Local councils need to ‘rein in the fantasies’ on spending – PM
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told attendees at the Local Government NZ conference in Wellington today that local councils need to “rein in the fantasies” on spending.
I’m not sure what is worse, that Luxon – AFTER KILLING OFF 3 WATERS – is now attacking the Councils for the utterly predictable explosion in rates rises OR that he is just parroting Taxpayer’s Union attack lines, an organisation that alongside astro turf dark money protest groups turned 3 Waters into an existential race war!
The fucking audacity on display here is phenomenal.
AGAIN – for the billionth fucking time you dumb redneck crackers!
3 Waters was an attempt by Labour to construct new efficiencies to upgrade water pipes so that the rates rise you are all getting now was as low as possible.
How low?
That was the whole point you morons!
To construct new funding models to limit the rates rise you are all now facing, instead you were all conned into believing it was da Maaaaaris is stealing da water bullshit!
Look, there WERE problems with 3 Waters!
There were problems with how the debt structure would be managed and whether it could cause a Sovereign debt downgrade, (Bernard Hickey says yes)
There were problems with some of the fishhooks inside the Māori Water co-management proposals.
And there were problems with the possibility of privatisation.
The biggest problem was that Jacinda refused to engage and explain what this all meant and in that vacuum astro turf dark ag money was used to turn this fairly dull and mundane issue of water co-management over who will fix the drains into an existential race war.
ANYWAY
Labour’s 3 Waters was designed to stop the pain you are all feeling right now so for Luxon to have the fucking audacity to lecture Local Government on cut backs WHEN IT WAS HIS GOVERNMENT USING MĀORI AS A PUNCHING BAG THAT HAS CAUSED THOSE HUGE INCREASES is just unbelievable!
How much must you hate Jacinda for all this to be acceptable?
We are a very easily led people.
Martyn – Fair points Martyn, however, some Local Council’s spending is over the top…
All left wing dominated councils are irresponsible when it comes to spending rate payers money.
Councils like some Political Parties are dominated by woke idiocy not fiscal disciplines.
Are you able to name just one left wing council?
Wellington City
All right wing dominated councils are irresponsible when it comes to spending rate payers money.
Councils like some Political Parties are dominated by woke idiocy not fiscal disciplines.
He’s an idiot.
So you happy for for councils to piss away your rates money on all sorts of crap instead of doing the basics well?
It’s seems they are Jonzie but the naked truth is they have no idea evidenced by their belief if you call something 3 Waters it’s free.
Sod off Bob. Who suggested three waters would make infrastructure free? No one.
So who pays? The rate payer or the tax payer? Something Labour never answered.
Of course the media never asked them
Did I say that? It’s pretty f’ing obvious that killing off three waters will make rate rises higher than they needed to be in relation to water infrastructure. Do I think councils should have some spend that makes a city more interesting? Yes.
Wheel
NO! First fix all the shit that’s gone wrong and not working, before even slightly entertaining concert halls or fucking statues or rebranding streets and building and parks. Or a shonky cinema property deals. I wish I was given a ‘statue budget’…it’s never less than 2 million for….oh, say a piece of rusty steel cut in the shape of a waka paddle….actual cost maybe $10,000…’cultural significance value’ will be $1.9million. Councils just sign that sort of shit off all day long.
An idiot in all sorts of trouble..
Everything is inravelling at an alarming rate!
Not only are none of their stupid ideas not going to work, and are unrealistic, they are actually going to make things significantly worse.
They are all just floundering around, operating off their own unsophisticated, ill informed, ‘reckons’.
Simeon Brown , after wasting a million dollars of the taxpayer’s hard earned money, has now decided to
put on the back burner, changing all the bilingual road signs around N.Z.
What an immature idiot for even going there in the first place.
Gutless wonder spray and walk away Seymour was a no show at the marae the other day.
He is getting paid a shitload of money by the hardworking tax payers of N.Z to front up…
He wants his cake and eat it..
The very thing he is accusing everyone else being paid by the
taxpayer of doing.
All those public sector workers that he , Luxon, Willis and Peters have
just had fired…..they were fronting up for their job every day…He isn’t..
He and Luxon won’t even answer questions from the media and Peter’s is usually in some 5 star hotel overseas somewhere… bankrolled by the taxpayer.
The Coalition of Chaos’ is living up to it’s name. ..virtue signalling is their game….All Hui and no doey!!
And Seymoure has created a new department of 90 to replace the former one by another name which had 20 staff at a cost 13.8 million per year just for wages .
Seymour is wasting the money he claims he is saving with his ministry of funny walks.
