But a lawyer for Tompkins Wake specialising in local government law, Linda O’Reilly, said he had very little ground to stand on.
“I’m sure he’d like to win it, but I suspect it’s more about making a statement. It seems to me unlikely that they can succeed,” she said.
“The bar for challenging the decision-making on these services is very, very high.”
O’Reilly said the Local Government Act gave councils broad powers that were difficult to challenge.
“Councils have what’s called a power of general competence. That means within the purpose of local government they can do pretty much anything that any legal person or entity would be able to do,” she said.
“A council can still have some degree of discretionary spending within its role as the local authority.”
She said Tamaki would have to prove the councils were spending money on projects beyond their scope.
“The only way Destiny Church could challenge council spending would be on the basis that the decision to spend money on these services was somehow outside of the council’s role,” she said.
“That would be very difficult to do. They would have to go to the High Court.”
However, O’Reilly said it was not unheard of for individuals to challenge their councils’ spending.
“There’s precedence for councils being challenged on their spending, but usually the spending on any particular service is provided for in the council’s long-term plan or annual plan and both of those documents are open for public submission,” she said.
“Once it’s actually in an annual plan or long-term plan, I think it would be almost impossible to challenge.”
Retired law professor Ken Palmer said the best Tamaki could hope for would be an injunction, but that was a long shot.
“That would stop the councils from funding these things ... but I don’t see how rainbow pedestrian crossings meet the threshold,” he said.
“I don’t think he has any chance of getting an injunction.”
O’Reilly said Tamaki would be pushing against the entire legal system.
“He’s talking about rights of expression, so it’s almost a Bill of Rights challenge rather than a challenge under the Local Government Act,” she said.
“In a way, he’s complaining about the law of New Zealand rather than about how individual local authorities apply it.”
Rainbow advocacy group OutLine disagreed with Tamaki’s assertion that the spending was wasteful.
“These investments like many others may not have immediately apparent tangible outcomes but we as a rainbow mental health organisation can testify to the positive individual and community outcomes that come from such investments,” chief executive Emmaline Pickering-Martin said in a statement.
“Tamaki does not care for struggling ratepayers but instead is preying on vulnerable people’s fears and stress to manipulate them into a false sense of community and purpose that does not create or promote a safe society.”
■ Gisborne Mayor Rehette Stoltz said yesterday Brian Tamaki “has taken up too much oxygen already” and she would not be commenting any further.
A council spokesman said there were no plans to paint over the tyre skid marks made in “wheelie” damage to the Gladstone Road rainbow crossing over the Easter weekend.
The police inquiry to locate the driver of the vehicle involved, seized by police earlier this week, continues.
