Tag: new-zealand

Fridays Fuming Foibles

20 February 2026

Ecclesiastes – a book of the Old Testament of the Bible still as relevant today as the rest, and one of my favourite books in the Bible. I highly recommend it as a good read for anybody trying to tackle this world on its own terms. Widely attributed authorship by King Solomon who was blessed with a Wisdom beyond any human comparison before or since, although even he was not infallible enough to avoid having several hundred wives (how wise is that?). But if you want to read about the difference between foolishness and wisdom and why it matters, this is the book for you. It is one of the only books in the Bible where God gets scant mention – and with good reason I think – and reason abounds in these writings of Ecclesiastes.

Which brings me to my main topic of today – doesn’t it stand to reason that one of the coldest regions in the country as we are here, should be making better use of the abundant heat beneath our very feet? Your elected members were yesterday hosted by local economic agency Amplify for a day tour of some geothermal sites around Taupo including GNS Science laboratories in Wairakei, Contact Energy’s Tauhara Geothermal Power Station, and in Rotokawa the Natures Flame wood pellet production facility and Te Ahi Eco Business Park commercial development. It was all quite impressive, though I must say the industrial atmosphere is one thing I never wanted to experience full time which is why I chose civil engineering as a trade rather than something which could end me up in places like these – and I was right. But if you want to live in a provincial place like Taupo and put into practice some very high qualifications like PhDs (and there are quite a few of them in this industry), this surely is the golden opportunity for this region at least. At the moment, the geothermal industry apparently employs around 1000 people in the Taupo district, second only to the dairy industry.

Contact Energy produces around 20% of the nations electricity, and over 90% of it is classed as ‘renewable’ with a significant portion contributed by geothermal, and in the Taupo region it operates some of the most productive wells in the world (note: figures I am quoting are anecdotal only but roughly accurate), and if you believe the spiel from the scientists – we are leading edge stuff here in little old Taupo and sitting on a goldmine of opportunity. But therein lies the catch – opportunity. Although the main thrust of geothermal exploration and activities go towards electricity production (and it still isn’t as cheap as coal, even with all the carbon subsidies and penalties), virtually untapped is the direct use of geothermal heated water for industrial and home heating. Sure we have AC Baths and a scattering of other individuals doing this, but nothing like Iceland and Northern Europe who do this on a grand scale. You see, at the moment in New Zealand geothermal is really all about tapping into the hot water under the ground (sometimes a few km’s deep) and piping it up to the surface to generate electricity with steam turbines to then re-inject it back a km or so distant (those are all the silver pipes you see around the place, and at around $10M per km they don’t come cheap). But it is fairly obvious to me anyway, that if a significant portion of that electricity is only to go towards heating of household airpumps as it must do in the chilly North Island Central Plateau during winter, then this must be very wasteful. And some of the GNS scientists agree.

So what then is the holdup? Apparently and not unsurprisingly, and the scientists and practitioners all fairly agree – it is a combination of bureaucracy and widespread ignorance. That is not to say direct geothermal heating is not going on – because that is exactly what the fairly unique He Ahi development in Rotokawa is basing itself on, and in conjunction with Contact Energy have a setup allowing convenient direct connections to tenants wanting this facility. But things like that are all too rare in a place with such abundant heat beneath our feet -and I have yet to figure out if the bureaucrats are mostly in Wellington – but certainly more can be done, and Taupo District Council could be leading the way on this if it so chooses. Because apart from a few spots up in Northland and down south, we are sitting in the epicentre of this countries geothermal activity and therefore opportunity. The question is – are we in the Taupo region going to take advantage or it? Shane Jones Minister of Resources wants to double geothermal energy production by 2040 – which is fine – but he is probably only thinking in terms of electricity generation. We can do more than just that.

As an aside, I do think if this country had simply invested in nuclear energy a long time ago then we wouldn’t be in the pickle we are now (if only former prime minister Robert Muldoon could have Thinked Bigger). As a clean green option it just can’t be beat, and if just a portion of the $70B this country spent on the Covid response had been put towards a few nuclear reactors (they come at around $10 – 20 B each) we would be sitting very pretty indeed. And the last governments ban on oil and gas exploration has crippled us for a very long time. But at least we are being pushed towards exploring other avenues, and becoming a world leader in geothermal electricity production can’t be an entirely bad thing.

Okay so what about other stuff?

JMA saga continues: In the next exciting chapter of this political hot potatoe that scurried our last Mayor to the dustbin of history, we will just have to see how it fares this time round. This Tuesday 24 February 11am we have the second public-invited workshop on the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) which tackles the question of: What exactly are the mandatory matters? A very basic question, and one that has been so shrouded in a fog of misinformation which I say Taupo District Council has done much to contribute. For one thing, how did Lake Taupo slip into a ‘Waikato Waters’ JMA? For a clearer picture of what areas of waterways are included, I suggest reference to the map below (and referenced here) which was provided not by Council, but a member of the public.

And how about the idea of doing a deal with Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) anyway? They haven’t exactly demonstrated responsible guardianship of Five Mile Bay Public Reserves, and I am far from convinced that their governance is anything like as accountable to its members as even this Council which at least has the Local Government Act to force some level of transparency (I have previously written a small piece on TMTB here).

The Chief Executive has also promised in advance of this workshop a point-by-point response from (I say biased) Council engaged Treaty lawyer Paul Beverley to these assertions about mandatory matters which were forwarded by the Taupo Ratepayer Group (TRG) before Christmas. It contains 20 assertions which seem to make good sense to me, and it is fairly crucial that we properly set our starting point here and now. Apart from that, how much is all of this going to cost the ratepayer?

As an aside, here is a snippet from my JMA for Dummies article of July 2025 that gives a clue as to why we ended up in the totally preventable place we are now:

To put it plainly: This JMA agreement could have been signed, sealed and delivered back in July of 2025 perhaps even earlier, if only your elected members of the time had decided to keep things simple instead of including all the optional extras to only end up compromising the whole thing. Your current sitting Councillors Kevin Taylor and Yvonne Westerman were among those who voted for the extra items to be included, so part of the blame must squarely sit with them.

On that note: Legal Council Franks Ogilvie have been offering free 30 minute consultations to elected members around the country, these are the guys which provided advice to Kaipara District Council (KDC) regarding Local Government Obligations to Māori (which are quite lesser than widely proclaimed). Of course they are only seeking to expand their business, but one of these days I may be giving them a call. Franks Ogilvie lawyer Stephen Franks gives his brief take on Council Treaty obligations in this Platform interview here.

And further on that note: I sent this letter to Mayor Funnell today to formally request that the Council templates be changed to contain neutral and statutory obligations only, and not political statements like below:

I’m not challenging Treaty obligations, I’m challenging the inclusion of a contested political interpretation as neutral agenda framing. This is about template neutrality and statutory accuracy, not ideology. If we had been including ACT Party slogans, I think this would have been picked up long before now. So let’s see what happens.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take your job: I have been using Chatgpt for nearly a year and now find it an almost essential tool for all sorts of things, with a notable exception (thus far) being in my own profession. I quite quickly did recognise its limitations though, especially for the written word. It is great for dealing with bureaucratese and legalese, but quite hopeless for stuff you want to make a personal impact and I never use it to write these Friday updates. But AI is certainly making an impact to some industries and career paths as this article well illustrates. If you are already enrolled in a course for graphic design for example, it may be worth switching now.

Those damned electric wheeled thingies: Did you know that a lot of those electric thingies zipping around on our roads and footpaths are actually illegal? Yes, really. In New Zealand, if an electric scooter is <300W power output then it gets classed just like a bicycle and doesn’t need to be registered as a motor vehicle, but unlike a bicycle is permitted to ride on a footpath. The laws in New Zealand around this topic are currently pretty convoluted and were not drafted with electric personal mobility in mind at all, but I can tell you that there are a lot of >300W electric mobility devices which are not registered as motor vehicles as they are supposed to be, and riding on footpaths too. Some other countries like the United Kingdom are cracking down on them a lot more (including confiscation and disposal like here) and Singapore where jail time is on offer for those who ride E-scooters on the footpath. But as a transport professional I like the idea of E-mobility, and am glad we live in a more liberal place than those.

While we are on about Transport…Recall that last week I mentioned about a submission to Waikato Regional Council regarding Public Transport and Total Mobility? Well read here for my submission sent on behalf of Taupo District Council in advance of the next meeting of the Waikato Regional Council Public Transport sub-committee on 9 March. Some of the things being requested would cost money to implement, so that means ratepayers would have to foot the bill. By how much is really the question, and on 9 March I hope to be making some headway to getting some answers.

Elections area coming sooner than you think: These guys are in town Sunday evening if anybody wants to catch up. I have once met John Alcock the Deputy leader of Loyal party and he is an interesting character who also ran for the Auckland mayoralty. If you want to talk alternative ideas like say, no income tax or GST, then I might see you at Ploughmans restaurant this Sunday 22nd Feb 5pm.

Northland takes dog control seriously: Sometimes it takes a fatality to bring about change, and that seems to be no exception up in Northland of late. I have heard anecdotal stories around here of dog misdemeanors going unpunished, more so in the likes of Turangi. But nothing like I experienced on a recent trip up Whakatane way where a bunch of angry dogs chased our car for several hundred metres down the street – we were really off the beaten path.

