Tag: news

Fridays Final Coming Up

17 July 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In other news:

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

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

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

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

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

Fridays Council Blood and Guts

10 July 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok so what else in the news?

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

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

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

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

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

Fridays Fabulous France

3 July 2026

The last stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s “If“:

We plod on, we do plod on, in this beast called local government. Sometimes I really wonder how I ever got entangled. A big reason I chose to become self employed ten years ago was to escape the office politics, so why on earth did I choose to do this? Although no human endeavour is ever completely pure of self-serving interest and gaslighting excuses, I have never encountered it on such a grand scale before. I have found it pays to remind myself that anytime in Council should feel an alien experience where normal forms of human encounter do not apply, because the day it doesn’t is the day you have succumbed. Anyway below is how it all went down, and just as well we have the football.

Amalgamation fumblegation: On Tuesday we had our first Council meeting where we discussed the Head Start pathway which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. Just an hour before, we were introduced in the backroom to some spreadsheet analysis our financial manager Sarah Matthews has undertaken and only now shared. We were told that we would receive some comparative analysis by early June or around a full month ago, but this was the first we have been presented with and only minutes before the debate. The spreadsheet contains information that is publicly available and apparently took some time to prepare, and is being held by Mayor John Funnell as so crucially important towards future negotiations that it needs to be kept secret. My own point of view about that is somewhat different: that it contains many assumptions and its comprehension in layperson terms is definitely questionable. For example there is a dubious assumption that larger entities will be more efficient, and a fairly obvious lesson that it may be unwise to shackle oneself with others already heavily in debt. But I say that irrespective of all that, the ringfencing of debt and the TEL fund are still valid bargaining chips – otherwise is it fair for Taupo ratepayers to pay for Hamiltons rapid development? This Head Start process is a large piece of work being required very quickly, and I think it is wrong to be backroom manhandling – but that is how Mayor John Funnell wants to play the ball. The only reason I am not publishing the secret spreadsheet for your viewing anyway, is that I don’t think its important enough to cause even more friction in Chambers than there is already. Ugh, is it living in a small town?…

So one thing I am really quite wary of with any amalgamation is that the small town small mind predilections of Taupo District Council will be magnified even larger (e.g Option 3), and that is one positive thing in favour of say hitching with a city like Hamilton. In hindsight, instead of staff I think we should probably have engaged a consultant for a more objective point of view like Wairarapa Councils did (although to be fair, they have been talking about amalgamation for over a decade). I asked AI to compare with some other Councils Head Start progress with the output shown below… you get the picture.

One thing I did attempt to highlight in that Tuesday meeting is that the Backstop Option D to stay independent is still a very practicable option, and we could become our own Unitary Authority like Rotorua is apparently considering (there are many more options than just four, but these are what was narrowed down to). I say that unless the Local Government Act gets changed, constituents of the Taupo district still have much protection to just being swept away in something ill-defined and un-consulted. The only public consultation undertaken for this very significant decision has so far been rushed and bereft of useful information – in other words it was not “meaningful”, and that has significant legal implications as this Simpson Grierson advice does point out. So we could probably stay put until 2031 in the meantime which anything could happen – but do we really want for that?

While we are on the topic of comparisons, the above secret financial analysis by Council staff is all very well – but what about condition of the infrastructure? Because although financial modelling does help assess the affordability of various arrangements, infrastructure due diligence helps identify the condition and future obligations of the assets that would be inherited under those options – so both perspectives are important to informed decision making. I put a few hours into this question in the past few days and using AI managed to prepare this quite comprehensive summary of all our potential Council partners. What do you think? I have not verified each and every source, but it is looking very useful to me and I will be asking for staff to carry it on.            

NOTE: This assessment is a desktop review of publicly available information relating to the infrastructure assets and asset management practices of councils included in the Head Start structural reform scenarios. Sources include Long-Term Plans, Infrastructure Strategies, Asset Management Plans, Annual Reports, and other publicly available technical documents. The assessment is intended to complement the Head Start financial modelling by providing a comparative overview of infrastructure condition, future renewal risk, and asset management capability. It is not a detailed engineering audit and does not rely on internal asset management databases, condition survey data, or other non-public information.This document was prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to support document review, comparison, drafting and presentation. All findings should be independently reviewed and validated against primary source documents before being relied upon for policy, financial or engineering decisions.