Couldn’t have said it any better Grant.
Luxon was criticising vanity projects like the Wellington Convention Centre that is already making a loss when Wellington streets are awash with broken pipes.
And the Mayor of Wellington that drove this edifice through is now part of Luxons coalition government.
The Christchurch stadium is another monument to hubris.
and the conference center there
Agreed
What does Luxon and his toy boy expect to happen ? all the pipes and roads to suddenly fix them selves by devine intervention .These fuck wits get worse by the day .Even Winston expects the gang leader to flip and give Seymour a blowy on the treaty (we will fuck al Maori ) bill .
Dr pork ranting at the power companies that national gave license to rip us all off , is just a fucken joke .They will be laughing at the over weight captain cooker .Then we have seymour too fucken scared to turn up at the hui the other day ,just a fucken soft cock its just down the road from Epsom and he says its too far to trek .
gordon walker your spelling and grammar are sufficient reason for no one to take any notice of the nonsense you spout.
Make no mistake…Gordon makes a lot of salient insightful points.
at least my head is not up my arse .Must have hit a nerve with my comments .
The result of national party education system .
Bro reckons his nonsense is better.
Bob the fist(comma) your spelling and grammar are sufficient reason for no one to take any notice of the nonsense you spout.
Oh the 15% increase over 7 properties too much for me as Im entitled not to pay rates because I am me the skin head gang leader .
Come on Gordon. He’s down to 6 now.
A successful person is our Prime Minister in contrast to gordon walker and Incel Dave the 2nd.
How the fuck would you know .
A useful idiot more like it Bob the Fisted.
An unsuccessful person is our Prime Minister in contrast to gordon walker and Incel Dave the 2nd.
yep had to sell one to cover the cost of living which has gone through the roof since he took over
Least we know who is responsible now.
Yep, he enjoyed all that capital gain that Jacinda, Orr and Robertson gave him.
Tell me again how the left is the party for the poorer?
To be expected. Just Part Two of the gNaCT 3-step privatisation process, used here & globally.
(1) defund
(2) criticise
(3) privatise
Dumb gNat voters can look forward to even greater pain when water assets are ultimately sold to make overseas shareholders richer.
Yes Jase dumb fuckers all because the maaaris are stealing the water BS.
So you happy for for councils to piss away your rates money on all sorts of crap instead of doing the basics well?
No but the government should practice what they preach ,$500 million pissed away and rising on virtue scrapping the ferries .Just one example .
But just because the government wastes our taxes doesn’t mean we want councils to waste our rates.
Maori King: We own the rain.
Labour: Let’s, do this. Give the water pipes back to maori.
Pakeha: We don’t need racial water.
Banks: We see through this cogovernance. No chance we give you lower interest.
Quote I heard yesterday ” you can judge a democracy by the way it treats it’s minorities”
I can imagine what your democracy looks like.
I would prefer the one that tries to assist the minority to be equitably treated not the one that wishes to suppress and dominate as ours does at the moment.
Another dick head sucked in by the nact race baiting lies .
Are you Nigerian or British. Can’t decide who the larger con artist are.
It’s the price you pay for Ardern’s war on LFOs.
Nothing to do with Jacinda ,its the result of 40 years of can kicking and voting the cheapest pricks onto council .For years all I have heard at council elections is I wont allow rates increases .I never heard one person standing for council say they were going to rebuild the water and sewage system.
You are correct, but the article is about Luxon & his Government, and there is a reason why you have this Government, not the “caring” Labour coalition.
yes its called race baiting Erik and sadly you fell into the trap .Lets see if you and the fucken idiot bob the fuckup are still in Love with Luxon at the next election .
I’m a single issue voter, nothing else matters.
Erik still down the Jacinda rabbit hole whilst he supports a gun lobbyists in parliament. And then there’s this lobbyists success…
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/leaked-tobacco-lobbying-plan-for-political-pressure-shows-tobacco-giant-got-its-tax-cut-wish/DH6HATO6X5AG5GPEKEK2W3JCRE/
Corruption everywhere with this government, can’t say Jacinda ever was no matter how Gunsmoke Erik tries to sell it.
We should see two sackings in this government but such is the depth of corruption we know it won’t happen.
Protecting the rights of LFOs is my only concern.
McKee is doing a great job. She’s an amazing wahine.
Maori majority are impoverished peoples and easy targets for race baiting. Our country’s is only young in the scheme of things 161 years apart from the signing of the “Te tiriti o Waitangi” Maori still controlled their resources with ever increasing resentment from pakeha immigrants labelling Maori as exercising privileges creating a “land league” which meant maori stopped selling their land.