Turns out the covid vaccines probably weren’t a good idea: as this article by Dr Raphael Lataster in Daily Sceptic outlines. I didn’t do it myself, but know of a few people close to me no longer with us whom I attribute this to their early departure. I just hope they made it to a better place.

What about that tree in Turangi: Just beautiful ain’t it?

Fridays Free Advice for the Filthy: This is something an engineer colleague and myself wrote up a couple of years ago. I think it helps to have a cynical nature to be an engineer, don’t you?

Fridays Black Who’s for the Sack?

13 February 2026

Pride – the worst and the essence of all sins. It is also the hardest of all sins to detect in oneself, and I count myself as no exception. As Proverbs 16:18 puts it: “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall” (New King James Version). I think it is more than just a strange coincidence that a movement is so bold to label themselves after it, but perhaps they are only being the most transparent. This country called New Zealand is rife with it, and it will be our downfall – correction – it is our downfall.

But there is also a thing called dignity, and this week in Chambers I think it was demonstrated there is not enough of that going round. Recall last week that I was refused a Public Forum showing on the topic of financial delegations? (for the record, here is my complaint to the Ombudsman about that episode) Getting Elected Members to take more direct responsibility for major decisions is something I reckon could shave $M each year, and I know the Mayor and many of the other elected members do want to hear about it – but virtually none of them wish for my 10 min presentation to be audio-video recorded and on public record. The given reasons: it would set a new precedent for an Elected Member to be given such a platform, and could be seen as official endorsement of viewpoints which are mine alone. Another reason not mentioned but I strongly suspect: a few of the old-hand Elected Members don’t wish for it to be highlighted that in November 2021 they recklessly handed over all fiscal responsibility to the Chief Executive when they really shouldn’t have.

I am refusing to bow down to such intransigence and hypocrisy, because I believe that transparency is not just a word and it actually does mean something. So I will instead be putting together a video release for public consumption which the other Elected Members can view just like anybody else. It is a shame that their responses will not be collected for public record, but that is on them. If nothing at all else, this little episode should highlight to you all just who actually runs the shop of Council, and even though they could be it certainly ain’t this current batch of Elected Members. And for goodness sakes, why on earth do the opinions of Council staff get held up as so much more authoritive and objective than anybody else?

But honestly in the bigger picture and for all the ill feeling this has caused between myself and the Mayor who can by executive decree make it happen, wouldn’t it have been so much easier to just give me my damned five minutes last week?

One other cause of angst between myself and most of the other Elected Members: my once again refusal to adhere with proposed one-hour code of silence sessions on our regular Tuesday catchups. This has come up before and I thought we had dealt with it, but the Mayor once again went around the room to get virtually everybody else’s support in order to pressure me into acceding. I tell you people, this role has hardened me and I am no longer the nice guy I once was. Three years ago I probably would have folded, or if I didn’t would have been sweating it big time. This time round though, its like water off a ducks back for me and I know they can’t do a damned thing about it. I will not put up with any more small town small-mindedness, because Taupo is too pretty for that.

As a sidenote to the above unsavoury conversation and at my prompting for past examples of confidential information being unduly shared, Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor recycled up an incident from 2023 where I apparently did breach the Code of Conduct. Some of you may recall the John Hall building consent fraud case which I won’t bother you with all the details, but will show my quite firm rebuttal at the time:

29 June 2023

Dear Mayor, CEO et al,

As elected Councillor I reject the allegation of breach of code of conduct with respect to sharing of confidential information as stated at a closed councillor meeting on the morning of 27 June 2023, on the following grounds:

  • As an elected official I have a fiduciary duty to the people of Taupo District, and by that I have an obligation to seek independent sources of information, and not just from the CEO and council staff.
  • I am a Chartered Engineer and did seek advice from both Engineering NZ and fellow Chartered Engineer Mr John Scarry.  The intentions of my questions were mainly around potential council liability with regard to the situation of Producer Statement fraud, but also to get a better understanding of the Producer Statement process.  I did not divulge the name of any individuals involved or any financial or commercial sensitivities, and to the best of my knowledge there is no possibility of any personal gain to myself from these enquiries.  Izaac Sugrue of Engineering NZ informed me that they were already well aware of the issue through previous discussions with Taupo District Council. 
  • Mr Scarry is a structural engineer with extensive experience in the industry who has informed me that he has no prior knowledge of this fraud case in the Central North Island.   What we talked about was strictly within the bounds of one professional engineer seeking advice, in confidence, from another professional engineering colleague, regarding engineering matters of very great importance to the public.  I believe it would actually have been unethical for myself as a professional engineer, not to have sought such a discussion.  Mr Scarry gave me helpful background information on the various types of Producer Statements and their standing in relation to the Building Act, Building Code and the building consent process, and from this I was indirectly able to gain some impressions of potential council liability and responsibilities. 
  • The identity of the accused fraudster appears to be quite well known amongst the building industry in Taupo, and indeed in the past five or six weeks I have heard the case mentioned by several people in passing well before we had our meeting in confidence about it last week.  It would be a strange situation indeed if elected representatives are unable to exercise due diligence when any other member of the public is able to, and especially at this point in time with an apparently similar availability of local information.

I therefore would appreciate a redaction of the alleged breach of code of conduct please. 

Thankyou,

Duncan Campbell ME (Hns) CPEng IntPE(NZ)

To the above I never did receive any reply, except that the Chief Executive subsequently contracted an expensive lawyer from Hamilton for an hour or so training session to help me understand that ‘this is not how we do things around here’, and from then on because I was still unrepentant did sense a labelling as somebody who cannot really be trusted. As to my original concerns about the above building consent fraud case, I never did get satisfactory answers to affirm that Council staff had not been sloppy in their vetting of consent applications or even that the process has since been improved – this is also on my list of things to bring up in the nearish future.

Alright enough of all my people problem bleating – and politics is all about people problems – what about some of the other stuff going on?

We have all f….ed up: Mangakino ward Councilor Hope Woodward gets herself in the mainstream news with a tirade about the condition of her part of the Waikato River and wants something done before “it turns into something from the third world”. Waikato Regional Council get most of the blast but Taupo District Council does not get completely unscathed, and Mercury’s use of the chemical diquot to kill hornwort further upstream is said to be adding to the problem. It has apparently gotten so bad that some residents are selling up and summertime visitors are deciding to holiday elsewhere. However, I do think it is ironic that a labelled baddy the chief operating officer of Mercury goes by the same namesake as our esteemed Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor. So watch this space.

Cemetery update – Some of you may recall that from a Facebook post by a member of the public before Christmas I said that I would look into this Council’s policy around cemetery decorations. Well from brief tours of Taupo & Turangi cemeteries I have identified that there certainly are some questions with respect to even-handedness. So I still have unanswered questions about how the policy on lawn cemeteries is put into practice, and also how a change in policy was slipped past us in Chambers when it was revised just a couple of years ago – and I do say that with a degree of conviction because although I don’t always pay attention to every detail, I am fairly sure that if that change had been pointed out I would have had something to say. Anyway, I have been told that we are going to be looking at Cemetery Management Plans in the next 12 months and that will be an opportunity to revisit. The issue is really all about cost-effective grounds maintenance, but I think there should be opportunity for people who want to decorate atop the grave in designated areas if they wish to pay a little more. Pasifika people in particular know how to turn a place of the dead into a place of joy, and if Auckland allows for it then why can’t we?

Growth assumptions or stabbing in the dark? Yesterday we had a workshop where Council number crunchers shared their predictions of population increase for the district, along with the currently designated and anticipated areas where residential housing will happen. You can watch the one hour presentation here. I am not 100% convinced that these people have got it all right, but we have to start somewhere otherwise bad things can happen. We need to plan for future water and wastewater infrastructure, and absence of that will throttle development. Likewise, if we overestimate growth and build bigger infrastructure than actually needed it could bankrupt the district if the expected increase in residential rates intake doesn’t eventuate. I have heard anecdotal stories of just that happening to a smaller Council in 2006 which so overstretched themselves they were forced to amalgamate with a bigger entity just to stay afloat – so these things do matter. Of note it was also pointed out the rapid increase in Kinloch residential housing in the past 10 years compared to other areas, but I am already hearing some rumblings from the Kinloch quarter that Council is getting it completely wrong by saying it will flatten. Says one member of the public observer of this workshop:

“In that entire room, there seems to be a lack of understanding of where growth comes from. Its like they think it ‘just happens’ all by itself.  Because of this lack of understanding there is a feeble effort to promote and attract growth. Growth is nearly always created by the private sector.   I realise this is political, because a lot of people don’t want growth, they want it to stay the nice little Taupo that ( in their minds) it used to be. But they do want better shops, better hospitals, better schools, and more jobs that any growth brings”.

Just tell us how much: We also had a staff presented workshop on Tuesday where Elected Members were asked the burning question: How much do we want rates to increase for their Long Term Plan (LTP) calculations? The next LTP is due out in about 17 months time, and given the government intentions of rates capping to inflation to kick in 2029 they were seeking some direction. I can tell you that no such firm direction was given, and I see scant chance that your 2026/27 rates bill will be anything less than the 6.7% increase already set out in the 2024/34 LTP. My own commentary included that rate capping to inflation is not to be relied upon as a government imposition because future governments could scrap it altogether, and I would much prefer that rates-capping to inflation become not only a voter expectation but an outright demand. You can watch the one hour workshop here. I also foresee that a new rate capping regime will force the hand of not only Councils but organisations like Ironman NZ and Supercars to seek alternative funding than just the hapless ratepayer, and which seems to become a competition amongst Councils – and that won’t be such a bad thing at all.