Anyway on the basis of the above effort, I should be expecting some plaudits from the Mayor don’t you think?

Okay in other news less depressing but only just:

Didn’t you vote for something different? We also had a Council meeting Tuesday later that day where the Annual Plan got approved with my own and Councillor Hope Woodward’s voiced disapproval (you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE). My concern is not so much the final number of 6.6% which is just 0.1% less than the orginal forecast, but how we arrived at it. This Council is simply not exercising sufficient oversight of its own expenditure. We rely too heavily on staff to identify savings, rather than elected members being given proper opportunity to scrutinise spending and explore different ways of doing things. That is reflected in the excessive financial delegations given to the Chief Executive in 2022 (watch my previous video on that topic HERE), a culture that too often treats operational matters as being outside the governance role, and the frequent refusal of information requests from individual elected members. In my view, governance is about setting direction, holding the organisation to account, and ensuring value for money for our ratepayers. We are not doing enough of that, and for that reason I did not support this Annual Plan nor the last three I have voted against. Before asking our community to pay more, I believe we have a duty to demonstrate that every reasonable opportunity to reduce costs has been rigorously explored, and that goes for everything from pedestrian islands to multi-million dollar gas flares for a landfill. We do not meet that standard by a very long shot.

Screaming from the hilltops: On that note we also had a Long Term Plan (LTP) workshop which you can watch HERE, and I voiced some frustrations including that staff are given carte blanche licence to present their own subjective viewpoints with Elected Members wishing to say anything contrary getting 5 minutes only (even members of the public get more latitude in a public forum). But I have to acknowledge Councillor Rachel Cameron’s filling in for the Deputy Mayor’s absence to present a pleasant facade of responsible governance leadership.

Taupo Airport goes live: Thanks to my request the Taupo Airport Authority (TAA) Committee meetings are now going live, with its first from Monday gone which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. The most notable thing mentioned was the uncertain state of the airport runway which could require a lot of $M’s to repair and which even garnered a Waikato Times article about it. We are still awaiting further findings about it, so watch this space.

Taupo connects but only just: We had a Taupo ward Councillor Connect forum on Wednesday night at Waitahanui Community Hall which you can watch HERE if you’re keen, but only about six people turned up and the topics discussed weren’t too mind bending. What is it about smaller communities like Mangakino that get more people interested in things like this?

Middle of the pack nothing to be proud of: The Taxpayer’s Union Rates Dashboard 2026 is now out where you can see for yourself how Taupo stacks up against the rest. We aren’t the worst by a long shot but certainly not anywhere near the best.

Un-natural justice: Last week or so Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee gave a comprehensive breakdown of the Code of Conduct (CoC) process of Elected Members as evidenced by South Waikato District Councils abhorrent $34K persecution of Councillor Zed Latinovic for a raft of negligible so-called offences. You can watch HERE for Cr Lee’s lengthy presentation to a packed community meeting. Fun facts: Investigators are paid by Council so that means by definition they are far from independent, and CoC’s weren’t a thing until 1998. Imagine being in a courtroom where the prosecuting lawyer has unlimited resources and is also the defacto judge, with your own defence being limited to just 15 minutes and without a lawyer unless you pay yourself – and you will get a feel for Zed. In other words: the CoC process gives official licence to ratepayer funded hit-jobs on Elected Members the Mayor doesn’t like, and it deserves to be scrapped.

Bird flu coming near you: Yes its true Council are preparing and I’ve even heard them talk about it, watch HERE if you want to know more about it.

Since its World Cup: For one of the most politically incorrect and hilarious football diatribes of all time by a disappointed Iraqi supporter watch HERE

Fridays French fabulous of the week:

Fridays Tail Wagging the Dog

26 June 2026

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

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

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

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

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

Other stuff in the news?

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

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

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

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

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

Fridays first reel by Duncan with Aunty Ann:

Fridays Spending Sprees Carry On

19 June 2026

God gives consequences to even His greatest servants and there are none without fault in the Bible, so what makes anybody think there won’t be any for you? Numbers 20 10-12: “And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock; and he said to them, “Hear now, you rebels! Must we bring water for you out of this rock?” Then Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod; and water came out abundantly, and the congregation and their animals drank. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not believe Me, to hallow Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land which I have given them.”

