Staff cuts and scrapped projects: Camp Chung's strongest hint yet at cuts

Tuesday, 17 June 2025

Wellington mayoral candidate Ray Chung, centre, and Better Wellington spokesperson Alistair Boyce, right, have given more clues to planned cuts - broadly inline to the suggestion by Louise Tong, left, at a recent Vision for Wellington event.

The group behind Ray Chung’s Wellington mayoral push has given its most-detailed clues yet about “aspirational” cuts, while admitting the promise of no rates increases will be “bloody difficult”.

Alistair Boyce from Better Wellington, which is behind Chung’s Independent Together political group, said a presentation by Infratil executive Louise Tong last week was a solid blueprint for what could be cut if Chung won in October with a majority council behind him.

Tong, a Chung supporter, outlined her planned $2.8 billion in Wellington City Council cost-cutting over a decade to a Vision for Wellington event last week.

That plan included closing Wellington Zoo, negotiating with the Government to take over council social housing, cutting $700m from the staffing bill, making the Tākina convention centre multi purpose, stopping the Golden Mile revamp and organic waste collection, and spending less on quake-strengthening buildings including Freyberg Pool, the City to Sea Bridge and the Opera House.

Former company director Paul Ridley-Smith, who was on the Vision for Wellington panel, said her numbers appeared solid.

Boyce on Monday said “due process” around staffing cuts meant Chung was hamstrung about what cuts he could publicly comment on – but Boyce could.

Independent Together is hosting events around Wellington called the Zero Rates Increase Roadshow, with an email newsletter saying they were running they're running “on a ticket of zero rates increases, back to basics and no party politics”. Boyce on Monday said achieving a zero rates increase the next two years would be “bloody difficult”.

“It is an aspiration,” he said.

Chung said the numbers came from looking at everything through a cost-cutting lens, before factoring in political will and listening to community feedback.

He confirmed a zero rates increase in his first year could be unattainable, but was something he was working towards.

Mayoral candidate Ray Chung backs many of Lousie Tong’s plans, but cutting the zoo is a step too far for him.

“I’m not saying we can’t do it, I need to know how to do it,” he said.

Chung opposed closing the zoo but backed some of Tong’s suggestions, such as opening up part of Tākina to apartments or businesses. He hoped to lose about 17% of staff by July 2026 via attrition – though did not favour redundancies.

The council should pause all quake-remediation work on its own buildings pending a government review into rules, he said. He has previously talked of cutting the Golden Mile, cycleways and organic waste collection.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis and Housing Minister Chris Bishop last week poured cold water on the idea of the Government taking over council social housing, but Chung hoped to at least start a conversation about it if elected.

Independent Together candidate Andrea Compton, who has been working the numbers for the group, would not commit to announcing other cuts, but said it had a five-point plan to interrogate spending: Re-examining predictions for population growth, carefully going through budget assumptions, benchmarking spending against other councils, and doing “top down” budgets – allocating funding to areas rather than deciding what to spend on, then finding the money.

But the biggest saver was getting the council chief executive to list all council services and checking others, such as central government, were not already providing the same service.