Zoran the Zorro of Selwyn: On that note, I think this submission by Zoran Rakovic during the Public Forum of a Selwyn District Council meeting in December is well worth a listen. Zoran didn’t manage to get elected himself, but he is very engaged with the way his Council operates and even went so far to prepare a Notice of Motion for Councillors to use if they so wish, in order to demonstrate their public commitment to keeping rate rises at bay. I reckon that such a Motion would go a long way to letting Council staff know just what is expected of them, something currently missing at Taupo District Council. I wonder if they would have let Zoran speak so openly and in a Public Forum if he were a Councillor?  

Shopping elsewhere next time please: Here is a copy of my complaint to the Minister of Local Government about our contracted electoral provider Electionz.com, who I felt was unnecessarily intransigent in their response to my questions about the data collected. I was only doing my due diligence to try and affirm that no election fraud might have been happening in this district similar to what happened in Manukau, and their employee Warwick Lampp steadfastly refused to respond. I also tried to find out how much we paid for their services, but that request was turned down by Council staff on the grounds of commercial sensitivity. Wow, whatever we did pay I say it was an absolute ripoff.

Buses and disabled take note: As your representative member of the Waikato Regional Transport Committee, I have until 20 February to make a submission around what we would like Public Transport and Total Mobility to look like in the future for our region. So I am coming to you for ideas. Public transport is handled by Waikato Regional Council (i.e. NOT Taupo District Council) and a portion of your Regional rates gets put toward this.  By Total Mobility we are talking about: “Assisting eligible people with long-term impairments to access appropriate transport to meet their daily needs and enhance their community participation. This assistance is provided in the form of subsidised door to door transport services wherever scheme transport providers operate” (for a fuller description see the NZTA website here). I also posted this request for public feedback on Facebook a few days ago and some of the responses are already quite informative, so feel free to put any comments there.

Zero rates rise for Northland so why can’t we? Northland Regional Council chairman Pita Tipene believes a 0% increase in rates take is achievable for the upcoming financial year, I wonder how they can manage but we can’t?

Lake Okareka locals take gold clams seriously so why can’t we? Isn’t it interesting that some people are taking the gold clam threat a lot more seriously than here in Taupo, like say Lake Okareka locals including Te Arawa Lakes Trust who are imposing all kinds of restrictions like warranted officers and community volunteers manning boat ramps to check those entering have followed the “Clean, Check, Dry” procedures. Food for thought there, and I don’t mean gold clam soup.

Almost free entry for youth: Hastings District Council has just introduced a scheme whereby youth get $1 entry into Hastings District Council-public pools and Hastings Sports Centre has been launched in a bid to encourage young people to be more active. Available to all young people living in Heretaunga Hastings aged 12 to 24, and interesting that with all their challenges from last year’s big storm it is reckoned as affordable. I say if youth don’t keep themselves occupied they can only cause more trouble for the rest of us, so I would like to know why we can’t do such a thing here too.

Like this guys style?  This guy Geoff Upson is a sitting member on Rodney Community Board up in Auckland, and he is already casting himself as the Opposition! I have thought of myself the same way for quite some time now, but never thought of actually labeling myself that. Perhaps I need to start talking more straightforwardly like Geoff.

Fridays Freak’in Fantastic: Amazing photo taken up Mount Tauhara on early Christmas morning of 2025, and believe it or not the silhouette in the middle of the rainbow is me. Rain or shine, that wonderful place is always stimulating.

Friday Summers Heating Up

5 December 2025

Councillor Duncan again with my view of things this Friday, and I must say that things are starting to get a little warmer and not just the weather. That old chestnut of controversy called ‘the JMA’ is now rearing its head, and a few other things like the Turangi Wastewater scheme and the Taupo Landfill were also recently discussed in Council Chambers that are stirring up thoughts in my own mind at least, of a few clues for this governments intent to smash up the Regional Councils. Whichever side of the fence you are on, there is no doubt that influences to some major infrastructure decisions are happening which have little to do with environmental science and everything to do with cultural preferences – and they don’t come for free. By the way these sessions were closed to public and not minuted either, so you will just have to get my version.

In the lighter side of things, it can at times feel like I am trying to defy gravity (again) with some of the stuff being presented in Chambers as the new Council takes shape. Like a little thing called ‘confidentiality’ for example, and I find myself explaining that we were not elected to be employees of Taupo District Council Inc, and so that means that floated ideas of weekly code of silence sessions are just not cricket. And the remuneration talks (still ongoing) remind that none of us are here for the money (around $40K for a Taupo District Council Councillor, unless you are the Deputy Mayor or chair one of the more important committees) – not unless you just want to be a tickboxing seat-warmer anyway.

And of course there was the governments announcement that rates caps of 2-4% (excluding water services) will soon be applied with a transition period until 2029 when the full model would be in place. I don’t exactly know what they were thinking to leave out the water services aspect, because although many Councils are behind their game and could do with catching up, places like Auckland can legitimately claim the same for transport (and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown is already squealing).

Anyway, lets get down to it:

Joint Management Agreement (JMA) number is coming up: Some of you may have heard by now that Council is having an open to the public workshop on 18 December in Council Chambers (open for the public to watch but not participate). This is the first in a series of workshops planned, and the idea is to do them in a way that avoids the accusations of back door dealings which happened in July. I don’t know why we aren’t leaving all of this until next year, but this first session is apparently intended as a basic introduction to just what these JMA’s are all about and how they came to be. I have heard some musings that given the current make-up of elected members, the Waikato Rivers JMA could be passed in its current form straight away and that all of this talk (let alone public consultation) is a waste of time. That may possibly be correct, but I think for newly elects to vote for something as substantial as this before being briefed would be highly irresponsible, and would likely tear apart any semblance of a constructive way forward not to mention lose credibility with the public. I did also come across the below mention of it in a recent Hobsons Pledge newsletter, so it seems that the eyes of the rest of the country are also upon us.

$20M better spent elsewhere? On Tuesday elected members had a workshop introduction to the proposed wastewater solution for Turangi, which has been subject to investigations and negotiations for at least 8 years (!). Some info is available on the Council website here, but I must say it hasn’t ever been portrayed as straightforwardly as it could be. The consent has been expired since 2017, and the aim is to get a new one signed off by the Regional Council to carry us through far into the future. But that application process has been put on hold until we can sort out ourselves to decide what we really want to happen, and therein lies the uncertainty.

There are undoubtedly some historical grievances from both the original land acquisition and the resulting outflow directly into Lake Taupo (and realise that without a wastewater plant, we couldn’t have the town of Turangi), but the plant has been developed to such a degree with the latest technology that its output is apparently not far off from being drinkable. With the existing wetlands and its proposed expansion scheduled to happen in a few years time, its environmental effects are arguably quite minimal in real and relative terms. For example, the diagram below demonstrates its Nitrogen effect as relative to other polluters (and Nitrogen is one of the key measures).

But the negotiations of Council staff continue – and there is no scheduled date for them to ever finish – to find a ‘long term’ land disposal option, and to date the only thing that has been holding up that happening seems to be the inability to find a willing landowner and for the right price. Just to be clear, this land disposal option is primarily being sought for cultural reasons, and would cost in the order of $20M for infrastructure alone (plus operating costs which may be in the $00,000’s annually). A glimpse of the amount of work that has gone into this is shown in the diagram below, which illustrates all the different options that have been investigated to date.

Now I don’t wish to offend the locals who have been so impacted by all of this over its history, but now is surely the time to step back and think about what is really trying to be achieved here and that we are all going to end up paying for it. I can think of a lot more productive ways to spend $20M, can’t you?

Taupos rubbish on trial : Yesterday we had a staff presented session on the Taupo landfill, which has also of late been a topic of discussion at a few local marae. The current consent expires in 2027 (when basically the hole will be full), and we need to get Stage 3 ticked off by the Regional Council to carry us through to 2058. As far as I can tell there are few if any environmental reasons the consent couldn’t get rolled over, and there are no disputes about land ownership as with the Turangi Wastewater plant because it was never subject to acquisition under the Public Works Act. But many local hapu are understandably not very happy about having a rubbish tip at the bottom of their precious Mount Tauhara, and that seems to be presenting a bit of a conundrum.

You see things seem to have been left a little too late in the piece to seriously consider other options like a different landfill location (and which is unlikely to be economically viable anyway) or alternative measures like incineration (which is very expensive). Apparently it can take up ten years to get a new site consented and up and running, so if it were truly ever a serious consideration then the ball on that should have got rolling long ago. The simple fact is that if this consent doesn’t get granted by 2027, we will need to start trucking household refuse to a place like Hampton Downs at an estimated additional annual cost of $270 per ratepayer. I don’t know how significantly the Regional Council takes cultural opposition in their consent calculations, but gather it will be diminished with the newly proposed government reforms – so to me, this whole exercise is seeming more about politics than anything else. In the meantime though, we will definitely be spending on a redevelopment of the existing site as shown below which will enable trucks to get their disgorged contents sorted instead of tipping straight into the hole as happens now – and is also a necessary if we need to start trucking it out.