Decision time is looming for the future of Taupo District Council, and how is it all looking to me? Controlled chaos is still how I describe this foisted and rushed amalgamation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is all bad. You see despite some of the things I might say – the negativity, I mean – I am an optimist at heart. Things might work out quite a lot better than now, and that is good enough for me. Are you an optimist or a pessimist, an idealist or a realist? Take your pick there is something in this for everybody.

I have pretty much had enough of this Kindergarten Council with its boorish culture of intransigency towards its governing members who are house trained to acquiesce, and although its a shame things have gone this far and smaller really can be nimbler – that certainly ain’t the case here. If the likes of Hamilton City want a piece of us we would be shortsighted to instinctively decline (and they are doing some great things to curb costs lately), and I certainly don’t think it would be healthy to get tied up with other backwater Councils of a similar vein to ours. It’s time we paint a new canvas with an improved outlook and a wider gene pool.

Smalltownitus is one name I give to how we are afflicted here. Everybody knows somebody connected with anything, so public commentary gets stilted because adverse reactions can really affect the bottom line. It’s only because I have zero business interests in this district which leaves me more or less uncompromised, and is one reason I think bigger can really be better for a small town as this. Last week I mentioned non-participation in the Headstart process as a pathway to remain independent – and it still is – but after reflecting on the ways of fickle central government I reckon its a pretty fragile hope, and it is now apparent that we could get chucked into somebody else’s proposal if the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) decide. So sitting on our backsides is looking a decidedly risky affair, and why stick up for a flawed status quo anyway?

There were no Council meetings of any consequence this week that I attended anyway, so what else is on the radar?

Missing the point: Taupo District Council is parading its recent AA credit rating as a win, and I am not saying it isn’t. But I think most of us will disagree with performance manager Sarah Matthews who claims: “This confirms we’re continuing to manage our finances prudently and have strong safeguards in place. In line with what the community asked us to do during our last Long Term Plan process, we’re investing for the future while keeping debt under control”. My own response to that is shown right.

Slack water? Last week I mentioned the Water Services Committee meeting on 11 June, my notes were very brief and below is the subsequent and quite pointed letter sent to us from retired engineer Phil Shields about the state of the reported stormwater system. You may want to read Mr Shields full letter HERE and to watch those particular proceedings again can do so HERE. I will leave you with this excerpt below:

South Waikato Pre-school: The week before last South Waikato District Councillor Zed Latinovic was censored on two Code of Conduct complaints in a kangaroo court of a proceedings which you can read the media article about here. I am acquainted with Zed and closely followed how it all went down, with experienced Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee turning up to represent Zed but them both walking out after being faced with a 15 min maximum time to present a defence case – and this after over $34K had been expended by the prosecuting independent investigator. You can watch the proceedings HERE on the Councils own media channel, which cost them a small fortune because it enables them to readily edit out the bits they don’t want people to see. I understand that Zed has probably little intention of complying with the stipulated punishment of: “written apology to council staff, further training and mentoring on his duties, council procedures and conduct as councillor”, and in his same circumstances neither would I (one of the upheld complaints was because in a Council meeting he naively used the term “creative accounting” to describe staff financial handling – yes really, it is that trivial). Ugh, I know Taupo District Council is a dog at times but that place makes us look like a shining beacon of democracy.

On the brighter side: Tararua District Council seem to be doing quite a good job with their amalgamation community engagement as their webpage indicates, and I gather they even had some town hall meetings early in the piece. I quite liked watching a short of their 10 June extraordinary meeting which you can watch HERE. One thing I noticed though, is that all the men were in suit and tie – do you think that’s important? Anyway, it is nice to hear that there are some not-dysfunctional small Councils out there.

