidence-based, and represent value for money.”( read the news article here) . Given that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just published the next generation of climate scenarios which eliminate the most extreme scenarios that have dominated climate research over much of the past several decades – so I guess that means we will soon be reconsidering the need for a new $3M gas flare for Taupo landfill?

Fridays musical pot at diversity in the UK, and I am assured the fight is very real over there:

Fridays Tail Wagging the Dog

26 June 2026

Bishop Desmond Tutu who received much venom speaking truth to power and was instrumental in saving South Africa from descending into bloodshed at the end of Apartheid era: “When people say that religion and politics don’t mix, I wonder which Bible it is they are reading”.

Hi people this week we didn’t have too much going on except that on Tuesday morning your Elected Members at Taupo District Council had a round table discussion about Amalgamation! Yes that’s right, although the government announcement was made way back on 5 May this was the first time we have actually got together for a few hours and mooted our own points of view – and next week Tuesday 30 June at 10.30am in Council Chambers there is an Extraordinary Council meeting (public can attend and is being live recorded) where we decide the way forward on the Headstart proposal due 9 August. We have only just received the agenda yesterday and I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but you can have a look yourself HERE and it includes a summary of the public survey results.

And what can I reveal from our unrecorded meeting on Tuesday? I expressed some dissatisfaction with the general way this is being handled, including about the open-ended public survey with no safeguards from mischievous intent. I also stated that amalgamating with a much larger entity than ourselves should at least lift the bar with regard to professionalism that this Council sorely lacks. I am no big fan of supercity sized bureaucracies like Auckland, but little old Taupo District Council has given me powerful reason to believe bigger can sometimes be better in so many ways. After all, the citizens of Auckland were up in arms about their historically high 7.9% rates increase for which Mayor Wayne Brown is receiving a lot of flack – yet Taupo doesn’t have all the significant infrastructure challenges of a city, and we have been tracking that way for years! We simply have no excuse for not doing better, and its YOUR FAULT for not holding those you elect more fully to account. On a side note to that, last week or so I attended a very interesting LGNZ Zoom discussion with the CEO of Auckland Council and an Auckland Councillor for Franklin ward, and a point of view was put across that the new community boards after 2010 were actually more effective at community representation than the old Councils before the amalgamation (I did ask, but unfortunately this interview cannot be shared). Other things to note from the Tuesday meeting: (i) there was little expressed enthusiasm for buddying up with Rotorua, which was interesting; and (ii) some senior staff clearly want to keep their jobs in Taupo. Perhaps the motives are altruistic, but with senior staff comments like (my paraphrasing): “..a lot of people are employed by Council, and if they get relocated to Hamilton that would mean a loss to the local economy and social cohesion”, you get my drift…

By the way, to date your Elected Members haven’t received any comparative data on the performance of our surrounding councils, so we are very much having to do our own homework on this (luckily we have the Taxpayer’s Union report which the Council financial manager is scathing of but has yet to provide any figures to dispute). If I were a betting man and knowing as I do that in my time virtually every major decision in this Council has been stage managed or manipulated by staff to some degree – my money would be on us ending up with anything other than Option A.

If I were really going to conspiracy theorise, would go so far to speculate that some staff could even be subtly attempting to derail the entire process (“because its all just too hard…”) so that we end up in the fallback position of Option D which is the Backstop option to sit tight and do nothing until 2031 – if that ends up being the case, we coulda saved a whole lot of time and hassle already… Anyway the meeting next Tuesday is intended to set the direction forward so should be worth tuning in, noting that these options have literally been prepared just days ago and whatever we decide is probably irrelevant if our proposed amalgamation partners aren’t on board. This is why I reckon that Mayors and CE’s should be keeping in constant communication and we have received some placatory responses that they are – but I suspect they aren’t.

Other stuff in the news?

Ground control to Major Tom: Yesterday there was a closed workshop session of the Chief Executive (CE) Review Committee of which only a handful of Elected Members take part (many other places involve full Council on these committees, but not here). Nothing earth shattering to report other than some subtle rejigs of CE Julie Gardyne’s Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) which as far as I can tell will not much affect ratepayer affordability, and the suggestion to introduce a KPI for the reduction of operational expenditure (e.g. by X%) as done some other places nobody was interested in. But I did have to gasp that even after repeating my dissatisfaction with the current Delegated Authority regime which does not require proper scrutiny of major financial decisions to happen, a few members of that committee were expressing that Taupo District Council is a standout model of prudent financial management! The rest of us on Planet Earth do simply not believe that!

