Friday’s Fantastic- It’s Snowtime!

5 September 2025

Councillor Duncan reporting in again on another Friday report, now just 36 sleeps until local body election day on October 11. And the snow has finally arrived! Yes the ski season has finally kicked off after a good dump earlier in the week and more is on the way. Wednesday was a truly bluebird day up on the slopes and I was one of those who downed tools and made the very most of it, so thankyou to the taxpayers of New Zealand who so generously donated $50M plus to keep it all going. Another $100M or so to get the Chateau up and running and we will be set for the future.

By the way, I have three campaign priorities for myself which next week I will start posting on: 1/ Restore Democracy 2/ Take Back Control of Council and 3/ Cap Rates to Inflation.

This week:

Cossie club was cosy alright: This week we had an especially interesting event put on by the Taupō Residents Group (TRG) on Tuesday night for Taupō ward candidates at the Cosmopolitan Club with a full house attendance I reckon of about 300 at least. Unless you are complete brick wall, I think most people in the room were hankering for change with the recording available here. We got to hear a little from both old and new Taupō ward candidates, and incidentally the 90 sec candidate interviews are available on the Council website here. Will I be one of those changed? We will just have to wait until October 11 to find out.

Another candidates meeting worth watching: This one hosted by Voices For Freedom (VFF) on 28th August and included Mayoral candidates John Funnell and Zane Cozens, along with the Let’s Go Taupo team of Ann Tweedie, Rebecca Stafford and Hope Woodward. So if you want to hear a little more about what these candidates are all about you can watch here.

Conflated or conflicted interests? In case you missed it, my mid-week article on this very grey area of elected members and Council business is to be found here.

Still banging on about Māori wards: Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell wasn’t too happy at having her own words thrown back at her from 2022 that the introduction of Māori wards had actually diminished Māori representation. Personally, I would like to see some of the positive outcomes more clearly put forth as to why they are a good idea, and especially from some of the current elected Councilor’s who decided to introduce them back in 2020 – because all I have heard so far from them is either deafening silence or rhetorical gesturing.

I wish to also remind that basically ALL of your current elected members endorsed this May 2024 submission from the Mayor opposing the government’s position to establish that the future of Māori wards be decided by public referendum. I wrote my own submission not because I necessarily disagreed with the presence of Māori Wards, but because I was uncomfortable with the assumptions being made on behalf of our community. The Council letter included this remarkable assertion:

“Through public consultation we have seen that opposition stems from a common misconception that proportionate representation can be achieved democratically through equal voting rights without a Māori ward”.

It then proceeded to ’empirically prove’ that a minority group (such as Māori) cannot be fairly represented unless a ward system is created for them. That’s quite a leap – it assumes people vote according to ethnic identity alone, and if Māori candidates don’t get elected in general wards then it’s because the majority voted them out. I don’t believe this is how most Taupō residents see democracy. I found the logic surprisingly simplistic and quite frankly, embarrassing.

I see that Tūwharetoa Māori Trust Board is encouraging voter participation, and I applaud that because it seems to me that Māori Wards are very much a band-aid solution to the much larger problem of voter apathy. Given that Māori apparently comprise about 30% of the districts population, if that issue can be properly dealt with then in a few year’s time we could get Māori voters wanting the two Māori wards scrapped simply because they are holding them back.

Shared Paths a battleground in Christchurch: Onto something lighter, and apparently those shared paths for cyclists and pedestrians are getting some bad press further south. I can’t say that I have pedaled into more than just a couple of pedestrians on our own lakeside path. It isn’t a big deal around here, is it?

Let’s go Nuclear – literally: I reckon we already have the look with some of those geothermal towers towards Reporoa, so why don’t we just go all the way to nuclear as Thomas Scrimgeour of the Maxim Insititute puts forth. It’s all very well to talk about going electric and saving the planet, but we have to make it happen somehow and just imagine all the local jobs it would generate. We only need to get Taupō locals on board, and the government. It costs around $10-15B to build a single nuclear power station, so if the government had only spent the $70B on covid relief on these instead I reckon we could have transformed all of our futures for the better.

Most awake or most awoke? Wellington is the first place in the country to adopt a rainbow action plan, with this article even including an interactive map to see where the rainbow communities are densest. Guess what – it’s in the cities.

Council having secret agendas, surely not! Marlborough District Council gets a wrap on the knuckles from the Ombudsman for keeping things to themselves more than they should and holding unjustified workshops outside public view. Taupō District Council more or less got a clean bill of health the last time they were investigated in 2022/23, but I reckon the Ombudsman was having an off day back then because I think transparency is certainly not this Council’s best attribute. Perhaps we are just better at covering our tracks, and as I said at the time: What about all the workshops which don’t happen?

Now that’s what I call a campaign launch! A couple of weeks ago I attended the campaign launch of Robert Lee mayoral candidate for Rotorua, and it included a slideshow presentation with some of the challenges Rotorua is facing like the emergency housing hangover from covid. They have some challenges that we haven’t had to face in Taupō, but we also have a lot of things in common. Well worth a watch for Taupōites too.

Are your other elected candidates taking the pledge from Taxpayer’s Union? If not, I think you should be asking them: Why not? I think it helps to pose the question if rates aren’t tagged to inflation, in 20 years time how do they think people on a fixed income (e.g. pensioners) will be able to afford to stay in their own homes? I say something has to be done, and it has to be done NOW.

Friday old school gets interesting: Australian politician Bob Katter after he takes offence at being called Lebanese but still walking with anti-immigration marches.

Plan Change 47: Māori Zones or Nothing Else?

25 August 2025

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.

Friday Wrap – This Council is Broken

15 August 2025

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:

Councillor Duncan speaks out – Here is my interview with Erica Harvey of Tauranga based Lobby For Good covers how local government protects itself from scrutiny – from both the public and elected members put in there to govern.

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?