Concealed election ripoff: I was finally able to confirm but only after the Ombudsman stepped in and it took over eight months, that Taupo District Council paid $235k to Electionz.com to undertake the recent 2025 local body election. I submitted a LGOIMA request for this information mainly because I had an unsatisfactory experience with Electionz.com with regard to their refusal to answer a basic question around indications of potential fraudulent voting (the Ombudsman could not help with that part, because as Electionz.com is a a private organisation it has no jurisdiction). I think it is interesting that such a significant sum can be effectively hidden within Annual Plan (AP) and Long Term Plans (LTP), not to mention the hundreds of other line items which are allowed no direct scrutiny by elected members (and the rushed AP & LTP process effectively precludes that anyway). But as far as I am concerned and because they unreasonably withheld important information upon request, for future consideration I would not be touching Electionz.com with a bargepole.  

Guide to Amalgamate: The Taxpayers Union Guide to Amalgamation is now available and it makes for some good reading. Much of it is detail applicable after 9 August when fuller proposals need to start being prepared, but they are definitely against the rush which is being imposed and some of their wishlist items like waiting until a full review of the Auckland Super City experiment seem quite forlorn.

Oops better fix that: And the Taxpayer’s Union have been busy bees on something else too – they claim to have uncovered with Local Government Minister Simon Watts’ Local Government (Systems Improvement) Bill currently before Parliament and in the last stages, that it contains some pretty bad errors – and hopefully they are errors not by design. In effect it is being stated that the new Bill: “creates rights for Councillors that are inferior to those already enjoyed by ordinary members of the public under freedom of information law (LGOIMA)”. You can watch the Platform interview with Taxpayers Union Chief Executive Jordan Williams HERE. I think it is a shame that our society is starting to become so litigious and pedantic instead of the egalitarian she’ll be right, but when trust gets eroded as much as it has then this is where we end up. Anyway, here is my brief note to Hr Simon Watts below:

Community Transport Fund $500K: Yes really. Waikato Regional Council gives it away every year to worthy applicants, but it is something that clearly is not well publicised. In summary: “This fund aims to enhance accessibility and mobility for residents, particularly in rural areas where public transport options may be limited. The grant provides financial assistance to community transport providers, enabling them to offer essential transport services for health, education, and social purposes”. It occurs to me that this could be relevant to places like Turangi and Mangakino which do not have regular bus services, so if anybody out there is interested you can read about it HERE. There was also the WRC Transport Committee meeting last week where the item got discussed HERE, and I believe the next time applications are open will be February 2027.

Spending sprees continue: I got some more information about the roadworks on Titiraupenga Street in Taupo town central shown below, and it more or less confirmed what I suspect – not only are these works which I understand cost in the order of $600K a very big nice to do, but they don’t even address the biggest actual problem which is crashes at the Roberts Street intersection.

If I had been on the design team would have instead done something like below with none of the rest, costing a fraction of the above to build. We wouldn’t touch the kerbs, and we would address road safety (police reported crashes in the last 5 years shown inset, including two injury). Then again, I’m just a humble traffic engineer… Yet another reason why we need a Council where this sort of thing gets run past your elected members for permission first, and at very least for them to ask such basic questions as: “Why?”

Fridays wrap with Duncan’s novel 3 X car lane / 2 X truck lane compact roundabout to get things moving:

Fridays All Aboard The Council Train!

5 June 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, so what else can we call news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

22 May 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what else is new?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fridays Watery Wishlist

15 May 2026

Isaiah 40: 29-31: “He gives power to the weak, And to those who have no might He increases strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, And the young men shall utterly fall, But those who wait on the Lord Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not faint.”

Another week goes by, and things are moving fast in local government. We now have slightly less than three months to decide where this Council wants to go, and as I see it unless a bunch of concerted proposals are submitted by 9 August the government will be putting us all where they want to regardless. If their received proposals are scattered in all directions that will absolutely give them the licence to do that, and like it or leave it I am sure they think that quite reasonably so. So how might those chips fall? Well if a webinar I attended a week ago with the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) is anything to go by – and these are the people administering the Simplyfing Local Government reforms and making the final recommendation to government – the major factors will be transport and water catchment. As I read it the transport element isn’t of much relevance to isolated places like Taupo, since the state highways which connect us elsewhere are already governed by NZTA – so for us it will be all about water – and as we happen to have the largest water source in the country which feeds about a third of the countries population (apparently), that means a Waikato Super Council just has to be beckoning.