Jonesie Awards coming up: Anybody not familiar with these, you can check them out here. Basically they are an annual awards ceremony headed by the Taxpayers Union to un-celebrate examples of wasteful spending by government agencies. Last years first place winner in the local government category was Hasting District Council which put a bunch of unelected teenagers in charge of Council for a time as a novel PR exercise. If anybody has some nominations for around here you are welcome to submit, I even have one in mind myself.

Chemtrails all hot air? This is not a topic I am very knowledgeable about at all, but I was sent this 97 minute documentary to enlighten and recommend it as worth a watch to bring yourself up to speed. I cannot confirm if any of it is true, but cloud seeding to influence the weather has been attempted since the 1940’s, and it is not very hard at all to imagine the same sort of thing being tried again to address global warming. However the question really is: Would those in authority really do this without our consent or even knowledge, as is being asserted here?

Only a few bad eggs, yeah right: It looks like the scandal involving the former top dogs of NZ Police Andrew Coster and Jevon McSkimming is already being subject to a thorough whitewashing, with the current Police Commissioner and Minister of Police trying to portray a black and white situation that it was only those two who ever did anything wrong, and Minister of Police Mark Mitchell ridiculously saying “If you’re asking me to condemn our 15,000 police officers – sworn and non-sworn staff – around the country, and judge them by the same standards of that previous police executive, I am not going to do that”. But I am hoping that the average New Zealander has a little more common sense than to swallow this nonsense, and that anyone should be able to see that if you get corrupt and calculating practices at the very top, then it is inevitable that the same behaviours could have been trickling down for quite some time.

What has this got to do with local government? Well I have said it before and I will say it again: New Zealand is not the bastion of un-corruption it claims to be. I am not saying that I know of any practices as blatant as that of convicted senior manager Murray Noone of Rodney District Council / Auckland Transport going on around here (whose renown was such that I hear every man and his dog contractor in North Auckland knew the only way to get contracts with Murray was through bribery), but I certainly perceive similar patterns of institutional self-protectionism as been exposed in the NZ Police, including the withholding of information on a need to know basis only.  Clearly this is being illuminated as not being a very healthy approach for the NZ Police, and it should have no place in Councils either. But it certainly does happen.

Ever heard of UNDRIP? Otherwise known as United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. If you want to come up to speed with one of the reasons this country has been headed the direction is has, this article by Dr Muriel Newman of NZPCR is quite informative. Whether you agree with the authors perspective or not, there is no doubt that when New Zealand was signed up to it in 2010 it happened in quite a surreptitious way. I had never been a great fan of former Prime Minister Helen Clark, but at least she saw what might be coming in a way that the fairly clueless succeeding Prime Minister John Key did not.

Beautiful roundabouts: I haven’t driven them more than a few times, but as a roundabout fan must acknowledge the new ones on Taharepa Road / A C Baths Ave and Taherepa Road / Crown Road. However, I do have a grumble about the cost required to make these happen, because in a small town like this we should be aiming for good-enough infrastructure and not the rolls-royce. We have a Chambers workshop coming up on December 18th to discuss Delegated Authorities, and it is exactly decisions like this I want to get in the hands of elected members and not just leave to the discretion of staff – because any engineer worth their salt will always prefer to build the rolls-royce.

Waterslide fun for summer: Anyone recall the waterslides we had several years ago in the Riverside Park (where the summer concert is held)? Well this year they are happening in Ngongotaha north of Rotorua, and I will be making enquiries with the operators if they might consider coming back to Taupo because I thought they were great fun.

Fridays fable to figure: I recently came across this extraordinary 13min short film entitled ‘Lost Face’ about the fate of a fur trader at the hands of a far northern American Indian tribe. Wouldn’t it be great if some New Zealand filmmakers could make something as gritty about our own colonial experiences?

Friday Whisperings of Change

28 November 2025

Hi folks its Councillor Duncan coming at you again for another Friday update, and you may have noticed I took a break last week. These Friday updates have become quite a habit since they started, and I have found that having a self-imposed editorial deadline is a great motivational tool to make them happen. But they can also be quite demanding if other things are going on (like working to feed the kids etc), and even at the best of times and even so rewarding, writing can at times be a painful act of creation (no AI used here). Now I don’t want to make any unkept promises, but I will commit to putting out these Council updates at least fortnightly until their usefulness fades or I really do get sick of them (except January when everything pretty much shuts down for New Zealand).

So starting with the biggest news of late – the governments proposed rejig of Regional Councils, and the possible future amalgamation of smaller ones like ours into larger Unitary Councils like happened in Auckland back in 2010. Minister of Local Government Chris Bishop says: “The government does not think local government is serving New Zealanders well and the time has come for reform”.

I have mixed views about this whole thing, because I have experienced the joys and the pains of local government in both this provincial small town and big city Auckland Unitary Council which is the direction this is definitely headed. Neither of them gets my first pick, and the old Waitakere City of which I used to be part or even the borough Councils before 1989 now seem a class above in terms of community representation and responsible spending. And despite repeated claims by the likes of Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor that ‘the funding model for local government is broken’, I say it has rather just been mismanaged. Not only that, but I strongly suspect the corruption and collusion recently exposed at the very top of the New Zealand Police Force (and quite possibly endemic throughout the higher ranks) is happening in a lot of other public institutions in this country – local government not excluded. My grandaddy who was the first chairman of the Public Service Commission in 1946 is probably rolling in his grave.

To elaborate further, I expect that cronyism (definition: giving jobs to friends rather than to independent people who have the necessary skills and experience) is far less prevalent in larger organisations, although I have heard this country described as one big small town before so it will never be completely absent. And I reckon isolated Councils like ours are far more likely to become mini fiefdoms of the senior staff, simply because their employees have fewer job opportunities to escape without having to leave town. On the other hand, large unwieldly bureaucracies like Auckland Council can be impersonal and intimidating for the average person to thread their way through, and the theoretical efficiencies of scale may not come to pass because additional layers of management seem to always get added. So I am torn both ways – on one hand we have civilisation and due process but all the bureaucracy that comes with it, and on the other some more flexibility but all the small town crap.

So if you want my honest opinion based on my past three years experience, I think we may have been better off under a Waikato Super City. Certainly some of the dumber decisions of the past might have been avoided, like demolishing a perfectly good Council building and rejigging the streets of Taupo township without thinking where the traffic will go. So whilst I am usually a fan of smaller and nimbler and every small town Council will have its quirky differences depending on the latest election, this place has not given me the greatest confidence. At least with a larger bureaucracy everybody is in the same boat and gets the same thing – just like living in a place like Auckland, and just like at McDonalds.

Apart from that, this week we also have:

Council meeting 25 November: Watch it all here on youtube and you can find the minutes here, nothing too exciting except the setting up of committees for the new triennium. There are a few subtle differences from last term, and I took the opportunity (from 5min 17) to express my reservations that without these committees having the appropriate Delegated Authorities elected members will not have sufficient opportunity to try and rein in costs – or even be held accountable (noting that Delegated Authorities are yet to be decided).  The deletion of an originally proposed Infrastructure Committee also removes potential oversight of anything other than just water services (which is to be covered by a separate Water Services Committee with independent chair) – so for example transportation projects get little coverage. In addition, I also noted the presence of a handful of un-elected representatives with granted voting rights – that is something I formerly campaign pledged against, so to be consistent with that I expressed my objection.

Pull the other karakia please: I recently made a bit of a fuss about the regimented format used in Council Chambers the past year or so, whereby everyone including visitors was expected to stand whilst the official Taupo District Council version gets recited in unison by elected members, and that the only permitted variations were in Te Reo. I never did get any satisfactory explanation as to how that all came about, and have for quite some time been concerned about its apparent exclusiveness. So after I submitted my own proposed way forward for karakias, last week we had a workshop presentation about it (unrecorded for public viewing of course) – and guess what? Here was me thinking all along that karakias are a spiritual thing, when all along they’re not!

We were told that karakias only became religious after Europeans hijacked them in their colonial way of doing things, and prior to that were never meant as prayers at all! Well blow me down if I found this all a bit hard to swallow, and from its very first line the Council opening karakia is hard to accept as just being secular: “Tuia ki te mauri o te whenua / Connect to the life essence of the land”.

Anyway to cut a long story short, it was decided by majority decree that going forward only the official Council (secular!) version will be recited, and we are thankfully dispensing with the obligatory standing. My own summation: This is at best a missed opportunity for openness to other belief systems, and at worst a cultural and spiritual imposition onto the rest of us. Somehow I don’t feel quite as enthusiastic partaking anymore, but I won’t be making any scenes like this Community Board member did in Whangamata.

We have some money in the bank, didn’t you know? After the electricity companies were sold off late last century, someone decided that Taupo District Council would look after the money on your behalf. It is otherwise know as the Taupo Electric Limited (TEL) fund, and here is Sophie M Smiths useful three-part series of what it is all about. My own simplified take: the $80M or so is a community owned fund, the dividends of which some other Councils gave away directly to their constituents early in the piece. Until very recently the TEL fund was tied down as a form of insurance against infrastructure (i.e. instead of paying premiums to insurance companies), but that obligation no longer applies. Yes there are some current policies in place to govern its application, but elected members could for example by majority vote change those settings and likewise give it all away if we wanted.