The vote that changes Council? Next Tuesday 30 June there is also a full Council meeting at 1pm (as always you can read the agenda HERE) where I have submitted a Notice of Motion (NoM) Item 5.3 to amend the staff report template, but I am not expecting anything too momentous. I have worked out that presentation is just if not more important as the motion, and elected members have egos as fragile as eggshells to vote against anything if they are disturbed. It is based on a NoM sent to me by Far North Councillor Davina Smolders but tailored to a local flavour, and is intended to allow for more informed and transparent decision making e.g. options considered, opportunity cost, author qualifications etc. I think it will take more than just this NoM to turn this Council around but it is a start, and it will be interesting to hear the arguments against. As an aside, Davina tells me that up north they have Council meetings in fluent Te Reo for hours on end with English interpreters. Gaps in the conversation are strongly suspected to indicate when abuse is being hurled your way – fascinating!

Encouraging signs: Hamilton City Council is signalling a new way forward which includes $9.7 million of Development Contributions ringfenced to pay off debt, and an improvement of $20 million in net external debt compared to the draft plan presented in April. Well done Hamilton, even though you are a big bad city perhaps you would be a good influence to partner up with after all.

Golfer speaks out: On vaccine injury of course, with Michael Campbell talking about his own ordeal. And why is it that sports personalities have so much stock with Kiwi’s?

Were you there for Winter Solstice? Stonehenge Wharewaka was apparently the place to be, I wasn’t early enough in the morning this year but came across the witchy crystal ladies once. If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, you can read about it HERE

Fridays first reel by Duncan with Aunty Ann:

Fridays All Aboard The Council Train!

5 June 2026

To those who don’t yet understand those who do believe, here is a pertinent message from Anselm the Archbishop of Canterbury (1033 –1109 AD),

I had a question put to me earlier this week – where do I get the energy to do these weekly messages? It has become a disciplined form of manic energy every Friday morning to put it all together, but has become habit now and even though I know the readership is limited, I find it helpful to process the chaos of a lot of things going on at once. And in local government right now, there is quite a lot of that.

For whatever reason the government is hell bent on the Auckland Supercity model of which I am moderately familiar with. I am getting a sense more than anything though, that the politics and assurance of adequate local representation is everywhere the big question being asked. That will be a devil in the detail for whatever amalgamated entity we become part of, and for Taupo if we decide that we want to go a certain direction it will be largely based on fears and anticipations that local representation could be swamped by bigger brother problems of a city or other emphasis (as an aside, some are challenging the legal right of government to make these changes at all, but I have confidence in the powers that be to rejig the rules to suit themselves) . Sound about right to you? I have no personal favourites right now, except a wariness of being tied to another provincial kindergarten like here, or to an overbearing city bureaucracy. So will it be into the frying pan, or into the fire?

Taupo District Council put out a survey on the amalgamation to residents this week, with submissions due in just a few days time on 17 June. You need to know that this survey was released without the vetting of your Elected Members despite several of us requesting this to happen, and we were only informed of it a few hours before being put out. I have a few doubts about the survey which I will describe below, but more importantly it should highlight the mischaracterisation that just because we have elections every three years that does not correspond to the people you elect having meaningful oversight of the way this Council functions. I had a few depreciating words to say about due process contrary to the way this was railroad handled which resulted in our staff “Communications Manager” walking out of the room, but I do not put the ultimate responsibility on her – Mayor John Funnell is the one choosing to do things this way, with some prompting from behind I am sure. Last week I mentioned we had a steering group of several Councillors leading the way, but that idea has since been disbanded before it even started, and for no given reason other than I suspect one or two of its members were making things inconvenient. Yes it is a shambles alright, and I don’t know why our Mayor just doesn’t drop the pretense now and let his Deputy drive the boat. So right now for me, the idea of dissolving this Council isn’t sounding such a bad idea at all, and its just a pity we have to wait a whole two years for that to happen (timeline below).  