So in the basis of transport I think places like Hutt City Council and Selwyn District Council will find it hard to avoid getting sucked into the new super Wellington and Christchurch super Councils no matter what they come up with, and we are in that same boat with water. But it isn’t a done deal yet, and I figure that roads are a bigger driver for amalgamating just because new ones cost so much to build – so there is still this window of opportunity to bring about a different result if we want it hard enough. And if we end up tied to a place like Hamilton, we will certainly become like minnows in the stream. I have worked out that some other Councils like Waitomo and Otorohunga already have a head start because they have been talking about it for ages, and the South Waikato look as if they are ahead of the game too, let alone Napier and Hastings which really should have amalgamated ages ago. But what do we really want to do? Because whatever we get stuck with could be for the next 40 years. Yes, this does matter.

And it really is all about cost, right? Because its the ongoing rampant rates increases which are the reason that the government is stepping in with these forced amalgamations, and is quite probably the main concern for you too. The fact is that our most vulnerable fixed income retirees are being forced off their land like here, and the implication of that is quite sobering when you consider the below statistics (sourced from a recent Taxpayer’s Union newsletter):

So what else has been happening in Council?

We had our second Water Services Committee meeting yesterday with a few things of interest – and believe it or not, water services can actually be quite interesting once you start looking. You can watch the entire meeting youtube HERE if you have a spare couple of hours, and as always the agendas are available HERE.

Item 5.2 was my successfully passed Notice of Motion for introducing some additional practical measures of affordability to which you can watch my 5 min presentation HERE, where I relate potential water service overspending to the over- complianced road cone nightmare which this country is only just waking up from, and I even manage to pseudo-quote the Lorax when I say: “UNLESS we start asking the right questions, we could end up just like the road cones. And if this Water Committee is the one which starts sounding any alarms, believe it or not then that actually makes us industry leaders”

Next was Item 5.3 presented by Nicola Hancock the Compliance and Monitoring lead who talked about all the water quality data gathering and gadgets which you can watch from HERE (and yes, road cones did come to mind), followed by Item 5.4 which was Tom Swindells Asset Water Manager with a very interesting presentation which you can watch HERE about the history of water treatment in the district from the year dot and where we are headed now. This includes the very compelling case for introducing water meters to every household – it means we might not ever need to build another water treatment plant for Taupo, whereas without meters it could be as soon as just 10 years away, with the long-term prognosis being that we would save around $45M over the next 30 years. Basically, the message is that making people pay for water they use will greatly incentivise water conservation like fixing that leaky tap (other parts of the country which have introduced meters have reduced demand by 30% or so). Anyway there will undoubtedly be another side to this equation, but if it doesn’t stack up then water meters it will just have to be.

In other news:

Talkfests continue: A few more Councillor Connect sessions happened this week and some were even audio-visual recorded like the Wairakei one which you can watch HERE. I gather there were also sessions in Nukuhau and Kinloch but didn’t make it myself to any of those.

Speaking of the devil: There were some Turangi committee co-governance meetings last week which were not audio recorded despite this being requested, because the Chair of that committee Te Wharau Jnr decided to refuse on the basis that several committee members were not very keen. I don’t believe in opacity where local government is concerned, and will be taking this further with the Ombudsman who have already told me they are keeping an eye on this place with this sort of thing. So watch this space.

And on that note: Next week on Tuesday we have a CLOSED workshop on the Broadlands Road Landfill Resource Consent. This is actually quite a big deal, because the hole is nearly full and if we don’t get a consent to make it bigger then we could end up trucking our waste elsewhere like Rotorua does – and that ain’t cheap. So if you are concerned with the price of rubbish bags now, things could get worse. There is a working group that includes Councillors Murch and Taylor who have been looking at this the past few months, and I believe there have been meetings at various marae. But you guessed it that cultural concerns are looking to be the biggest potential hiccup, and when that happens the doors of public scrutiny often get closed. I have requested to the Mayor and Chief Executive for this meeting to be made public and recorded, but so far had no response.

Christine’s Rant’in again: This time Councillor Christine is talking to the other Duncan about things like: state of the nation; local government; co-governance; and how its all going at our place Taupo – and according to Christine, things are looking pretty grim.