It a recurring cycle every 50 years or so that arises with claims that maori are “privileged” and this lie keeps popping its head to the surface usually when something traumatic is about to be visited upon “US” History is an important vehicle to understanding current social and economic issues and “WE” need to tread carefully of where and how we manage “OUR” country future.
He also stated that councils should stick to the basics and not spend millions on vanity projects.
Take Wgtn Council, hundreds of millions spent on fucking anything but water pipe renewal.
Councils have been put on notice now.
Yes and rightly so Im right.
It’s ridiculous to say calling something 3 Waters makes it cheaper.
Watching water trickle down Wellington streets while the left dominated Council choose their latest vanity project is the ultimate slap in the face for rate payers. The last Council was no better and the one before was worse. Wellington seems to attract non-performing Councils.
Mahuta paid the price of being hung out to dry by her leaders on 3 Waters .A poor policy made worst by making it a racial thing from both sides.
the hate was driven ,and still is by NACT as you well know .And all the right wing racists gleefully jumped on the band wagon .
The morons are those who believe by changing the name of something,in this case to 3 Waters,makes it cheaper.
Tell us how it was a poor policy Trevor. Talking to a water engineer who has worked with many of the smaller councils over the years, he applauded it as the only way they could afford to fund their water and waste systems. But you seem to know more about it Trevor so do tell us.
Only a few councils excepted the offer .The majority were against it as they saw it as a asset grab by Labour. These councils that turned the idea down were from both sides of the fence politically speaking. In Chch there was 2 million of assets on the block.
yes I have had similar coversations lately with died in wool national party people .
Well hopefully all the numbskulls are going to enjoy their huge rates increases! In my area people on rural properties that never use Council water, storm water or sewage systems were the majority of those with “Jabcinda” and “STOP 3 Waters” signage, which proves Martyn’s point that this was largely an ideological battle. The right got control of the narrative, so here we are.
Water and showers of shit are fountaining in Wellington on a regular basis, Queenstown! had boil water notices as have many districts, and more to come. Good luck to you all, I have two huge rain water tanks with a filtration system…
Then the FNDC charging for water and sewerage services will save you a lot of money.
Yes Tiger Mountain all that reached a peak during Labour’s 6 years as Government aided by left wing councils full of some ridiculous ideology,empty on basic management skills.
Yes Tiger Mountain all that reached a peak during National’s 9 years as Government aided by right wing councils full of some ridiculous ideology, empty on basic management skills. Sandra Goudie TCDC as a fine example.
I have an idea – to manage council behavior and spending what about a traffic light system that gives back-office government bureaucrats the power to punish and micro manage councilors behavior.
Over the top is the money given to landlords and the minute tax cuts we all got what a waste of billions now more NZers are going to die prematurely. But hey some of them were dumb enough to fall for all the bullshit from National during the election. I see our public health system and schools are deteriorating by the day.
Surely most of you are sick of paying rates for leaking pipes, bad footpaths, sewage spills, and council CEOs who earn $700k per annum (Christchurch). The modern council is a disgrace.
Of course we’re sick of it. But what do the idiots vote for, more of the same. Always the cheap ‘solution’ which is never adequate.
What some of us knew but many couldn’t understand, was that voting in a right-wing govt. wouldn’t solve a thing. They are the kings of cheap fixes. Give the people cheap fixes because they have better things to do with our money, make themselves and their foreign masters rich.
Even the pothole fixing is cheap. Some of our local potholes are shallower but not fixed. They only budgeted for one shovel of tar and metal, not two.
So, 3-waters got dumped because they couldn’t stand being told about it by a Māori woman. That was all the proof they needed to decide Māori were going to ‘steal’ the water. Containers on gorgeous looking farms beside the motorway screaming Stop 3-Waters. One would think you’d have to have more brains than that showed, to own lovely looking farms like that.
So now, after all the disastrous decisions he’s made, Luxury Luxon needs to shut his face and get to work negotiating with power companies for the benefit of the majority. He reckons he is a master negotiator so show us the money Chris. We’re sick of waiting for evidence of your cleverness. All we get is childishness.
Yes we are but it is not the fault of current councils is it .?If councils over the last 60 years had paid their way instead of reducing rates by doing nothing we would not be here today would we .To turn up and make out that the current situation has just happened shows how far out of reality Luxon is .Maybe he should have stuck to selling soap .
The outrageous CEO salaries could go now.
