Letter: favoring The ‘Right’

Source

In response to Matt Bullen (“No ‘rights’ are being removed”, Beacon, August 13), I have to assume when he says “rights”, he’s talking about the parties on the right, because the voter suppression efforts he is in support of have had a tendency to favour the “right”.

How special votes changed the number of seats:
■ 2005 – National down 1 seat, Te Pāti Māori up 1.
■ 2008 – National down 1 seat, Greens up 1 seat.
■ 2011 – National down 1 seat, Greens up 1.
■ 2014 – National down 1 seat, Greensup 1.
■ 2017 – National down 1, Greens and Labour up 1 each
■ 2020 – National down 2, Lab up 1
2023 – National down 2 seats, Te Pāti Māori up 2 and Greens up 1. NZ First needed.

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Opinion: What the heck is happening with rates?

Posted on by Dave Stewart

Rates are going through the roof and people are struggling. Even so, I’m going to say something that most mayoral candidates won’t admit. Rates are going to keep going up and anyone who promises that they can stop that happening is lying to you. The Government would sack the council and install commissioners if we did what it would take to stop rates increasing.

Letter: Who’s to blame for dormant town centre?

Posted on by Dexter

Since the election of the National-led coalition government, 33,000 more people were unemployed, we’re in the deepest recession in 30 years (aside from Covid), record numbers of people are needing government support to get by, free prescriptions have been cut, half-priced public transport has been cut, food bank funding has been cut and all this despite borrowing $15 billion dollars to fund tax cuts that we were told would fix the cost of living crisis. While the Government shovelled billions to big tobacco and mining companies, 2700 businesses went bankrupt in the last year, and to top it off I read that Nicola Willis burned $671 million from the Bank of Taxpayers on no new ferries.

Article: Hutt mayor Campbell Barry warns against council spend-ups after water reforms

Posted on by Dave Stewart

Barry told The Post he was concerned that some candidates in the coming local government election were suggesting that shifting water services from council balance sheets opened up new spending or debt to invest.

“It’s a dangerous position because there will potentially be the desire to load up with additional spending, additional debt ‒ councils may want to do that because their financial or balance sheet may look a lot better.

“But of course, it will be the ratepayers who get hit with that, because they will still have to be paying water bills.”

He said with rates rises already unaffordable in many places, there should instead be a corresponding drop in rates, in line with that of water bills.

For example, he said if the new Wellington water provider had already been created, the rates rise at Hutt City Council would have dropped from 12.6% to 7.6% — a 5 percentage point decrease.

Any decrease in rates less than 5 percentage points would therefore actually be an increase to the ratepayer.

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