We’re about to pay a very steep price for our local government apathy

Sunday, 28 April 2024

While everyone was getting worked up about Three Waters, the looming fiscal cliff for local government infrastructure spending slipped under the radar.

Tracy Watkins is editor of The Post and Sunday Star-Times.

OPINION: If, like most Kiwis, you’re not interested in local government politics, then you’re in for some bad news.

While you were looking the other way, local councils across the country have been passing double-digit rates rises, and it looks like that will be the norm for the foreseeable future.

One calculation done by The Post for Wellington City Council rates shows that someone paying around $4000 a year in rates currently, will be paying more than $11,000 within a decade. That’s $211 a week, or an extra $134 a week compared to their current rates bill.

For some, particularly older ratepayers in big old family homes, that’s going to make staying put unaffordable.

Bigger homes in affluent suburbs like Welligton’s Mt Victoria will be paying steep rates in the next 10 years.

The breakdown goes like this: Wellington City Council is currently considering an 18% rates increase, including a levy for a new sewerage plant, for the coming financial year, with projected rates rises of between 7.2% and 15.5% in the following years.

It’s not until you take into account the power of compounding that you understand the true scale of those numbers, however; the 10-year increase, including the sewerage plant levy, is more than 175%.

Wellington City Council isn’t even at the top end of the scale for rates increases. Canterbury is forecasting a 24.2% average rates rise while the average around the country is 15%.

But we can’t say we weren’t warned.

Local government has been crying poor for years, and the failing state of infrastructure that falls under their watch is a looming fiscal cliff.

The cost of fixing waste water, drinking water and sewerage reticulation alone is estimated to burden local government - i.e. us, the ratepayers - with a $120 billion to $185b bill over the next three decades.

And that’s just one aspect of the infrastructure deficit facing councils.

Wellington’s aging infrastructure has been on full display as the city’s pipes fail.

Labour’s Three Waters legislation was about handing over some of that headache to central government.

But national politics - and by that, of course, I mean national politicians playing politics over local government - managed to obscure the real issues.

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown at an Auckland Council budget meeting.

In a reversal of the old adage about turkeys not voting for an early Christmas, they managed to convince ratepayers that the biggest threat to their future was Three Waters, and more specifically co-governance with Māori, despite co-governance having operated successfully for years in areas like the Waikato River.

So the warnings about that massive bill to get water infrastructure up to scratch got drowned out by the noise over co-governance, Māori wards, and a whole lot of nonsense about te reo road signs.

Three Waters may or may not have been the solution local government needs - and let’s be brutally honest here, voters had lost confidence in the last Labour government being able to design or deliver anything competently - but regardless, the problem is back with us, the ratepayers.

And local government is now drowning under the weight of the infrastructure deficit, of which Three Waters is just one aspect.

The problem is they have only a very small number of levers to pull when it comes to raising the necessary dollars, and rates are the biggest and most effective of those levers.

But really, who do we have to blame but ourselves? Most ratepayers are apathetic when it comes to local government politics, and just 40% of eligible people actually bothered to vote at the 2022 local body elections. While that’s lower than previous years it’s not vastly lower - turnout has mostly always been poor.

And those who do vote, apart from those who are organised behind a factional cause, tend to punish councils that push big rates rises.

The constant push and pull of these two forces means that spending on boring things that matter - like infrastructure - has for years been deprioritised behind pet projects pandering to those factional interests.

If we’re all paying attention now, it’s because our chickens are finally coming home to roost.

Is there an answer to this? Only the usual one; that apathy - and an information vacuum - are our biggest enemies.

So you might have noticed that in recent weeks we’ve been hearing from Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, and today, Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau.

Every week we’ll be putting the spotlight on local government by hearing from Mayor Brown, other mayors, and others involved in local government, about the issues that they are dealing with.

We decided to make this platform available because local government struggles to get its voice heard above national politicians much of the time.

But also we did it because it’s true; knowledge is power. It’s time we all armed ourselves with knowledge about issues that are having such a direct impact on our day to day lives.

And if you can’t be bothered, at least stop moaning.