Mike's Minute: It's time - cap the rates and can some councils

The Mike Hosking Breakfast

So having looked at every council in the country and the pending rate rises we are all going to have to pay, a couple of inescapable conclusions are to be drawn.

1) We need central Government to cap rates.

2) We need fewer councils.

If you were to roughly use inflation as a guide, Waitomo and Whanganui are your only councils to get under the wire at 2.93 % and 2.2% – so congratulations to them.

I'm sure every council could, and would, mount an argument as to why whatever it is they have come up with, whether it be the 12.9% in Taranaki or the 15.5% in Hamilton, is in some way, shape, or form, justifiable.

A lot of it will be historic. In other words, if previous councils had done their job and been fiscally prudent the work being undertaken today would not be the current burden it is.

But a lot of it if you were DOGE-like, or brutal, would not in fact be needed at all.

Councils have become fiefdoms. They have entered areas they have no business in, but like so much in life, once you have ventured there is no turning back.

Apart from the specific, like the 9.76% for Otorohanga or the 12.4% for Central Otago, you also have the more general impact. In other words, you are adding cost to the economy, and you are charging fixed-income folk who don’t have the money.

What you are doing is inflationary.

None of us have the ability to simply add more charges. We don’t simply get the pay rise we want, or up our hourly rate to the poor sap we are servicing. Life isn't like that.

We cut our cloth. Could we buy more? Could we do more? Could we spend more? Of course we could, but we can't. Unless you're a council.

Even if a council could say "look at what all that money got you, look at the gold plating and the shiny baubles and the tens of thousands who have flocked to our region because of our expenditure", but they can't say that because none of that has happened.

15% doesn’t buy you utopia. It merely sets you up for another 15% next year because councils know a sucker when they see one.

So, cap those rates and can those councils. It might well be the most popular thing this central Government does in three years.

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