Dunedin City Council flying high with third highest travel expenditure in country

Friday, 28 June 2019

Dunedin is the latest council to declare a climate emergency, setting itself an ambitious new target to reach net zero carbon two decades earlier than originally planned.

The Dunedin City Council has racked up the third highest spend on travel expenditure among all New Zealand councils.

The figures, obtained by the Taxpayers' Union, were released just days after the council declared a climate emergency.

It spent $347,885 on air travel in 2017-18 – $214,067 on domestic travel and $133,818 on international.

That puts Dunedin third behind much the much larger councils of Auckland (which spent $1,221,571) and Wellington ($591,310).

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The Dunedin City Council has spent the third highest amount on airfares out of New Zealand councils after Auckland and Wellington.

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A council spokesman told Stuff there were several reasons contributing to the air travel expenditure, including the council's size and geographical location.

'Many important meetings, conferences, training courses are held in Auckland or Wellington, and are therefore not easily accessible by other modes of transport.'

The spokesman said while the council did not currently offset travel emissions, 'we do have a range of strategies and initiatives in place aimed at reducing carbon emissions across the city'.

The council's declaration of a climate emergency and bringing forward its goal to be a net carbon zero city by 2030 would also 'make us look even harder at where we can reduce our travel costs and/or offset travel emissions'.

The council could not say whether its travel bill had increased in recent years, but managers had been directed to 'be mindful of unnecessary travel'.

'Our standard process is to have, where appropriate, only one staff member attend an event and bring information back to share with colleagues, rather than sending multiple staff members.'

Cost was always a key consideration for the council, but the expenditure was balanced against the need to represent the community at important meetings, conferences, and upskilling staff 'where appropriate and within budgets', the spokesman said.

Taxpayers' Union spokesman Louis Houlbrooke criticised the council for its travel expenditure, particularly being unable to provide a breakdown of the costs.

'Almost every other council in the country has been able to provide this information, so why is Dunedin City Council refusing to be transparent? Is it ashamed of the extravagance of its ratepayer-funded, emissions-spewing junkets.'

A council spokesman said its systems could not provide that level of information without a 'significant amount of staff analysis'.

The Taxpayers' Union plans to appeal to the Ombudsman.

Meanwhile,Stuff questioned the council about mayor Dave Cull's working arrangements with Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ).

Since he was appointed LGNZ president on July 25, 2017, Cull, who is standing down as Dunedin's mayor this year, worked an estimated 420 days on council affairs.

Another 146 days were spent working on 'a mix of Dunedin City Council and LGNZ business', with 44 of those primarily spend doing LGNZ business.

The calculation was inclusive of weekends.

A council spokesman confirmed any LGNZ travel was not paid for by the Dunedin council.