Chlöe Swarbrick vs The Boomer King’s ‘slash-and-burn’ Budget in generational warfare

Chlöe Swarbrick urges super-city MPs to meet over ‘slash-and-burn’ Auckland Council budget

Tāmaki Makaurau Mayor Wayne Brown wants to cancel 1000 buses per day and slash arts, culture and local board funding to reduce a fiscal hole of nearly $300 million.

Swarbrick told Morning Report she believed the super-city’s MPs had a role to play in the local process.

She has written an open letter to her Parliamentary colleagues in Tāmaki Makaurau, asking them to meet next week to discuss what the budget would mean for their constituents.

“I’m sure somewhere, even amongst all our Parliamentary and political differences, that we could find some common ground.”

The proposed date of the meeting was a day after the 28 March deadline for budget submissions, she noted.

Swarbrick said Auckland-based or electorate MPs spent a lot of time working with the council in their electorates and should be encouraging constituents to make submissions on the budget proposal.

“Part of this slash-and-burn is the intention to hand these costs back to central government,” she said, “and that, again, is precisely the reason that we need to see Auckland or Tāmaki Makaurau-based MPs, not necessarily wading in themselves, but ensuring that communities are well aware of what’s at stake here.”

The scale of cut-backs proposed in the council’s budget would make it “easily the most significant local government budget in living memory”, she said.

“What we’re looking at is hugely detrimental impacts on communities across Tāmaki Makaurau, in the environmental space, in the climate space, in the transport space, in the education space – across the board.”

It seemed “next to insane that we have the proposal to cancel more than a thousand buses a day whilst also increasing fares, in the midst of what appears to be cross-Parliamentary consensus that what we’re facing – or what we have faced – is a climate change-charged storm”, Swarbrick said.

The job of Auckland-based MPs was to represent Aucklanders, she added.

“Right now, what Aucklanders are facing is the most significant Auckland Council budget that we have seen in living memory, cuts to services that will not be replaced if we lose them.

“It is critically important that we see the leadership from central government in the absence of it currently coming from those at the top at Auckland Council.”

More than 10,000 residents have already submitted feedback on the draft budget, with those still wanting to have their say able to submit until 11pm on Tuesday, 28 March.

Every passing week, it just becomes more and more apparent that Aucklanders have been played magnificently by the Boomer King.

You’ll remember that when Wayne Burns won, I said the following…

I would expect a ‘report’ to come out suggesting a vast leap in rates to cover the perilous position Auckland has been left in and that those rates will terrify and enrage ratepayers.

…and almost like clockwork, what was the next headline?

Auckland Council $270m budget hole: Mayor Wayne Brown responds, says 12pc rates rises unacceptable and won’t happen

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown says the prospect of steep rates rises is not acceptable and will not happen as a result of a huge financial hole in the council budget.

…and now look at what is being said…

Auckland Council considers selling assets to fill $270m shortfall

Auckland’s deputy mayor says the council will go line-by-line through its assets to try to fill its $270-million budget hole.

The estimated budget shortfall for the Auckland Council’s next financial year was due to revenue drops from Covid-19, rapid inflation and interest rate rises.

…bahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha – Auckland just got played and the privatisation agenda has been snuck in while you all got conned into believing the Boomer King was going to ‘fix it’, rather than ‘privatise it’.

You are being played and to be honest, Auckland deserves what comes next.

If Aucklanders are stupid enough to elect a multimillionaire over a peoples hero like Efeso, they get what’s coming to them.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if the local elections weren’t contracted out to a private company that only saw 8 polling booths for 1.2million Aucklanders more people might have voted and averted the looming privatisation fire sale.

Our poorly resourced privatised local elections are a giant voter suppression blanket that ensures the poor are excluded while the wealthy land owners get multiple votes!

Chlöe Swarbrick’s fight against the Boomer King’s ‘slash-and-burn’ Budget is generational warfare between those who benefitted from the property speculation orgy of the last 30 years and those who did not.

The shear scale of what the Boomer King is doing at a time when new ideas are needed, is extraordinary.

We need vision not basic bitch cut 10% costs management cliches!

Cutting 1000 buses per day, gutting the culture that keeps this city barely alive while using bullshit justifications for dumping the LGNZ annual fees because he claims he saw some drunk people at a LGNZ party while he was playing the banjo???

What. The. Fuck?

Wayne Brown plays the banjo?

Tumeke!

Wayne Brown’s unfailing lost grandfather on the spectrum routine while angrily lashing out at media is endearing him to no one but he is channeling the rage Aucklanders feel being trapped by never ending road cones and public transport meltdowns.

This seething resentment in Auckland is going to explode politically somewhere this election.

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