I had a funny experience with my District Council’s manager of water and waste at the local super market a year or so ago.
I found him inside shopping and after a polite introduction I asked him if he felt uncomfortable with doing his personal shopping in a brand new council owned $70 K 4×4 during work hours after a massive rates hike of 100% over several years. His response was less than courteous and we ended up brawling in the isles between the pink iced buns cabinet and the canned vegetables department and all caught on CCTV security cameras. He was dragged off by mates who must have been in the truck with him while I got thrown out into the car park in an arm lock by a swarthy fellow who worked there. As luck would have it, he was also a trainee cop.
Sometimes you just have to walk up to the fuckers and spell it out for them.
If you don’t like what your council or your government does, or doesn’t do, get an unruly, rowdy, mob together then go to YOUR council or government offices and smash all YOUR fucking windows while they * run for their lives. While I’m no God botherer ; ” Evil does prevail when good people fail to act.”
* Something like this. FYI and all that : https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/10/air-france-executives-have-shirts-torn-from-their-backs-during-protest/408991/
A bully exposed one who can’t spell.
Jonzie this current government is pissing my taxes away with their pet projects. And our CEO PM had to be bailed out when he ran AIR NZ.
The bail out was 2001 he was in charge 2013-19.He ran a successful airline while many others lost money just like the country.
Do we really know if he was all that successful at his last job, Trevor?
The airline was successful before he got there and largely ran itself, as they always do, when the lower downs do their jobs properly.
The interesting comparison is that the lower downs at Air NZ (or any airline) have rules and regulations to follow and are far better educated and proficient at their jobs than a CEO. They are responsible for many lives and most take that pretty seriously.
A CEO doesn’t make day-to-day decisions, only long-term decisions. What we do know about Luxon is that he makes a decision and then does a 180, so how did that go at Air NZ.
So covid was telling porkies.Virgin has a bad reputation in Australia so good to get out even at a lose.
The Airline was a global success well before Luxon ever arrived, that is credited to Rob Fyfe and it is clear Luxon jumped ship before having to make the hard decisions through hard economic times.
Wikipedia
“As CEO, he inherited Air New Zealand’s financial interest in Virgin Australia[15] and in 2014 joined its board.[16] After reportedly failing to win board support to sack Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti, Luxon left the Virgin Australia board and sold Air New Zealand’s 25.9 per cent shareholding at a loss to Air NZ shareholders, including the government.”
Not such a great endorsement one would think.
Did he indeed?…read Trevor’s fact you dick.
Jonzie this current government is pissing my taxes away with their pet projects. And our CEO PM had to be bailed out when he ran AIR NZ.
Yes, Ennius and I am sick of paying taxes for fuck all to
Have to agree with Erik the Nordy the usual fuckwits got the wankers they deserve and its time they were given the boot
Only a few councils excepted the offer .The majority were against it as they saw it as a asset grab by Labour. These councils that turned the idea down were from both sides of the fence politically speaking. In Chch there was 2 million of assets on the block.
We had a major water leak on state hiway 3 which took 2 weeks to get repaired .Today I was told it took so long because the council did not have enough funding so had to get from else where .My rates just went up 800 a year .
Up above, I mentioned the outrageous salary for the Christchurch City Council CEO. No-one here seems to have a problem with the salary. Council CEOs aren’t exactly worth twice more than a Labour PM so why do we tolerate it?
Wellington council is a disgrace. Their wasteful spending is a regular topic of conversation while chatting at a bus stop, eyeing the empty cycleways. Their failures are too numerous to mention.
Luxons speech will go down very well with Wellingtonians who have watched their rates bills rise while their councillors spend money of things they don’t want
But Wellingtonians repeatedly vote these low performing mayors and councils in. You can’t cure stoopid Capitolians.
Luxon just doesn’t rate.
Pick up the rubbish, fix the pipes, fill in potholes, and more generally, maintain local assets quickly, carefully, and cost effectively.”
The government has announced plans to remove four wellbeing provisions in the Local Government Act and putting a revenue cap on “non-core activities” to ensure councils get “back to the basics”, and introducing performance benchmarks.
New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom said it should be left to communities to decide “what inspires
“A government capping local government’s ability to reflect what its communities are asking for is a slippery slope to mediocrity.”
Trouble is that local gummint, with some financial controls and better ways of establishing fair rates (ie not with $1million sections and $150,000 valued houses woohoo, could do a better job than central. What a saving, could get us raving!
Funny the hard right wing moron Graham Adams still putting business cards and pamphlets of “stop co governance” in the mail. The right have always been a bit slow on the up take.