Sounds like a plan: If we copy Thames Coromandel who have set up a Mayoral taskforce aiming to cut rates in half, then because our current forecast is 6.7% we should be about bang on to capping it to inflation just as myself and our new Mayor have pledged. No word of any taskforce happening yet though.

That much, really? Taxpayer’s Union was recently harassing Christchurch City Council for allegedly spending $1.36M on Ngai Tahu consultancy services over a three-year period. That is less than Taupo District Council has set aside for the next ten years on that sort of thing, so I am guessing nobody has tipped them off about us yet.

Too many Council staff? A recent review by Deloitte suggests that Wellington City Council has 330 more staff than they need to, I wonder if we should get a quote from them to look over us too?

Now that would be an interesting conference: There is a Marxism conference happening in Melbourne April next year, which I think would be far more straight-talking and entertaining than a Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) bash. I don’t think I can convince our Mayor to send me along at your expense, but I recommend it to anybody who is interested in the future of this nation to attend – even if only for information gathering purposes.

What has The Treaty got to do with school anyway? On the most recent consternations being thrown around after the government threw out obligations to The Treaty of Waitangi out of the NZ School Curriculum, I think Sean Rush’s letter to his local Roseneath School Board stands out as a reasoned argument that schools should stick to their knitting which is to educate kids and to stay out of politics.

Climate Education or Misinformation? Nowadays it’s hard to tell, but if local esteemed scientist Dr Dick Reaney’s recommendation is anything to go by, then visiting professor William Happer of Princeton University will be worth listening to at this FREE event next Sat Dec 6th as per below. You will need to RSVP dickreaney@outlook.com to secure your place.

Fridays roundabout revelry: Four bendy-buses trapped themselves and others into a stalemate situation for about ten minutes recently at a roundabout in Alexander Kiellands Plass in Norway (right-click translate to English if you don’t speak Norwegian). One bystander: “I don’t know what I’m most impressed by: That they managed to get into the situation, or that they got out of it”.

Fridays Circus Starting Again

31 October 2025

Councillor Duncan reporting, and whoever said local government wasn’t interesting? Today we had our inaugural Council meeting of the new triennium, with Declarations of the newly elects to do the right thing by Taupo constituents and also a reveal of who the new Deputy Mayor will be. The Council media team are right onto it and although we aren’t quite up to livestreaming yet, you can watch the 30 min proceedings here or read about it here on the Council page.

Mayor John Funnells choice of Deputy is an interesting one, and will be controversial with some. Cr Kevin Taylor was also the Deputy Mayor under the previous Mayor David Trewavas, and so might not represent the clean break with the past that the 63% of Taupo District voters who voted for change were expecting. Like myself, Mayor Funnell stood on the key election pledges of transparent decision making and tying rates to inflation – not what Taupo constituents have been experiencing to date, and not what Cr Taylor aspires very much to in my experience either. Kevin and I haven’t always seen eye to eye by quite a long shot, so I wonder how things will be different this time around. Then again we do both claim to be Christian men of faith, so it won’t be a very good look if we don’t even try to get along will it? So we will just have to see.

This week we also have:

Passengers beware: Bus driver killed in fiery Auckland crash with an electrical engineering professor subsequently inferring that lithium battery buses are a risk in any collision and we should be wary.  Any bus passengers in Taupo worried about safety, had perhaps better sit close to the emergency doors – because as far as I know, our only commuter bus is electric.

Dubious distinctions: The Ombudsman’s Office had a record year with complaints up 30% from the previous year. For any regular business this would be something to be proud of, but certainly not this one. Do we even have a Public Service to speak of anymore? I have my sincere doubts, and my experience of the Ombudsman is that they stick up for bureaucrats like themselves more than the public interest. I say New Zealand’s reputation as one of the least corrupt places in the world is hard to imagine as deserved, and perhaps it’s the strict definition of ‘corruption’ which needs updating.

Corruption or incompetent? While we are on that subject, Erika Harvey of Lobby for Good does an interview with David Baker of RapidQS who says he could without fail save 30% off the price of most Council projects valued under $100K. Erika also muses that commission-based litigation of the United States hands down beats the New Zealand system for the average person to be able to claim damages. Sad or maddening, take your pick.

Who owns the coast? Elliot Ikilei of Hobsons Pledge puts out his view about the passing of the Marine and Coastal Area (Takutai Moana) Amendment Bill and applauds New Zealand First MP Casey Costello for helping to make it happen. Casey was formerly with Hobsons Pledge and around two years ago offered to come down from Auckland and present to Taupo District Council free of charge, but elected members of the time didn’t want to hear about it. I really wish Casey could have made the trip and got listened to, because she has some interesting stories which might have helped broaden some of the narrower points of view.

Class ‘N’ word Act: In this interview Mayor Nobby Clark (former) of Invercargill makes left-wing interviewer Guy Williams very uncomfortable in a humorous way with his frequent use of the ‘N’ word. I reckon that Taupo District Councillor who in 2020 got pinged for doing exactly the same thing only accidentally – should perhaps have done it with as much gusto as Nobby to avoid himself all that trouble.

Judge knows best: Kaipara mayor survives recount bid because a judge decides that a 21 vote margin isn’t reason enough to justify. Because the electoral process is bulletproof and people in this country don’t ever make mistakes or manipulate. Yeah, right.

Most successful worst Mayor ever? Blogger Bruce gives his 13 min take on South Waikato Mayor Gary Petley’s narrow win. The 70% who voted for change didn’t get their wish, greater than the 63% for Taupo – think about that. I think Bruce does a great job of keeping elected members accountable, and encourage anyone else out there with some spare time to do similar.

Not fitting in: Given the playground atmosphere of the last Council which I have in previous posts mentioned, I reckon this social experiment demonstrating learned helplessness of adolescents is also relevant for newly elected members to please take note. And a reminder that complacent participation for fear of exposing one’s ignorance or naivety is not going to be of much benefit to the people you represent. Much better to ask dumb questions than to stay silent and portray a disingenuous wisdom.

Council follies: Here is Duncan Garner’s latest podcast this time about Taupo District Councils new building.  I suppose it is old news around here and we are certainly not the only Council to commit follies like the ones this Tauranga based advocacy group is getting stuck into. 

But I reckon it pays to reflect and remember so that the same mistakes don’t happen again, and if I ever get to be Mayor of this place do pledge to you now to put a plaque where the old Council building used to be on Lake Terrace to help us do just that (and paid for out of your rates).

Staff costing too much? While we are on that subject here is Sophie M Smith’s latest piece entitled Inside the Machine: What 430 Staff and 9 Comms People Tell Us About Taupō District Council. I think staff numbers are an important part of the story, but not all of the story.  The other is how much is spent on consultants and contractors, with a Taxpayer’s Union report of 2023 indicating that TDC spent $50M as opposed to similar pop. Councils of Invercargill and Kapiti Coast which each spent less than $5M (I mention this in one of my 2025 Campaign pages).  I have not been able to 100% confirm the veracity of those figures, but intend to follow this up for 2025/26.  Because high staff numbers can be acceptable if it means we are spending less on consultants, but it seems we might be getting the worst of both worlds.

Cutting corners: Anyone driving the new roundabout at the intersection of Crown Road and Taharepa Road better not do what the picture on right shows, because that would be illegal and maybe even dangerous. Bridge engineers work with steel and concrete, but for traffic engineers like me our material is humans – and with experience they aren’t so unpredictable. So let’s see what happens.

Oops got that one wrong: Here Bill Gates backpedals on climate change and Donald Trump pounces on him for doing it. I learnt some time ago that the cooler periods of Earth history were worse for agriculture and humanity, if Bill Gates is so smart then how come it took him this long to realise?

Tribalism not so good: Here we have Tom Henry’s interesting take on tribalism as it relates to the Scottish clans and New Zealand in 2025, saying in his summation: “NZ has reached the stage where government miss-management, tribalism preferred over democracy, lack of real practical education, corporatisation, amalgamation, centralisation, the introduction of preference and privilege depending on who by race or association and connection, all have combined to intentionally hand this country over to the Globalists, one massive tribal system that wants individualism crushed, and humanity replaced”. Is he right, and is it too late anyway?

Friday because it’s Halloween: And I am fairly sure it was The Warehouse who slipped that formerly unknown tradition into New Zealand before we could even realise what was happening.

Fridays Getting Sucked In

24 October 2025

Councillor Duncan back at you again, and a few people have asked me lately if it is exciting to be re-elected. My answer is that it is about as exciting as having a new baby – I can put on a smiley face for posterity, but not really looking forward to the sleepless nights and nappy changes. But let’s see if things roll different this time, and there are promising signs that things could turn out better than before.

The past two days gone newly elected got to partake in some quite stimulating induction sessions to educate (and remind) what Council is supposed to be all about, and this time round was quite special. We had an ex-mayor from another district come in and run some Q & A sessions along with meeting test runs, and all of the old-hands appreciated we were getting something quite different from what has happened before. It did start off feeling like a family councilling session because of the last term and election travails, and you can probably blame me most of all for that (perhaps also for how this special treatment even came about). I don’t know exactly who arranged it all, but much kudos to whomever did.

But don’t let oneself get too sucked in – I say to others and have to remind myself. Because when things start feeling too cosy, if you want to make a real difference then the battle is already lost.