About that survey: Unlike the Western Bay of Plenty District Council survey which gave a shortlist of five viable amalgamation options, our one only talks in quite abstract terms, like “Team up with a neighbouring council”. Along with the dearth of information about viable partner options, the submission process to this survey is completely unguarded from mischievous bias as no submitter identification is required – so people could be submitting from New Delhi to Timbuktu for all we know. This means that the survey results could be virtually useless, thereby making us vulnerable to legal challenge if we try to use results to justifying any particular direction we want to take. And my reading of a recent legal opinion by Simpson Grierson about this local government reform, is that any Council putting up a Head Start proposal without doing its due diligence with the community is exactly lining itself up for that – so the more risk averse Councils could well be giving up now altogether. Anyway I am not trying to discourage you from putting in your own submission and we really would love to hear from you, but please bear this in mind.

All that local woe aside, what are some other places doing? Well I have to say that there are some clearer heads than ours around, and recommend keeping an eye on how Rangitikei District Council are doing things like this excellent 14 min interview with Mayor Andy Watson. I quite like their Councils social media page too, perhaps that is something we could emulate? Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell seems to be angling for a Taupo-Rotorua-to the sea kind of place, which in the Waikato times our own Mayor John Funnell is reported as not being overly enthusiastic about. Apart from that I haven’t heard too much else through the grapevine, and it seems that a lot of these Mayors could be keeping these things close to their chest and not talking much to their fellow elects – just like here.

Okay, so what else can we call news?

Democracy restated, or democracy undermined? Minister of Local Government Simon Watts has caused quite a stir with his recent announcement to remove voting rights from unelected members on Council committees. Although it was undoubtedly stirred up by Far North Councillor Davina Smolders and aimed at the overtly undemocratic things going on up there, this will affect every Council in the country from the Far North to Bluff – because everybody has at least one committee with one or two of those. But some places are more prolific than others, and sounds of alarm from Rotorua and Hastings seem to me to ring a little hollow (with one exception now being questioned in Auckland?). I have pondered this question before actually, because on the one hand it could be beneficial to have a few engineers on board an infrastructure type committee instead of leaving it completely in the hands of the amateurs to decide. But overall I am quite convinced that this change will be a good thing (even engineers have bias), and it should highlight why elections are so important for getting in wise people who can see the big picture instead of stacking the deck with those who can’t. Elections matter, and that means voting matters too – will people ever learn?

Politics don’t just pontificate: On that note, aspiring politician from down south Zoran Rakovic wrote an inspiring piece about the importance to get organised or stay forever irrelevent. For somebody like me who prefers to write about instead of deal directly with troublesome and unpredictable, too often disappointing sometimes even downright nasty people – I will try to take this in.

Deep diving into the mystical land of “Operational”: I have had some quite inspiring news this week about how things work elsewhere. You may recall my often voiced words about financial accountability and local lack-thereof, as it happens they are doing something about it in Auckland and Hamilton and even better than I have come up with. Auckland has a Value for Money (VfM) Committee which has been going for around five years and is comprised of elected members tasked with overseeing the VfM programme via: reviewing council operations; identifying efficiency and savings opportunities; commissioning deep‑dive reviews; and monitoring implementation of recommendations. This year they have a target of $80M savings and seem well on the way to achieving it. Hamilton have just recently started up a new Procurement Committee chaired by Councillor Andrew Bydder, whom I caught up with last week and which he tells me is more or less attempting to do the same. How so very refreshing, how so indeed! These go further than even what I have been suggesting for Taupo District Council which has been stuck in the kindergarten keep-your-eyes-and-hands-off-operational-matters style of governance for so long, it is no wonder rates here are sky high and even though we are relatively trouble free unlike a city or coastal place falling to bits every time a storm hits town. Damn, maybe buddying up with a place like Hamilton isn’t such a bad idea at all.

