Tomorrow, Tuesday 26 August from 1pm, your elected members of Taupō District Council will vote on a bundle of plan changes – some necessary and worthwhile, others quietly political.
One of them, Plan Change 47, proposes a new ‘Māori Purpose Zone’ – a separate planning framework for Māori land. Meeting agendas can be found here, and I will tell you now that tomorrows is a bit of a long read.
Let me be clear: I support removing barriers to Māori development. But I do not support doing so by bypassing public scrutiny, skipping alternatives, or building a parallel zoning regime.
Here’s the deal:
1️⃣ No other options – such as planning overlays or targeted infrastructure support (e.g. deferred Development Contributions)- have been presented to Councillors. That breaches Section 77 of the Local Government Act, which requires all practicable alternatives to be considered.
2️⃣ No exemption has been granted by the relevant government Minister to proceed. Yet Council is voting to proceed on it anyway – assuming legal approval will magically follow, or that it’ll be politically awkward to reverse later.
3️⃣ It’s being marketed as a ‘housing initiative’. But this is really about changing how planning rules apply based on group identity – not about increasing public housing, affordability, or urban supply.
Sound familiar?
Just like with the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) debate, elected members and the public are being told one thing – while staff quietly push something else entirely. Your elected members have had no workshops or meetings to properly discuss, and it is being bundled up with a pile of other stuff to help get it through.
Yes, this one will go out for public consultation – and that’s the right step. But: Will you be told the full story? And when submissions roll in: Will anyone actually listen?
I’m not here to make noise for the sake of it, but my instincts are telling me this is once again being railroaded. And in my experience of these particular Council Chambers, that often means there’s no room made for dissent, and no interest in real debate. Funny how all that changed when there was a lot of people in the room for the JMA decision a few weeks ago.
This isn’t about race. It’s about transparency, process, and one law for all. Isn’t that what we all want?
Addendum: For those interested, it looks like the Māori Purpose Zone was in fact discussed for about five minutes at a sparsely attended Council workshop on 27 May 2025. You can watch the recording here to see how it was presented.
Councillor Duncan here once again, and now we’re heading into the front end of the election campaign some new faces are starting to appear. One of them, Māori ward candidate Wahine Murch, is calling for a revolution in democracy, governance, and leadership. I may not agree with her on everything, but on this point we’re aligned – this Council is a poor imitation of what it is meant to be for the people it purports to represent, and it has been going on for way too long. It is broken and needs to be rescued.
But talk is cheap, and especially at election time. Belief in good ideas is one thing – delivering under pressure is another. Voters should ask candidates, and especially incumbents who should have been evidencing this to you already: When did you last hold your ground against determined opposition? When did you stand apart from the herd? Walking the talk is harder than it looks, and if you dislike playground politics, you may dislike the reality of local government even more.
Meanwhile, Council is in near-hibernation because our illustrious Mayor apparently finds it too uncomfortable to meet and talk about any issues before the election. Still, a few things are going on:
JMA sentiments continue to disturb – This document sent to me by a constituent claims ~90% public opposition to the JMA was ignored. I can’t verify the author or data, but the gap between public concern and Council action is clear enough – and a good reason to keep pressing candidates on this. Oh, and we just have to make mention a very special Facebook post with the graphic below by an anonymous identity known as Lake Taupo which shows how much fun AI can be. However, it is quite apparent that some person(s) has reported it to Facebook as a rule breach (which it isn’t, because these are public figures and it is satire), because yesterday afternoon the Lake Taupo identity was deleted. I will probably do a fuller post about this next week, but let me tell you that censorship of that kind is one of the most insidious enemies of your local democracy and we should all be abhorring it. A California based company like Facebook cannot be relied upon to tell the difference.
Kaipara kicks back to the Treaty – Kaipara District Council has adopted an independent legal opinion on Māori obligations that avoids locking in governance ‘partnerships’ not required by law, and some people aren’t very happy about it. In the past I have questioned some of the terminology in Taupō District Councils own planning documents, but have been abruptly flipped off with comments like: ‘go read some history’. It is quite clear to me now that statements in the Long Term Plan such as ‘Taupō District Council is committed to meeting its statutory Tiriti O Waitangi obligations and acknowledges partnership as the basis of Te Tiriti’are there by political choice and not any legal necessity. Now that Kaipara has demonstrated that Councils can meet obligations without embedding partnerships into governance, I believe we should revisit these policies to reflect the law and the will of the whole community – and this has clear relevance to things like the proposed JMA partnership deal with Tūwharetoa Maori Trust Board.
Local government under the microscope – Management consultant Kathryn Ennis-Carter offers us a blunt assessment of why change is urgently needed. Worth a listen, especially for any newbie candidates before they get thrown in the deep end.
Signs of silliness – New signs at Five Mile Bay remind people it’s illegal to drive on a footpath, which it always has been. Yet despite a five-page staff paper in May to justify why the signs are needed, people still do it – just amazing, isn’t it? Anyway if you come across such activity and you don’t like it happening, please just report it to the Police.
Roundabouts right, or roundabouts wrong? Someone asked me about the two Council planned roundabouts the other day, and do they really have to be so expensive at $1.6 M and $3M apiece? The short answer is: No they don’t. To put into context, when I was a Council engineer at Waitakere City pop. 300K, I was in charge of an annual safety budget approx. $2M (2025 dollars) from which we would get at least a dozen projects including at least a few of this nature. Because civil engineering infrastructure like this contribute a mighty portion of Council debt, it is important to employ staff who really know their stuff, and I can’t help but also think that perhaps tools like rates caps would better motivate some lateral thinking.
Pukenamu pushes back – while we’re on the subject of roundabouts, the Environment Court has set a 9th September hearing date for constituent Ivan Jones’ challenge to the Pukenamu Rd roundabout. Back in January I called this exercise a $300K harassment of a residential street — and if it proceeds, it’s being submitted straight to the Taxpayers’ Union Jonesie Awards as an example of wasteful spending.
DIA financial snapshot – The Department of Internal Affairs has just released a set of financial metrics comparing councils nationwide. One figure that stands out for Taupō District Council is our revenue-to-operating-expenses ratio, which has dropped from 121% in 2022 to just 93% in 2024. In plain English, that would appear to mean that we’ve gone from a healthy surplus to barely breaking even – with not much buffer for unexpected costs. At election time, that should make you ask whether the current spending mix is sustainable, or whether we’re quietly setting ourselves up for either more debt or more rates hikes – yet one more argument for rates caps.
Taupo Airport rejig shelved – last month or so an initiative to change Taupo Airport to a full Council Control Organisation (CCO) with independent directors was squashed by several elected members including the Deputy Mayor even before they got to read the 95% prepared staff paper, I say quite transparently because it was felt that the predicted controversy might compromise their chances of getting re-elected. Yes kiddies that is how things work in this town, and I bet those same elected members are now wishing they did the same for the JMA.
Berms and bureaucracy – not that we are so short of space in the Taupo region and the soil is pretty awful anyway, but I think this Aucklander who took on the bureaucracy of Auckland Council to plant a garden on Council berm deserves a medal. After all if you are expected to maintain it, why can’t you choose what grows there?
Fridays flippant fancy: Why can’t we be more like the French?
duncandoestaupo.com 