Just as sure as one plus one equals two, if rates don’t get reined in close to the consumer rate of inflation then the working and middle classes will continue getting smashed. That much is real and we had all better understand it.

As an aside, identifying and defining a problem is the very essence of Critical Thinking. If it doesn’t happen, we could for example end up spending $10M on a water plant upgrade just because some legislation or other says we should – but without bothering to measure the tangible benefits to end users.  Or end up with too many road cones. So let’s keep constituent’s best interest first, and do some more of that Critical Thinking.

This week we also have:

Didn’t we do well: Voter turnout for the Taupo district was an impressive 55%, I am not sure if that is any record around here but compared to Auckland’s 35% with closer to 20% in some of its wards – people in Taupo are thoroughly engaged. This article by NZ Initiative tries to piece together why the disparity, with the faceless anonymity of cities being cited as one factor (e.g. in the provinces you are much more likely to meet elected members on the street). But the author also critiques the general failings of local government, and suggests the Mayoral powers granted to Auckland’s Wayne Brown get made available to other Councils – and I tend to agree.

Trojan Horse Code of Conduct: BloggerZoran Rakovic breaks down the governments DRAFT Code of Conduct for local government elected members, and it isn’t very pretty (Zoran ran for Selwyn District Council this year but unfortunately missed out by a smidgeon 80 votes).  His conclusion about Section 8 which is to do with Treaty of Waitangi:

“Clause 8 hijacks process to enforce ideology. It crosses the line between governance and governmentality. It substitutes obedience for representation. And so it must be removed. Not softened. Not edited. Removed. Entirely. We have replaced democracy with dogma. We have built a church inside the council chamber. And we have hung the Treaty not as a taonga, but as a warning. You must believe. You must obey. Or you will be called… unfit to serve”. 

This is sounding like a convincing deal breaker to me, and who wants to sign up to that? Anyway, the wheels of parliament turn fairly slow in this country, so we will just have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Housing for the elderly? Dr Wilkinson in this NZ Initiative report questions the viability of government owning rental accommodation, he says: “On the evidence, it is plausible that both taxpayers and tenants could be better off if the Government were less dominant as a landlord and if its subsidies empowered tenants by giving them a greater choice of landlord”. In the past three years I have seen some shaky indicators for the long-term viability of Council social housing, including lesser access to government subsidies which private providers can get. When this question next comes up for this Council, I predict it mightn’t be an easy decision to make and could well be unpopular.

Friends in high places? Sophie M Smith’s latest interesting piece is entitled Dummies Guide to the council hotseat series : The Things We Said We Wouldn’t Take. I personally think politics and governance are not the place to be making friends, because compromise to one’s own reason for being there can inevitably follow. The alternative is school playground antics, which I reckon is pretty much what we have had going on in Taupo for quite a long time. I hope that will change this time round.

WELCOME TO THE MACHINE: As we kick off this new triennium, I thought to upload my four Councillor Chat articles which I posted Jan – April 2024 about how Taupo District Council operated last term. Again, I am hoping things will be different from now on but only time will tell by how much.

Taupo gets the miss: Governments latest release on Roads of National Significance misses us out altogether – aren’t we important enough? In all honestly though, when in 2012 the Taupo Bypass happened I was a little surprised because I thought big stuff like that only happened in the Golden Triangle of Auckland – Hamilton-Tauranga. So I suppose that means we better start writing to our local MP Louise Upston if we want that much better road to Turangi.

Friday call to arms: This 1989 single by band The The took a few years longer than it should to get my attention, but isn’t it such a wonderful premonition of where young people find themselves now?

Friday Fingers Crossed

10 October 2025

Okay tomorrow is Election day, and I hope people have been listening because otherwise the last two years could have been a complete waste of my time. As your on-the-spot Councillor I have tried to illuminated the workings of Taupo District Council as best I can with the tools at my disposal, hoping to educate you about what needs to change and why. Some of you have listened, but it remains to be seen if enough of you have understood or care. And seriously folks, I really do not want to sit at the table of a semi-banana republic Council for another three years.

That doesn’t mean some of the elected people cannot be stupid some of the time (because that would be too much to ask, and even I am not perfect), but just enough of them to not behave stupidly enough of the time to make more sensible decisions than has been happening.

So if nothing else, please just think of me.

But even with a best-case scenario that we get a near complete makeover of elected members, it is going to take an extraordinary effort to effect the real changes that are needed . Some of these I mention in my Campaign 2025 page, and it is going to require much more than just me, myself and I to make them happen – in fact it is going to require your help too. Because even with someone like me in there, there is no way that this Council (or any other Council for that matter) will be transparent and held accountable all by itself.

It just ain’t gonna happen.

I say what this town needs are reliable and trusted community news sources, ones which are constantly on Council’s back and won’t take no for an answer. A decade or so ago that used to be the role of the mainstream media, but I don’t envy the likes of local newspaper Taupo & Turangi News for making a go of it in this challenging climate of competing news sources. Even though LakeFM and local Sophie M Smith have made some valiant efforts in 2025, and even me, we can’t be expected to do it all by ourselves. And it shouldn’t have to require messaging through the likes of Hobsons Pledge to get local messages out at short notice, as happened with the JMA. Some other towns already seem to have more of it happening in this space, such as Whatoninvers for Invercargill and Crux for Queenstown.

So my question is: Who’s going to make it happen from here on in?

Okay apart from that lengthy intro, this week we have:

WARNING to newly elected members: Don’t be dummies and sign the government revised Code of Conduct put in front of you in the next few weeks, or at least not until it gets drastically changed. Submissions closed a couple of weeks ago and you can read my own here, but The New Zealand Initiative submission along with that from the Free Speech Union align that they don’t much like it either. In its current form it could have a chilling and crippling effect on elected members to properly function, and I say is yet another supposedly well-intentioned government initiative that has been hijacked by minority interests.

Westwards ho: West Auckland candidate Ken Turner talks for 15 min why he won’t sign the Taxpayer’s Union Ratepayers Pledge to cap rates to inflation, and given Aucklands present commitment to some very large infrastructure projects like the $B Central Rail Link (CRL) he may have a point – but what is the excuse for Taupo? He also has a few things to say about Council’s ‘Reputation Department’, and I’ll let you guess what he means by that.

Giving New Zealand away: In a recent article Sophie M Smith gives a nice summary of Agenda 2030. Coming from a city background as I do, prior to the 2000’s it had always an uphill struggle to make new cycleways and busways happen because New Zealanders have always been wedded to their private motor vehicles. As well justified as those things are in a city context especially (the cycle and busways I mean), I cannot help but think that things like Agenda 2030 and climate fearmongering were always intended as a disingenuous way of changing the political environment to effect those often necessary changes – many of which are now realities in 2025. But I say that a flawed ideology is no way to run a country, and it is costing all of us dear. Although probably a little outdated by now, I reckon Ian Wisharts ‘Air Con’ (2009) covers it quite well.

Good enough should be good enough:  A constituent was in Whanganui lately and sent me through a few pics of what looks to be some very cost-effective urban roundabouts as per this pic here.  It has always been obvious to me that a small provincial Council like ours should be laser focused on doing good enough infrastructure not rolls-royce, so I was greatly surprised after moving here to find the opposite seems to apply.  If I get into any position of influence after tomorrow, I will be trying hard to turn things around.

Another reason to keep fingers crossed: Governments overhyped but softly changes on the electricity sector mean that your power bill doesn’t look like it will be getting any smaller in the foreseeable future, so even more reason we get some better people elected in Council who can actually do something about your cost of living.

Your $$$ going to a worthy cause: Read Part Two about Mayor Trewavas expenditure account by Sophie M Smith.  I recall being present at the mentioned Mr Brightside bar during the 2023 LGNZ conference, but don’t recall ordering any food – so damn, there was my missed chance for a freebie. But it is so true that things like credit card expenditure get a mention in some policy guidelines or other, but often don’t actually get checked up on or followed through. Central and Local Government will have their armies of policymakers, and the lack of practical application I partly blame on the general demise of the Public Service in this country.

Off a ducks back? Ruapehu candidate gives up their campaign due to abuse received.  I can’t say that I have faced that sort of thing to any serious degree, apart from online stuff of course which I can mostly shrug off.  But not everyone has as thick a skin as me, and I have gleaned at least one candidate in our district has faced much worse.  I have said before that politics can sometimes resemble the primary school playground – and I still mean it. Feelings will get hurt, and if you can’t handle the jandle then perhaps it’s not for you.

Complicit cop-out: Last week, Taupo District Council shared this informational video – apparently produced by Gisborne District Council – that describes Māori wards as “one way Te Tiriti o Waitangi can be honoured at a local level”. I raised concern to our Electoral Officer Warwick Lampp that this kind of language is bias by omission, because it subtly suggests that not supporting Māori wards would dis-honour the Treaty – which is an unproven and politicised claim. I say it is analgous to publicly messaging that violence can make you feel better, but leaving out the bits around consequences and non-violent alternatives. Council Chief Executive Julie Gardyne refused my request for the video to be removed from the Council website, because guess what – she is deferring to the Electoral Officers decision which is not to intervene! Local media reporting isn’t exactly providing very balanced coverage on this issue either, as this Taupo & Turangi News article last week about a one-sided panel discussion on this topic demonstrates. Not that I am biased or anything (?!), but I am speaking as an independent and not as a ratepayer funded supposedly neutral source of information.