Turangi bus one step closer, or even further away? Turangi Councillor Sandra Greenslade gets in the news to advocate for a commuter bus for her town with mention of potential Ministry of Education hurdles. I am turning up to the Waikato Regional Council (WRC) meeting this coming Monday to see how it all unfolds, but I’ll give you a heads up clue right now – don’t expect anybody to go out of their way for you, if you can’t be bothered to lift a finger for yourselves.

Another crash outside Chem Warehouse: As reported recently in social media, picture on right. To answer your questions: 1/ Yes I am a traffic engineer 2/ Yes it needs a roundabout 3/ No it wouldn’t cost much. 4/ Because Kindy Council doesn’t let me near it.

Ombudsman on the way: To rescue us from opacity and behind closed doors governance, that is. Last month I lodged a complaint about the refusal of the Chair Te Wharau Walker Junior to audio-visual record the Turangi Co-governance Committee which the Ombudsman is currently looking into, and this Wednesday just gone Chair and Mayor John Funnell unbelievably did the same! I tell ya folks, the next two years is gonna feel like ten… But people of Turangi and everywhere else, I need to tell you: You are allowed to make your own audio or video recording of Council or Committee meetings, and nobody can stop you. The relevant section of our Standing Orders I give below, and note it is “notified” and not “asked”.

A Crux worth reading: I have heard us referred to as the poor man’s Queenstown before and perhaps they are right. But they do have some quality reporting going on down there worth a read, like this article here (you may need to email subscribe) where I love the killer line near the end which is just SO relevant to here:

“Under (new Queenstown Mayor) Glover’s leadership our councillors seem to have been conned into thinking that if they are all really nice to the senior council staff – everything will be fine. God help us“.

An important aside: I came across this commentator Nigel Anthony Gray who has a fairly solid social media following, and his article about the new anti-stalker laws seem a little worrying. Read more about them here if you like, and if he’s right then duncandoestaupo and the like could be headed for some jail time don’t you think?

Fridays Poli..Poli..Poli..Politician:

Fridays Lock-Me-Up-And-Throw-Away-The Key

22 May 2026

Exodus 18:17-23 with a message about wise leadership: “So Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing that you do is not good. Both you and these people who are with you will surely wear yourselves out. For this thing is too much for you; you are not able to perform it by yourself. Listen now to my voice; I will give you counsel, and God will be with you: Stand before God for the people, so that you may bring the difficulties to God. And you shall teach them the statutes and the laws, and show them the way in which they must walk and the work they must do. Moreover you shall select from all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And let them judge the people at all times. Then it will be that every great matter they shall bring to you, but every small matter they themselves shall judge. So it will be easier for you, for they will bear the burden with you. If you do this thing, and God so commands you, then you will be able to endure, and all this people will also go to their place in peace.”

Your friendly Councillor Duncan reporting in again, and change is definitely in the air. On Tuesday Taupo Mayor John Funnell has this week instigated a working group to steer the internal amalgamation discussions, comprising himself and Councillors Taylor, Murch, de Lautour and Greenslade reporting back to the rest of us at regular intervals. The particular make-up of this working group was not fully explained and some reservations were expressed that the rest of Elected Members not being invited to fully participate – but there there it is. The question of whether we will be early engaging or consulting with the community like Western Bay of Plenty District Council is about to do did also come up, but the answer was not very forthcoming – so for now I will take that as a no. I myself am keeping an eye on the headlines and talking here and there with Councillors in adjacent districts whom I am acquainted with, and am receiving some interesting perspectives sent to me from local people too. Time to start having some real conversations I reckon with only a couple of months to go, and Councillor Hope Woodward is already trying to kick that off on social media which you can watch HERE.