In the news: Councillors Wahine Murch, Ngahuia Foreman and myself took the opportunity to respond to journalist Bronson Perich after he contacted Elected Members for comment after the amalgamation announcement week before last, and you can read the article HERE. In addition, Wahine put together a nice 4 min summary which you can watch HERE.

Mosque stirs up: Seems like a new mosque happening in Taupo town is ruffling a few feathers if this social media post is anything to go by. Resource consent has already been granted, but a petition is afoot to try and stop it happening. I don’t quite understand the crux of the objections yet, but am guessing that some people are thinking of what is happening in Europe – but we are a long way from anybody, and boat people don’t come here. Another space to watch.

Te Reo only: New cafe Rumaki is set to open in Rotorua where the catch is you are only allowed to speak Te Reo. I don’t know how successful their shop will be, but as an opening strategy I cannot imagine a better way to get all the free media attention that they are getting, and as a tourist mecca for that sort of stuff must be the best place in the country to try it on. So good luck to them majorly, and it just goes to show that novel ideas are often worth a go.

Lake Rotoaira is doing it better than us: About the Gold Clam invasion that is , with certifications and wash stations at their boat ramps – why can’t we do the same? It doesn’t pay to think about if/when gold clams happen to Lake Taupo, but perhaps that is the biggest problem – we aren’t thinking hard enough.

Fiver ever going to finish?: Okay so my last weeks post which included some words about the Five Mile Bay occupation stirred a few people up. All good I say, and the sooner this is brought to light the better. I have a relation within Department of Conservation (DoC) who is familiar with the way these settlements go down, and he tells me they invariably happen behind closed doors (it was Doc land prior to around 2019). I did some initial investigations a few years ago and at least ascertained that it was Crown land around the year 1900, so it is a very good question as to whether previous to that the land was legitimately sold or confiscated as some maintain. It would take some additional expense to try and get an answer to that question (if there is any documented, that is), but if anybody wants to take it further I may be able to point them in the right direction – so feel free to message me if you are so interested. In any case, it is 100% certain that the old freedom camping area is a designated Recreational Reserve which is meant for the benefit of all the public and not just depending on whose cousin you are. If anybody has any doubts about this, you can check out the Treaty Settlement documents HERE.

Fridays Financial Friedman: Listen to this guy Milton Friedman, I think you’ll find he’s really good.

Fridays Flashy Burnout

1 May 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So what else is going on?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fridays Fixing Bayonets

24 April 2026

Daniel 1:8: “But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king’s delicacies, nor with the wine which he drank; therefore he requested of the chief of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself”.

I had the Biblical character of Daniel pointed out to me twice this week as relevant to positions like mine in secular governance, and the analogy is apt. It is every bit akin to a den of lions, and it takes more than just willpower to overcome the gravity of this world which pulls so hard. Great men, and women, are required to pull this nation back to the greatness it once was and can still be. So stand firm wherever you are, and dare to stand alone. Because others will see and follow.

Council was simmering this week and not a whole lot to report, except it has struck me that the effort to uplift it from its current setting can be extraordinarily hard and perhaps isn’t really worth the sacrifice. Where we have landed I believe, is a place quite different to the past when there was tension in the system to keep a lid on. A time when there was common purpose and intent, and a real sense of public service. I say systemic failure is why rates keep rising, and unless the current system changes the only way I see for tension to be applied is from above – not governments so much because they come and go – but from those you elect to locally govern. What would a true Anzac do?

However, for those you elect to make that change, they have to be able to have their say. Last week Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee walked out of a Council meeting because he was prevented from asking questions of staff (you can view his social media post including the exchange HERE and read the media story about it HERE). I have received that sort of treatment many times before in my three or so years on Taupo District Council, and continue to still do so (local sleuth Sophia M Smith also wrote a recent piece on the topic HERE). At the end of the day, it is 100% the responsibility of the Chairperson to stop this nonsense happening and nobody else, so in Councillor Lee’s case his Mayor was undoubtedly complicit. My number one 2025 election pledge was to Restore Democracy in Council Chambers, because if that doesn’t happen then nothing worthwhile afterward can. Perhaps I should start to walk out more often, what do you think?

