Category: RNZ

Article: Capping rates rises would make things ‘worse not better’ – Chris Hipkins

Posted on by Dave Stewart

“Having created a situation where councils are being forced to put up the rates to pay for things like water infrastructure, the government’s now trying to blame them for doing something that they really don’t have a choice but to do.

“Ultimately if the government don’t want councils to increase rates, they’ve got to find another way of funding the water infrastructure that we need.”

Local Government New Zealand president and Selwyn District mayor Sam Broughton said rates capping could be “disastrous for communities” and leave councils without the means to fund essential infrastructure.

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Despite decades of cost cutting, governments spend more than ever. How can we make sense of this?

Posted on by Dave Stewart

Many of the managerial techniques that have arrived in the public sector over the austerity years – such as results-based pay, corporate contracting, performance management or evaluation culture – have their origins in a budgetary revolution that took place in the 1960s at the US Department of Defence.

In the early 1960s, Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was frustrated with being nominally in charge of budgeting but having to mediate between the seemingly arbitrary demands of military leaders for more tanks, submarines or missiles.

In response, he called on the RAND Corporation, a US think tank and consultancy, to remake the Defence Department’s budgetary process to give the secretary greater capacity to plan.

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