This week we had a couple of things going on. On Monday we had the second of our Taupo Airport Authority Committee meetings, held at the airport. I do have to say that of all the committees that I have been involved in the past three years or so, this committee has been by far the most convivial and one of the most engaging. It probably helps that the surroundings are so pleasant (the Lil Something airport cafe is easily my favourite coffee haunt in all of Taupo), where people talk to each other like adults and there is none of the politic bickering that seems to happen anyplace else. The newly elected Chair is Chris Grace who is a wonderful and recent retired gentleman of ex Pak n Sav fame, and he was also with us as a member last term. Other Elected Members apart from myself are Councilor Steve Mananui and of course Mayor John Funnell who is obviously taking a keen interest. I know the airport isn’t of huge interest to everybody, and there isn’t a huge amount of news to tell except that members are pressing to more quicky develop a Master Plan for the airport precinct and get some more income generated instead of relying upon fickle Air NZ who could potentially withdraw any time they wish (remember that Rotorua is only an hour away, which is closer than many Aucklanders to their own airport). There is also the untrivial matter of a main runway that may need a $5M or so rebuild in not so many years away – luckily we have a great deal with Ministry of Transport where they pay half the costs and we keep all the profits, long may that continue. These meetings are open to the public (who rarely attend, but this week we had around six people which was a record) with agendas as always available HERE. They are not audio-video recorded but I will request this start happening, because I reckon the airport precinct is a bit of a hidden jewel for the district and something that people should perhaps take more interest in.

We also had a Regulatory Committee meeting on Tuesday which you can watch here if you have an hour to spare. There was only a couple of items for us to get stuck into and make something of a meal of. First there was Item 5.2 Bombay Bistros successful bid to remove three parking spaces from Robert Street for their purpose as a dining area (outside the old Dominoes). You can watch the owners oral submission and the 25min or so debate from HERE. Which I think is fair enough to request, but which myself and Councillor Woodward objected to on the grounds this was a piecemeal approach on the fairly unsubstantiated basis that it will increase the vibrancy of the area – by that argument, why don’t we just remove all car parking from the CBD altogether? Apparently the adjacent businesses KFC and Lone Star are okay with it, but I say the entire street should have been consulted – which they weren’t – with Chairperson Councillor Rachel Cameron implying they would be biased anyway. I’m telling ya people, this sorta thing would not happen in a place like Remuera where shopper car parking spaces get treated like gold – so perhaps amalgamating with a place like Hamilton wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all.

Then there was Item 5.4 which was to inform us about an upcoming Taupo District Wide Reserves Management Plan Project which you can watch from HERE. This seemingly innocuous item I chose to take some issue with because of my past experience with the Motutere Reserve Management Plan Review the year before last which I have already written copiously about. The Reserves Act requires management plans to be kept under continuous review, but it does not prescribe expiry dates or require wholesale rewrites simply because a plan is considered “old” – and what is old anyway? One of the plans listed here dates from 2022, and others from 2015 and 2017, which do not seem especially old to me. I later came to the view that the Motutere review need not have proceeded at all, because not proceeding was itself an entirely realistic and practicable option which was not properly presented then and even more so with these now. So my first and foremost question was is: Why is this now being presented to Elected Members as informational only? These reviews cost staff time, consultant time, and community time. What specific problems are we trying to solve, that are so unworkable that targeted amendments cannot fix? Or are we just creating a process of planning for planning’s sake to create jobs for the staff to do? We also need to be very mindful of public confidence in these processes – whether they are transparent and whether their input will be meaningful. Consultation is supposed to be genuinely open-minded and capable of affecting outcomes, but not in a way that will be disproportionately influenced by vocal minority interests – as I believe did happen with Motutere. What is to stop that happening again? Anyway there is also a presented paper on this topic next Tuesday 1pm 26 May in the full Council meeting which I intend to speak more to. In the meantime I have also asked the Chief Executive to be provided the answer to this question in advance: Can you please tell me the expected cost including estimated staff time and any consultants for the Reserve Management Plan project?

Oh yes and there was that one other little thing about the Broadlands Road landfill which was also discussed in a confidential workshop Tuesday morning. Myself and Councillor Woodward requested beforehand that it did not justify the secrecy, and also agreed afterward about it too. To cut a long story short – the landfill is forecast to be full by end of 2027 with a new resource consent required to expand, and Taupo District Council have left things too late to get it all done and over with in time for Environment Court if objections are received to drag things on. And yes, any objections are likely to stem from the cultural objections of neighbouring land owners, which is why there have been around 14 hapu meetings at maraes about the place in the past few months to try and convince that it is in nobodies best interest if things take that path – starting 2028 we are talking roughly an additional $4M annual costs to truck out waste to places like Hampton Downs (so think an extra 4% rise in your rates). So this is quite a monumental cock-up in my opinion and I am spilling the beans – so go ahead, lock me up and throw away the key. Anyway we are not the only place having backroom conversations when we shouldn’t, as Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee has recently posted about on social media which you can read about HERE, and I agree with this 2025 unsuccessful South Waikato candidate sentiment below:

So what else is new?