On that note I attempted to table a Notice of Motion for next weeks Council meeting which you can read HERE, but thus far have been thwarted by Chief Executive Julie Gardyne’s direct application of a technicality belying one of the very things I am wishing to highlight:

To cut a long story short, my notice was submitted a couple of hours after their official deadline (which I still dispute the interpretation of), and neither the Chief Executive or Mayor are so far willing to exercise their discretion to accept even as a late item. So I guess you will probably have to wait another month to hear how it goes down. Ugh, moving right along…

A couple of workshops we did have this week included a workshop on Property Revaluations which you can watch HERE. Not a lot of consequence that I can recall from that, except that one thing which could make a big difference was not a topic of discussion – Differential ratios between business/commercial and residential. The current setting in Taupo is 1.8 and apparently has been for quite some time, and it would take a Long Term Plan (LTP) round of probably controversial public consultation to amend – because changing that figure would shift the rates burden to either side of the equation. So its not something this Council would lightly dare to touch without much consideration, but I think could contemplate. Of interest a Chatgpt scan of settings elsewhere around the country (shown right) demonstrates that figures can vary widely.

There was a Taupo Airport Authority (TAA) workshop on a proposed District Plan change which you can watch HERE. I have been on the TAA committee the past three years, and it surprised me that there had been little or no protective designations already in place as with most other airports, so I don’t see this as very controversial and just needs to be played out.

There was also a lengthy workshop for Elected Members on Tuesday entitled “Long Term Plan Wrap Up”, and despite all the previous LTP workshops being public viewable was held behind closed doors on the spurious grounds of “the possibility that sensitive material will be addressed, including that they may impact staff employment”. Myself and at least one other Councillor disputed beforehand that there was no justification to keep things under wraps, and as far as I am concerned there was virtually no sensitive material discussed and it certainly was never mentioned the laying off of swathes of staff. Not that the four-hour workshop was riveting viewing or anything, and I rather suspect that certain Elected Members don’t want people to see their commitment to reigning in rates isn’t perhaps quite as strong as some of their election campaigning spoke to. But I did mention that the $70M bridge over the Waikato was surreptitiously put into the last LTP without the required debate, which Deputy Mayor Kevin Taylor probably wouldn’t want you to hear about because he was instrumental to make that happen. And that places like Waikato District Council which managed to achieve a below inflation rates increase this coming year are anomalies which are best not talked about…because they probably fiddled the numbers anyway.

At the outset of the workshop staff presented us with three options: A/ Implement proposed rates cap range of 2-4% from July 2027; B/ Transition to a rates cap range of 2-4% by July 2029; or C/ Wait until 2029 to comply. Instead of any debate, vote or even show of hands, the discussion morphed into something resembling what I have seen every year last term:

Things are tough, we’re doing our best, see it could be worse, now give it a rest.

(Yawn) so apart from all that, what else is going on?

Daring to be Davina: Kings Counsel Colin Judd gives a stirring inditement of Far North Councillor Davina Smolders brave stand against her own bunch of miscreant members elect which you can read HERE. This is a story really worth following and Shane Jones ill-thought words about it I am sure will come back to haunt him. Local Government Minister Simon Watts says he is looking into it and will have a response in about a month. I hope all this publicity makes a difference, because any time I have called on Ministers to help out the response has always been the same: “its a local issue that needs to be dealt with locally”. Not this time around Minister Watts, its time to do your job. But one of KC Judd’s comments stuck with me as quite relevant to the Taupo JMA saga we have going on.

On that note, I was recently sent this 2011 thesis by a Sonja Hancock entitled “Joint Management Agreement between Taupo District Council and Ngati Tuwharetoa: A Summary of lessons for local government”. If we put aside the accusations of me scaremongering for a moment, why don’t you read the concluding paragraph for yourself:

Also on that seeming endless note, I submitted some legal and financial questions about the JMA which you can read HERE and which our Chief Executive neatly deflected. If this Council gets it wrong which it very well could, I perceive an expensive Judicial Review is just around the corner because there are people out there to make it happen. Question is though – will they carry it through?

Late item on Council spending: I used my discretion to include this letter to Mayor and Councillors from intrepid retired engineer and Taupo resident Phil Shields, and his final statements are precisely on point (except I think we do need consultants some of the time):

Fridays I don’t know why but this just struck a nerve for me: