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Prime Minister’s delivers some Hard Truths - Local Government NZ Conference

Writer's picture: Hamilton GreypowerHamilton Greypower

Prime Minister Chris Luxon fronted the $1495 per person Local Government New Zealand

(LGNZ) junket in Wellington with a few a hard truths. here to the delight of ratepayers and the chagrin of many attendees.


In the 2023/2024 financial year, LGNZ received the following funding:

 Department of Internal Affairs sector engagement - $1,250,000

 Department of Internal Affairs libraries - $112,500

 Ministry of Social Development - (MTFJ -$10,000,000


Auckland Council is LGNZ’s biggest member, and its $350,000 subscription represents nearly


Christchurch membership costs rose by more than $20,000 to $163,254.75 for the coming


With that income LGNZ could easily fund the conference and allow Mayors and their entourage free entry.


Two of the largest councils (by population) Auckland and Christchurch have left LGNZ. West

Coast Regional Council is the latest to leave


LGNZ supposedly an association for councillors across the country, but has morphed into a

left-wing lobby paid for by your rates, employing its own staff to manipulate members, and

working for Aotearoa, not New Zealand. It promotes the adoption of Tiriti principles into every aspect of council work despite the obvious fact that councils are not crown organisations and never signed the Treaty. LGNZ signed a Heads of Agreement with the Labour Government to Support Three Waters Service Delivery Reform (https://www.nzcpr.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/heads-of-agreement-partnering-commitment-to-support-three-waters-service-delivery-reform.pdf)


After years of lobbying to strip local bodies of control over water infrastructure through

supporting Three Waters, its clear LGNZ has long-since lost its way.


No one would trust a trade union which took government money to lobby against the interests of employees, and no council should trust LGNZ after it did the same to campaign against their members’ interests.


The Prime Minister wants councils to get back to basics. Councils are essentially large

engineering companies. Two thirds of expenditure is on roads and waters. Fixing potholes and treating sewage is core business, not fancy stadiums.


It was not a hit with mayors in Whanganui, Ruapehu and Rangitīkei. Whanganui Mayor

Andrew Tripe said he would love to see what Luxon would do differently when it came to

Whanganui District Council books. ”All of us in the room felt like we were being told off – the naughty kids who have been chucked in the corner for doing something wrong.”

“Well-being’s would “always be there” regardless of legislation”. Ruapehu Mayor Weston Kirton said Luxon’s speech “reminded him of his first day at boarding school in Auckland after leaving Taumarunui”.. (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/whanganui-chronicle/news/whanganui-mayor-andrew-tripe-says-prime-ministers-lgnz-speech-missed-the-mark/PCYO4XST4JELVFBN6BUIIMVB7U/)


Local Government New Zealand president Sam Broughton, mayor of Selwyn, took issue with

that framing of council spending. He noted councils were investing heavily in infrastructure and did what they could to avoid unnecessary spending. "Councils go line by line through our budgets every three years, that's what a long term plan is. We do it in a transparent way with our communities with input and consultation from our communities and it's really great to have that level of input."


Wellington City mayor Tory Whanau said "I'm also very proud to be hosting this at Tākina, our world class convention centre, built to bring events like this to our capital city and stimulate our local economy. This event alone will bring in a million dollars to boost our city." A loss making venue that stimulates the local economy = Ratepayers subsidising local

businesses. She also won resounding applause from the audience for criticism of the government's Māori wards legislation, which requires councils to hold a referendum on their Māori wards. "Localism also means that councils should decide for themselves on the use of Māori wards"; she said. (https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/525819/pm-christopher-luxon-s-speech-on-waste-rubs-councils-the-wrong-way)


Three announcements were made to get local government back to basics,


  1. Streamline the purpose provisions in the Local Government Act to get councils back to basics.

Means abolishing the four wellbeing provisions in legislation and restoring focus on local

services and infrastructure. The devil will be in the detail. The role of Local Government ought to be explicitly defined in legislation. The original Local Government Act 2002 went some way toward doing this in section 11(a)


2. Investigate performance benchmarks for local councils.

Is it really possible to performance manage councils without clearly stating and enshrining their purpose first. This cannot include vague concepts such as community amenity, future

communities or cultural well-being. It needs to be something like a constitutional document for local government that states what councils can and must do, prohibiting activities beyond explicitly stated activities.


3. Options to limit council expenditure on ‘nice-to-haves through a regulator that would

cap rate increases for non-core spending.

Local Government Minister Simeon Brown wants councils to focus on core spending and has

revealed that councils will face rates increase caps on non-core spending such as those in

some states of Australia. While that is a step in the right direction, it is akin to sticking a finger in a dyke to stop a flood. It is unsustainable and such caps are subject to political whim, like in Victoria, where the caps are set annually by the state government. It would be better they simply transition councils to an explicitly defined role rather than attempting to regulate the funding of non-core services. Repair the dyke, rather than put your finger in the hole.


