A recent Cabinet decision reveals plans to explore an Australian idea to restrict councils’ ability to hike rates to pay for non-core spending, such as building new convention centres.
Even before the Prime Minister went to Wellington’s Tākina convention centre to give local body politicians a bollocking, he must’ve known he’d come out the winner.
It’s aneasy fight to win. Local and regional councils are hardly anyone’s favourite anything at the moment. Rate increases as high as 27% will do that to one’s reputation.
Luxon only said what many ratepayers have themselves said – councils should stick to doing the basics, picking up the rubbish, fixing the pipes, filling the potholes. They should cut out the weird fantasies and luxuries.
And then he asked for the kind of accountability that anyone putting money into any venture would think perfectly reasonable: rein in the spending or there will be no new money from his Government.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon during his hard-hitting speech to the LGNZ conference in Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell
A notoriously big spender, Wellington’s Mayor Tory Whānau accused the PM of “punching down”, as if he was picking on her, the mayor of our capital city.
Greater Wellington regional councillor Thomas Nash tweeted that the speech “was one of the most mana diminishing, paternalistic and visionless speeches to a group of people I have ever heard”, making it about he and his mates’ feels – while completely forgetting how that sounds to the ratepayers he and his council just slapped with a 20.55% rate rise.
New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom said communities should get to spend money on “what inspires them”, because inspiration is exactly what ratepayers are longing for. If only we could spend more money on fixing those leaking pipes that inspire us so much!
In a room full of dozens of mayors and scores of councillors, none came close to mounting a decent argument against Luxon.
Instead, they spoke about Māori wards and the Government’s over-reach in bringing back democracy there, once again reinforcing to ratepayers struggling through a cost of living crisis that councils think other things are more important.
There was a day when ratepayers may have come to the defence of their local council and told the Beehive to keep its nose out of our communities. Those days are gone.
Just hours before Christopher Luxon's speech a burst pipe had flooded Wellington's Kent Terrace nearby. Photo / Ethan Manera
These councils might find a tiny bit of sympathy if there wasn’t a prominent council setting an example for them. Auckland Council’s rates have only increased by 6.8%, less than half the national average. It wasn’t easy. The cuts it took to get there were painful and public, but Auckland ratepayers were protected from yet another increase in their bills.
The other councils could ask Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown to show them how to do it too, but he wasn’t at the Local Government NZ conference. He quit the group early last year because LGNZ is useless (just look at the quality in that conference room) and spending $640,000 on membership fees annually was an obvious waste.
Before Luxon went into that room, he was in touch with the vibe of the country’s ratepayers. He knew he was picking a fight he was odds-on to win.
What’s remarkable is how out of touch the mayors and councillors were. But that’s not a surprise, is it?