Other Electoral antics: Okay so the Electoral Officer declining to intervene on ratepayer-funded electoral bias should probably not surprise, given the recent revelation that it took ACT MP Cameron Luxton petitioning the Electoral Commission for them to remove a link to Local Government New Zealand’s (LGNZ) blatant pro-Māori ward messaging, and also declining to intervene after Council staff deleted Rotorua Mayoral candidate Robert Lee’s campaign material which included some informational snippets of youtube material available in the public domain. My opinion: The Electoral Commission does not know how to do their job which is to administer a fair and unbiased electoral process, and in future will need firm instructing from above. In the meantime, the status quo powers get to retain their influences.

Careful who you vote for: Claims that foreign states are targeting your local Councillors including through sister city arrangements just like we have going on here in Taupo. Last year or so Councillors Rachel Shepherd and Anna Park went off on a media unreported week-long lark to China (mostly funded by the Chinese city of ??), and I am sure some good will was received – but is that all they brought back?

Speaking of Rachel…Recall I reported on the vandalism of candidate placards last week? Well it looks like that beacon of balanced argument organisation Hobson’s Pledge decided to post up their own revised headline to assist people’s understanding, as shown on left.

Duncan talks: Here I talk for about an hour in an interview with Tristan Baynham of the Taupo Ratepayers Group about a whole bunch of Council stuff from rates caps to speed humps to fluoride.

Ann talks too: Here we have Taupo ward candidate Ann Tweedie talking for about 15 min with RCR interviewer Paul Brennan about her aspirations in Council should she be so lucky to be elected (or is that unlucky?), and like me she is big on capping rates so will be getting my tick.

Ha ha funny- NOT: In his latest post on Facebook Mayoral candidate Kevin Taylor doubles down on portraying that he will be the People’s Advocate against the scary changes of Central Government coming in the future.  I find it hilarious that ex-policeman Kevin positions himself like this, because he is absolutely the last person I would be expecting to push back on authority instead of asking how high they want us to jump. More concerning though, is that he probably does believe it.

Truth is what you say it is: A thoughtful post about the history of this land and the Treaty was put out by local Sophie M Smith, entitled It Wasn’t Ours to Begin With. I don’t completely buy it though, because for one thing our recreational access to the lake is a clear obligation under the 1991 Resource Management Act and is not just down to Iwi generosity as she portrays. Aside from that, did Maui really get the lot as soon as he touched it, mountains lakes and all? Methinks there is a little more to it than just Sophies article says, and for a good context we need to look further back than just 1970 or even 1870 – perhaps 1770 is more realistic.

Sensible Speed Limits: A 60 km/hr speed limit past the Motutere campground is getting a revisit by NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA), when it really shouldn’t have been put back to 100 km/hr in the first place earlier this year. I haven’t quite worked out if it was NZTA’s intransigence at the time and/or the fairly tepid advocacy by this Council to push back, but at least something is now happening and you can make a submission here due 17 November. There is also a proposed 60km/hr stretch for Hawera and submissions for that close 29 October.

Rotorua ratepayer money down the drain: Here Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee briefly describes how $2.5M was given away along with $300K/year and all in the name of…honouring the Treaty? I thought they always said it came free.

Condolences: Taupo ward candidate Belinda Walker tragically and suddenly lost her 19 year-old son last week. All politics aside no-one ever deserves that to happen, and all sympathies extend.

Friday piece of flippancy: I have suspected for quite some time now, but is it really true?

Why I won’t be ticking ‘Yes’ to Māori Wards

1 October 2025

This is my brief take on Māori wards, and why I think they aren’t a healthy way forward. A lot of people have already made up their mind and some have even already voted, and that’s just fine. This is only one person’s point of view which you can take or leave – and either way, I don’t think it will be a train smash if Māori wards stay or go – least of all for Māori.

We could get into all sorts of questions like what was or wasn’t committed to in the Treaty of Waitangi, but Māori wards are really just about one thing: representation in a democracy. If that’s not happening as has been claimed, then it’s a problem that deserves to be fixed. But the issue with Māori wards as I see it, is that they cannot – and will not – do that.

Democracy only works if people show up to vote and understand why they’re voting. I worry that carving out separate electoral wards for any group not only doesn’t strengthen that process, it is actually a recipe to weaken it. It creates a space where voter engagement can wither even further, and where candidates can succeed not through broad support but because of low turnout and political alignment with specific vested interests.  That will be a cost for all of us to bear.

We should also take a few lessons from history.

Māori seats in Parliament were introduced in the 19th century as a very practical way of giving Māori men without individual land titles the ability to vote. But what was originally intended as a temporary fix has now become a permanent feature, and one that arguably hasn’t delivered on its promise of better outcomes for Māori.

And remember when New Zealand went nuclear-free in 1987? Can anyone even recall the actual reasons why? For a refresher, you can read about it here. Ever since then, I believe we’ve been basking in a kind of self-righteous glow that often outweighs the practicalities. Māori wards risk heading down the same track — symbolic, entrenched, and ultimately ineffective at solving the real issues (if they even get remembered).

The reality is there is no such thing as a ‘temporary fix’ in politics. Once baked in, a thing can hang around long after its purpose is done. 

Māori are not children, and yet Māori wards treat them as if they are – that’s demeaning to everyone. Life throws challenges at all of us in different ways, but the most important breakthroughs don’t come from handouts – they come from within.

There’s a well-known proverb:
“If you give a man a fish, he will be hungry tomorrow. If you teach a man to fish, he will be richer forever.”

Māori wards are like giving the fish, and I think we can do much better than that.

Fridays Fit: Democracy Aflame?

26 September 2025

Councillor Duncan with another Friday update with the latest election and local happenings, as I see things anyway. Is Taupo the centre of New Zealand politics? It certainly feels that way to me, but perhaps I am a little biased. After 11 October, I wonder if things are going to quieten down? I might even take a holiday.

I have been getting a few people asking for voting advice lately, so I will try to spell it out now. I reckon either John Funnell or Zane Cozens would make fine Mayors and it greatly helps that like me both of them have signed the Taxpayer’s Union Ratepayer Pledge committing to tie rates to inflation as much as possible. Of the existing Councillor candidates, the only ones I can say have been more on the useful side are Christine Rankin, Sandra Greenslade, and Rachel Shepherd. Of the newbies, I am optimistic for the Let’s Go Taupo team of Ann Tweedie, Rebecca Stafford and Hope Woodward, with the rest a bit of a guessing game because I simply am not acquainted enough. Steve Punter seems as if he could be quite useful as the experienced governance and conflict resolution guy, and Wahine Murch looks as if she might be both smart and sensible even if she is quite young. But I am sure many of the other candidates have great potential, and in this sort of role it’s only under fire do peoples true dispositions get revealed.

My advice to voters: Don’t tick all the boxes just because you can, only tick for the people you really want to get in. In the Taupo ward especially, things are looking quite competitive and every vote could matter.

Okay this week we have:

Tūwharetoa Chief moves on to a better place? Sir Tumu Te Heuheu Tūkino VIII, the ariki and paramount chief of Ngāti Tūwharetoa, has died at 84, RNZ media release is to be found here.

Pitch to the business leaders: On Wednesday night at the Cosmopolitan club there was a candidate event put on by Town Centre Taupo and the Taupo Business Chamber, with food and even complementary drinks as well. It was mostly just the Taupo ward candidates who turned up, but in her 2 min speech about reducing bureaucracy, Rebecca Stafford of the Taupo East Rural ward did make an impression with her intriguing account of paperwork that a prospective contractor for this Council was expected to fill out which even included stuff about child trafficking! But the evening was really mostly about the banter between Mayoral candidates David (what on earth is the problem) Trewavas; Kevin (government is coming to get us but trust me because my fingers are in everything) Taylor; Zane (100 day plan to fix this place) Cozens; and John (it could take 3 years to fix this place) Funnell. A transcript of my own mildly well received 2 min speech can be found here, and I am not sure if there are any recordings.

Smoke and mirrors: Here we have an interview with Danny Loughlin – 2025 Taupō District Te Papamārearea Ward Candidate, who just like Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor keeps on conflating the mandatory requirements of the JMA with all the optional extras (like that little thing called ‘Lake Taupo’) to justify why the public don’t need to be consulted. I really wish these guys would stop treating everyone like they are stupid.

Maori wards on Monday: This coming Monday 29th September there is a helpful information evening from 5.30pm at Waiora House if anybody is interested, I plan to go along myself.

Code of Conduct unbecoming? Today is the last day for submissions to the Local Government Commissions attempt to standardise a Code of Conduct (CoC) for elected members. Currently each Council is left to their own devices on this, and even though obliged to sign I know there have been ruptures in the past – with Rotorua Lakes Council elected members failing to sign theirs this last term because it was so oppressive. There are some elements in this new DRAFT version which I have concerns about, including Treaty of Waitangi provisions, opening up for complaints to be made by members of the public and staff, and also an introduced ‘collective responsibility‘ which infers that elected members should shut up if decisions are made which they don’t agree with – just imagine that!