4. Reforming the code of conduct process to balance councillors’ freedom of speech

rights with spurious and politicised code of conduct investigations.

Hamilton City Council's CEO Richard Briggs banned a hard-hitting chair's report to the finance committee by finance chair Garry Mallett. Mr Briggs said he did not allow the report to be included in the meeting agenda because of "inappropriate content". Cr Mallett circulated privately after the meeting; he says he is convinced that the council is doing a huge injustice to ratepayers by balancing the books from their wallets. "We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem" (https://www.nzherald.co.nz/waikato-news/news/hamilton-council-ceo-pulls-finance-chairs-monthly-report/LEUOTVPGLOPS6TMXTUN4EL2EBU/)


Many ratepayers haven't used a public library, never use council swimming pools and many

other amenities. Apart from pavements, roads and associated equipment, water and

sewerage, in other words the basics, they use very little yet get charged a small fortune per

year for the pleasure of subsidising others and council commie boondoggles and ideological

Marxist nonsense.


Some necessary changes urgently needed are:

 Legislate these council parasites into a fiscal straitjacket.

 A staffing review to cull out the wasters.

 Charge rates per person (i.e. user) rather than the property. People use the services,

not the land or house. This will capture renters and non-permanent residents such as

students

 Only ratepayers who have a property in which they live in can vote in that area. That will

kill the outsiders harvesting the student vote of people who have no skin in the game and vote on idealistic virtue bull effluent.


Our city library(s) is mainly used by students wanting free wifi and homeless people wanting a place to sleep. Our local pool is mainly used as a day-care centre by parents who drop their kids off and then go away to leave them in the hands of the unhappy staff and unattentive lifeguards. But we have to pay for all of that.


Many have no desire to either fund or attend a supposedly critical to have Events Centre, a

Stadium used by highly paid professional ruby players or other jewels in the crown that have

annual deficits in the millions of dollars. Meanwhile the potholes grow, the water supply is

precarious, the sewage system is at risk with old pipes and a capacity problem as Housing

New Zealand keeps building multiple units in once quiet streets.


Not keen on the expressed desire of meeting Zero Carbon ideology by 2030 either. Now the

PM has defined that sovereignty was ceded in 1840, how can the extensive "partnership" staff and associated costs be justified?


We resent being "told what we have to pay", even if we don't use or need those so-called

services - what the Councils must be forced to do (and perhaps this is what Simeon Brown and Chris Luxon are referring to) is have two categories of rates:

 Core services (as defined by section 11(a)

 Anything else.


Better still, I want to be able to "opt out" of paying for anything else.


Recently Paul Southgate said “We can’t turn off the growth tap, whether we like it or not

Hamilton is on the rise, whether we’re ready or not” and “Infrastructure is a significant part of


Having arranged the deck chairs on it, the Council appears to be the Titanic looking for an

iceberg to hit. Hamilton could just be it. Anything Council spend is never their own (none possess the ability to have personal income or wealth), leeching their livings from ratepayers, and ill-informed unionists. These despicable leeches have no place in local body politics.


If you are a trustee, you have to act in the best interests of the beneficiaries. If you are a

company director, you have to act in the best interests of the shareholders.


If you are a councillor, you can decide whatever you like and claim community consultation. Yeh Right.

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Roger Stratford
Roger Stratford
25 de set. de 2024
Avaliado com 4 de 5 estrelas.

Geoff Kreegher is wrong in many of his assertions. The libraries are used for chess games, for instance, not just a place to "crash".

There have been rogue councillors but they have failed to gain traction with the mainstream. The Marxist radicals on Council are only emboldened by their clumsy efforts, rallying the media to push their leftist agenda even further.

The way to tackle growth is through municipal tariffs. We don't need fancy partnerships with central government.

Council is in fact a crown organisation - its councillors are sworn in and it posseses a coat of arms. The number of Wards should be increased to 32, utilising the Reception Lounge for full Council meetings and reserving the Council Chamber…


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blee108
14 de set. de 2024

I received this email from Grey Power Hamilton, entitled "Prime Minister’s delivers some Hard Truths - Local Government NZ Conference," (sic) written by one Geoff Kreegher. The message was accompanied by a dominating public relations photograph of the Prime Minister. I saw little in the email which was related to the concerns of superannuitants. Might I suggest that if we, Grey Power Hamilton, wish to continue to enjoy the support of pensioners in advancing their interests and needs that we constrain our discussions to matters which directly affect us? Personally I don't think the mailing list of Grey Power Hamilton should be used for party political messages. Doing so can only reduce the enthusiasm for Grey Power from supporters …

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