Keeping it up Sophie: Local intrepid reporter Sophie M Smith put out a couple of articles of interest this week, the first being Part three in a series about the Council building where it is revealed that the lease hasn’t actually been signed off yet. Yes well, after taking office in October 2022 it was pretty much explained to us Elected Members that it was a done deal and all that needed to happen was approving the $5M office fitout, and the question of it being optional was certainly never raised as a possibility. So the question now given the proposed amalgamation just has to be – what are the ramifications if it doesn’t get signed? On the flip side, at least a 25 yr lease might ensure a Council staff local presence instead of a head office Hamilton… There is also Sophie’s take on Amalgamation and an item on the dubious state of some Mangakino wastewater storage tanks allegedly leaking into the nearby waterways with no forthcoming explanations.

Zebra the problem? Following the incident on 11 May where a pedestrian was struck outside Taharepa shops I am doing what any traffic engineer worth their salt would do and checking out if Council is at least partly to blame. That zebra crossing where it happened was only upgraded a year or so ago and I managed to dig up the independent safety audit where it was noted as a serious safety concern with a recommended speed hump(s) as a solution. Why that didn’t happen is not entirely clear, but I intend to find out because if they had been implemented the consequences may have been lesser.

Proper oversight or lip-service tick-boxing? Kaipara District Council are currently under scrutiny by the Audit Office for their procurement and contract practices. I have no idea what stimulated this but somebody has obviously talked so it will be interesting to see where that inquiry goes. Another space to watch.

How to fix Maori Trust Boards: Now this is a topic I have been thinking of delving into for some time now, but it seems that Whanganui Uri Unite is already making some inroads as this social media post amply shows with this intro: “Have a GOOD look at the names and connections across your current river entity and land entity: • Trustees becoming contractors • Family members employed across entities • Operational roles staying within the same circles • Contracts repeatedly landing with connected people • The same whānau names appearing everywhere you turn”... I am not saying that Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board works like this, but can anybody properly in the know with their hand on their heart says it doesn’t?

Homeschoolers under threat: If you are a Taupo homeschooler you will undoubtedly already be aware, that the government is trying to throw a spanner in the works with a last minute amendment bill which is not innocuous at all and intended to introduce increased government scrutiny to people who choose to opt out of the state system. The amendment is shown left, and people like Cynthia Hancox are activating the resistance now for apparently the first profound change in homeschooling oversight since 1989. Although my own kids are nearly all through their schooling now, as a homeschool dad myself this is quite disturbing – so watch this space.

Fridays poem of the week, with Peter Hitchens response to a panel question the others dodged – does poetry matter to you?

Fridays Flashy Burnout

1 May 2026

Genesis 37:5: “Now Joseph had a dream, and he told it to his brothers; and they hated him even more. So he said to them, “Please hear this dream which I have dreamed: There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Then behold, my sheaf arose and also stood upright; and indeed your sheaves stood all around and bowed down to my sheaf”.

Perhaps Joseph wasn’t the best diplomat in his younger days, but things ended up well enough with him in charge of Egypt and able to feed his family through a severe seven-year famine. But he had to be hurled in a pit and imprisoned in a far off land before that could happen, so if you are going through a rough patch too and not all of your own making – maybe, just maybe, it was put there for a reason.

Civil War – couldn’t happen here, right? I’m not so sure. Talking to a fellow from Serbia last week, he says before the strife started over there in the nineties they were all happy families too. Catholics, Orthodox and Moslem all worked, lived together and intermarriage was common – but in the space of just weeks they were at each others throats. Yes, it can happen that quickly, and my pal said don’t ever think that it can’t happen here. The tensions there are all gone now, but only after much bloodletting and new countries coming into being – so war does fix some things. People don’t be so naive that it can’t happen here, and my Serbian pal says he can see some omenous signs. Political leaders need to talk our way out of this, because we can become a Yugoslavia too. Don’t just call me a pessimist, I am only getting real.