My own submission you can read here, and I am also using this opportunity to suggest that non-financial conflicts of interest also be seriously addressed in this document following the recent situation we had here with the JMA – which I reckon was akin to a bank manager saying they are not conflicted even if they are also sitting on the board of a company applying for a loan. This is the sort of thing which would never be accepted in the private sector, but somehow gets waived in local government.

Wisdom of age or just too old? Mayoral candidate John Funnell put out a recent post about his age of 75 years and some public commentary about it. I reckon the late President Ronald Reagan came up with a hilarious riposte to that chestnut of an argument (actually I think it was one of his speechwriters beforehand) and you can watch as it was delivered in a presidential debate here. Folklore says that his political opponent Walter Mondale knew after this gag was delivered he had lost the race.

AirBnB paying its way? Last week John Funnell mentioned the Queenstown rates model to try and generate more income from BnB operations for the district, and I believe he said it could generate well over $1M annually if it were implemented. For anyone wanting to find out more about the Queenstown model, here is the link to check it out. One feature I found interesting in the Queenstown model is a stipulated annual survey of neighbours to assess if things aren’t going awry (like all night parties etc). I am not 100% sure if it is a good fit for Taupo, but it definitely deserves to be looked at more closely.

Debs is my kind of gal: I really don’t know much at all about Deb Mair candidate for Waikato Regional Council, but I do like her minimalist style and am quite happy to have one of my own placards alongside hers

Ann’s out and about: Its not really my thing but Taupo ward candidate Ann Tweedie has been making a good effort these last few all-day Thursdays to meet and greet to find out what’s on people’s minds. I will try to at least be there at the 9am next Thursday 2 October at the Airport, because it is out and out by far my most favourite cafe in town with a great outlook and so very quiet too.

Vandals strike: Sophie M Smith put out what looked to be a very handy online poll on candidates earlier this week, but it seems the vandals got in there to try and distort the results. A bit of a shame as it could have been quite useful, but I guess in this day and age it is only to be expected. I reckon polls like happen for national elections could also be a thing for these local government ones, and could even get people more interested in voting. Sophie also just put out an interesting perspective of the false promises some candidates do make (myself included, apparently) which is worth a read.

Why aren’t they signing? A recent RNZ- Reid poll says 75% of voters support a rates cap, so why aren’t more candidates signing the Taxpayer’s Union Pledge to do just that? I reckon that to not have rates capped to the inflation that consumers experience is simply unsustainable, and it is too important to rely on fickle governments to address. Perhaps look at it this way: Should voters put up with candidates who promise to kick pensioners out of their own homes unless they have a small fortune set aside? Because that is what it really means if we carry on the way we are. You can read more about it here as my own #3 Campaign Priority.

Idle words apart: Facebook message (since deleted) from Maori ward Councillor Danny Loughlin to Mayoral candidate Zane Cozens on 11 September: “Given your attacks on Maori and Tuwharetoa to pander to the racist vote, I won’t waste any more time on you.  If you don’t want to engage then you can always quit again…You can chat with Dunkin Donuts”.

Auckland Transport over the top (again): I just had to throw this in here because even though it has little to do with Taupo, it just goes to show what a big mean bureaucracy like Auckland Transport (AT) can get up to. Here we have a media report of a man very unhappy at a speed hump put in directly outside his house because it has apparently caused $40K damage to his home. Noise and vibrations from passing trucks is something I actually approached AT senior management about around 2018, because although somewhat of a previous influencer in that field I just knew it would blow up sooner or later because things were going a little too far. Anyway things have transpired pretty much as I predicted, with even the incoming government putting a temporary moratorium on them for State Highways the year before last.

Taupo’s missed paddleboat opportunity: Does anyone recall that the paddleboat Lakeland Queen was up for sale a few years ago? I was hoping someone might have scored it for Taupo, but it was not to be and Rotorua now has it back on their waters. In any case, this recent media release mentions that particular situation marked a turning point in Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee’s tenure to being less of a team player with the rest of his fellow elected members than he was before. If I could pick my own similar moment of revelation, it would be my exclusion from late 2023 towards the Northern Access Transport Study despite my professional expertise and being elected on a platform that I could contribute on that basis.

Put it this way – imagine if a Turangi elected member was sidelined any time Turangi came up for discussion, or Maori ward councillors with anything to do with Maori. Democracy does matter, and what you have been experiencing from me the past year or two is a symptom of what can happen when it gets treated badly.

Campbell’s still allowed? In a certain part of Scotland there are still signs like these around, and words like “Never trust a Campbell” still resound all the way back from 1692. If you want to learn a bit more about it, this 6 min documentary clip from 1974 will fill you in. Someone brought it up in a recent social media commentary riposte, so I thought to mention.

Friday piece of wisdom: I say to you all as much as myself.

Campaign Priority#3: Cap Rates to Inflation

23 September 2025

Councillor Duncan here, recalling my three campaign priorities:

#1 Restore Democracy

#2 Take Back Control of Council

#3 Cap Rates to Inflation

You can read about #1 and #2 here, but today I want to talk about #3 Cap Rates to Inflation which seems like a pipe dream to some, with abounding comments like:

Councils don’t run on bread and butter like the rest of us you know, what about the price of concrete?

What about catering for future growth?

Won’t our infrastructure fall to bits if we don’t put enough money into it?

The list can go on, but the fact of the matter is that if rates increase as per their current trajectory, anyone who doesn’t have a second fortune stashed away is going to be run off their own properties by the time they reach retirement. I am sure many have already.

One only has to look at the last few Long Term Plan (LTP) forecasts to see that an optimism reigns which takes no account of future uncertainties, and the self-imposed limits are continually being ratcheted upwards up from a mere 3% in 2018 to 7.7% in 2024 (and these get regularly exceeded anyway). Do people realise that Council staff will always find reasons to spend more money than we can actually afford, and it is legitimately and legally on elected members to reign things in? But that hasn’t been happening in Taupo for quite a long time.

What about doing fewer niceties? We can all probably think of a few things in the district that needn’t have happened, from the very expensive Council building saga from 2017 to the present day, to the Taupo town centre transformation project which many people still complain about, to the 6km of wire rope barrier on SH1 between Taupo airport and SH5 where there were no previous safety issues to speak of (okay that was NZTA and not Council). And yes, maybe even Boom Boom the dinosaur sculpture too.

What about doing stuff cheaper? Most of the Council debt goes towards infrastructure, and I know in my own professional field that smarter design can achieve a good enough result for a fraction of the price. For example these Compact Urban Roundabouts I developed a few years ago occupy much less road space than conventional designs which can make a big cost difference. So it is not all just about the price of asphalt, and having a guy or gal who knows just the right place to tap the hammer can be invaluable.

For one thing, I will tell you that the proposed $20M land disposal scheme (plus running costs) for the Turangi wastewater treatment plant is an absolute nicety. It has been portrayed to the public as necessary for environmental reasons, when that simply is not the case. It is being pushed along for cultural reasons alone, and goodness knows how much has been expended on consultants and staff time in the past five years plus. I wouldn’t mind so much if the constituents of Taupo were being properly informed, but that hasn’t been happening.

And what about that new bridge over the Waikato River we apparently so desperately need? I cover that in some detail here, but basically this Council spent $300K on a consultant last year to produce a lengthy study that not only didn’t even seriously consider options which could negate building an additional bridge altogether, but also failed to assess when the current bridge needs replacing. I found the sheer arrogance of the elected member leadership on this project to be quite astounding, and the workshop when it finally did happen in July 2025 nearly a year afterwards was a true gaslit gala of smoke and mirrors.

What about consultants? According to the Taxpayer’s Union Ratepayer Report of 2023, Taupo District Council spent over $50M on consultants and contractors the previous financial year. In comparison, Invercargill City Council and Kapiti Coast District Council with similar populations and staff numbers each spent less than $5M each on the same. So what’s going on? I haven’t been able to verify what these figures exactly do represent, but the Taxpayer’s Union are standing by them. Asking the same question again in 2025, I was told by our Council Chief Executive that this information is too laborious to readily access – and that seems strange to me, because this is an important metric that should be regularly reviewed. I think it is fine to hire a consultant if they are going to come up with better ideas to save us money, but from the examples above I can tell this is not always happening.

What about staff? Local amateur sleuth Sophie M Smith put out a recent article about the nearly $1M we spend each year on Communications and Public Relations staff salaries, and on top of that the $1.7M on marketing (which I understand includes the Destination Great Lake Taupo CCO which continues to claim that every dollar invested generates $800 of income for the district – yeah right). I think these aspects of Council are particularly overdue for review. Mayoral candidate Zane Cozens has mentioned that staff numbers at Taupo District Council have ballooned 30% in the past ten years, and I say what also needs to be asked is whether we are even employing the right people in the first place.

Why, oh why do things have to be this way?

The answer is: They don’t.

In an alternative universe where rates were capped a few decades ago and some common sense did prevail, for one thing I believe we would not have the current road cone nightmare – because Councils would have been so pushed that things wouldn’t have been allowed to get this far. That is one of the more visible symptoms of unrestrained bureaucratic spending, but there are also more bums on seats than necessary and probably a lot more besides.

I believe that tying Council rates to the inflation that consumers experience is not only doable, it is imperative to even be sustainable for residents to carry on living here. We just need to knuckle down and work smarter, and I know that it is possible. First term Mayor of Wanganui Andrew Tripe did it and without any magical silver bullets – so can we.