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 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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Folks
I went through the LGNZ website. Have a go yourself. It’s pure Wellington. It gets involved in way too.much more than it should for the sake of being politically correct. Way too.much fluff and waffle. I’d also pull out if I saw that.
Folks
I went through the LGNZ website. Have a go yourself. It’s pure Wellington. It gets involved in way too.much more than it should for the sake of being politically correct. Way too.much fluff and waffle. I’d also pull out if I saw that.
Yes – let’s fund hate fueled poetry from a talent-less poet, that targets white men…proudly funded by the Arts and Culture fund…As for Chloe, 1 question, ‘how is the private member bill going on cannabis law reform’, or is she a bit too busy releasing media statements…
Why do people bother which such lame debating points that just reeal their prejudices? While there might be hate filled poetry somewhere in the arts scene the vast, vast majorityof arts in Auckland (well over 99.9%) will not be. Come back when you can put a decent argument together cos this doesn’t even have anything to do with the article
Aaron – missing the point Aaron…Arts and Culture set expects Aucklanders to shut up, and pay up to fund their hobbies…despite how crappy they are…getting it Aaron?
indeed, she’s been so effective in achieving…what exactly? Oh, that’s right, nothing. Another Green waste of space.
Okay Zoomer.
Thank goodness for straight talkers like Chlöe.
Fabulous to see Auckland’s Mayor getting on with the job.
Keep up the right wing propaganda Bob.
Yep it’s always propaganda with our boy blow Bob.
Thanks chaps always appreciate your support.
He should cut or should I say tax the moaners and bike users to pay for the gold-plated bike lanes. CC is a green washn scam so it doesn’t have to be a priority anymore.
But really. More tinkering with the budget when you have more than $11b of debt. You’re not going to achieve anything substantive long-term.
It’s the corporatised ideological bias that needs addressing along with the senior management that needs to be given the boot from what is meant to be a Public Service entity that provides public services for the whole region.
PS. He must have been pissed himself if he can’t remember where he was when he was plucking on his banjo?
Swarbrick emerges from her slumber,must be election year.
Bob the first – Spot on
Wayne Brown who?
Oh failed Northland mayor
Chloe failed…at nothing.
Chloe for mayor.
Mike Horse Kings – Not true…Chloe failed as an Communist Party Member in the Maungakiekie Local Elections of 2003…she never mentions this.
Yes, that’s wrong bob, but I have to ask. Just how many dicks do you need because you just made another one of yourself.
RNZ
Green Party wants immediate action on bank profits
Green Party revenue spokesperson Chlöe Swarbrick says the Australian banks are making roughly 20-percent more in New Zealand than they do in Australia, and a 10-percent tax on their excess profits would be appropriate.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/audio/2018881050/green-party-wants-immediate-action-on-bank-profits
I do wonder why so many commentators think a cities finances work totally different to their own. When you’re broke you have very few options besides having to force yourself to live within your means which inevitably means something/s are going to have to go/stop.
I also wonder why TDB is becoming so much like the MSM these days. I find that sad.
Astounds me how people think in politics you don’t have to manage your finances.
Brown knows this,hence he’s doing something about it.
You and Brown should live on the margins and then you wouldn’t be so self righteous Bob.
PB
Too many in nz now get a heap of money “here it’s yours do what you want with it.” Just like that. Betcha nobody at LGNZ works their guts out 60hrs a week for their fat salaries. It’s become an epidemic.
Actually cities’ and countries’ finances are fundamentally different from personal finances. Debt is the norm, and is far more manageable because cities and countries don’t die at age 80 or thereabouts.
Auckland is broke dude. It’s ability to more more is all but gone. It also pays $1,500,000 a DAY in interest costs.
When you are broke and have huge interest payments to cover your options become very very limited to non-existent.
It’s interesting that Goff’s deputy chair on his finance comittee was Brown’s choice as deputy mayor.
At least Chloe is doing something useful while her Green colleagues busy themselves fighting a niche culture war between extremist factions which alienates 95% of the population. The irony is that they will probably have to rely on her winning Auckland Central to keep them in Parliament after the election.
We will see this happen on a larger scale if ACT and National get in this year. Wages, healthcare, services cut right across the board.
The breathtaking igorance of those New Zealanders who believe that Arts & Culture are only and always about a piece of fringe poetry. It has nothing to do with generation nor genre. I shan’t allow all the years of dedication spent on developing a thriving arts scene in Auckland in which I and my family were involved, to go to waste. This boomer is about to challenge her contemporary. Such a pity Wayne Brown wasn’t the target of tomato soup today!!
You make a good point Leighton.