Okay on Tuesday we had the April Council meeting which you can watch HERE and read the minutes HERE. The items were fairly mundane this time round and I was prepared to put money that it would be all over in less than an hour, but boy was I wrong there! Two hours later we were still gasbagging on about this or that, and yet everything got tick-boxed anyway – I can tell you this would NOT have happened last term!

The new Three Waters Asset Management policy was approved in Item 5.2 (watch from HERE), where I once again took the chance to put forth my perception of this new Water Services Committee as one where compliance is treated as No.1 with affordability only being a secondary consideration. “Safe drinking water” is apparently whatever the standards tell us it is, and it is to be had at simply any cost. On that note, on 26 April local retired civil engineer Phil Shields wrote a gem of a letter to us all challenging why $1.6M is being spent on a water main renewal project in Omori which serves just 130 properties. You can read the letter HERE, with his recommended course of actions below and to which I look forward to reading our Mayors response:

So please do keep at it Mr Shields, and I do heartily appreciate your educated input. That last recommendation for a new Financial Committee I do especially agree with, and a month ago put up my own 15 min argument for it which you can watch HERE.

Apart from that, the only other thing of note was Item 5.6 where Fees and Charges are being proposed to be hiked upwards for Animal Management (dogs mostly), Food Licensing and Resource Management. You will get to have your say on these later on because they are apparently going to be publically consulted. You can watch it from HERE, and it is fair to say that there was a little bit of disquiet amongst a few of us around the table regarding some of the hourly rates especially ($245/hr for consent staff?). Some charts to compare with other Councils were gratefully provided, and although we are on the higher end of the range even these aren’t able to tell the whole story. My take is that the ultimate test of efficiency is if you are losing customers to the competition, but a fundamental problem with Councils is that there isn’t any competition – and that isn’t such an easy thing to fix.

So what else is going on?

Let’s talk about Turangi buses: Okay it hasn’t gone away, Waikato Regional Council (WRC) are still working in the background to help make a commuter bus service happen. Yes it will require some cash injection (around $170K apparently), and just a month or so ago it was mentioned to us that WRC might have even had some spare funds available – but the fuel crisis has squashed that opportunity, because just like everybody else the diesel prices are hitting them hard too. Our view is simple: if we want to secure long-term funding from New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA), we need a service that people genuinely use. We’re now trying to work constructively with WRC on options that improve capacity while keeping the service practical for commuters and day users alike, so watch this space and it needs to be decided before the next WRC Transport Committee meeting in June for a September 2026 kickoff.

Chance to meet a Councillor: The first of Taupo District Council Councillor Connnect forums is kicking off next week, so why not come along and meet your favourite Councillor? No promises yet from me, except I will at least be at the 5th May one next week in Chambers.

Councils could or might get GST: It would certainly help things quite a lot says Roger Partridge in this article which you can read HERE. I thought this statement of his below spells it out why quite well enough:

Could be costing us too: Rotoruas waste charges just got higher, and all because their hole in the ground got full and they have to truck it out of district. The current consent for the Taupo landfill is currently up for review, and if that doesn’t happen we could be in for the same. There is a working group of Elected Members negotiating with local hapu now, I am not part of that, but gather for better or worse their input is apparently fairly crucial to the equation. So watch this space because it WILL affect you.

Unethical behaviour, or acting in the peoples best interest? Hard to say from here, and I know not to take at face value any mainstream media headlines like the one you can read HERE. I am fairly confident that Dunedin Councillor Benedict Ong believes he is doing the right thing, but what even really is that? Anyway he is being censored for breaching Code of Conduct, but I know that is just a wet bus ticket to be ignored if he wants and still turn up to Council Chambers for another round. Local Government Politician – about the only job apart from self-employment where you can’t be fired (except every three-years at election time).

Politicians in town this Wednesday, and they even want to charge for it: A bit cheeky if you ask me, but I suppose with petrol prices they need the help.

What is a Council? I was sent this post by Matthew Horncastle which I will repeat below, quite a nice summary I think of what a Council SHOULD be:

Fridays Fable of Fortitude, and oh how appropriate for the pickle we find ourselves now: