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From cleaning up Agent Orange, to being deported from Fiji, new ACT MP and self-described 'radical environmentalist' Simon Court shares his background on our MPs in Depth podcast series.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
As part of our MPs in Depth series, Louis sits down with new Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds for a wide-ranging discussion on her career and electorate.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
Louis sits down with Damien Grant for a discussion about the growth in size and role of the government, such as new tax changes on housing and the potential for rent control.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
This dashboard is subject to ongoing updates. Please contact [email protected] if you have more up to date information.
Council |
Proposed 21/22 rates increase(click to read consultation document) |
Consultation period(click to make a submission) |
Actual 21/22 rates increase |
| Ashburton District Council | 6.28% | 19 March - 19 April | |
| Auckland Council | 5.0% | CLOSED | |
| Bay of Plenty Regional Council | 5.8% | CLOSED | |
| Buller District Council | 16 April - 18 May | ||
| Carterton District Council | 5.65% | 18 March - 19 April | |
| Central Hawke's Bay District Council | 7.8% | CLOSED | |
| Central Otago District Council | 6.7% | 26 March - 25 April | |
| Chatham Islands Council | TBC | ||
| Christchurch City Council | 5.0% | 12 March - 18 April | |
| Clutha District Council | 3.53% | 27 March - 27 April | |
| Dunedin City Council | 9.8% | 23 March - 29 April | |
| Environment Canterbury Regional Council | 24.5% | CLOSED | |
| Environment Southland | TBC | ||
| Far North District Council | 5.5% | CLOSED | |
| Gisborne District Council | 5.3% | 24 March - 23 April | |
| Gore District Council | TBC | ||
| Greater Wellington Regional Council | 12.64% | 2 April - 2 May | |
| Grey District Council | 15 April - 17 May | ||
| Hamilton City Council | 8.9% | CLOSED | |
| Hastings District Council | 6.8% | 1 April - 7 May | |
| Hauraki District Council | 4.23% | 19 March - 30 April | |
| Hawke's Bay Regional Council | 19.5% | 1 April - 2 May | |
| Horizons Regional Council | 8.0% | 26 March - 23 April | |
| Horowhenua District Council | 6.7% | 18 March - 19 April | |
| Hurunui District Council | TBC | ||
| Hutt City Council | 5.9% | 6 April - 6 May | |
| Invercargill City Council | 5.0% | 30 March - 3 May | |
| Kaikoura District Council | TBC | ||
| Kaipara District Council | 3.37% | CLOSED | |
| Kapiti Coast District Council | 7.8% | 7 April - 10 May | |
| Kawerau District Council | TBC | ||
| Mackenzie District Council | TBC | ||
| Manawatu District Council | 5.1% | 12 April - 12 May | |
| Marlborough District Council | 5.73% | 9 April - 10 May | |
| Masterton District Council | 5.5% | 1 April - 3 May | |
| Matamata-Piako District Council | 11.85% | 16 March - 16 April | |
| Napier City Council | 8% | 12 April - 12 May | |
| Nelson City Council | 5.7% | 22 March - 21 April | |
| New Plymouth District Council | 12% | CLOSED | |
| Northland Regional Council | 19.8% | 13 March - 16 April | |
| Opotiki District Council | 6 April - 7 May | ||
| Otago Regional Council | 73.2% | 9 April - 9 May | |
| Otorohanga District Council | 16 April - 17 May | ||
| Palmerston North City Council | 14 April - 14 May | ||
| Porirua City Council | 8.04% | 26 March - 27 April | |
| Queenstown-Lakes District Council | 4.56% | 19 March - 19 April | |
| Rangitikei District Council | 6.95% | 12 April - 10 May | |
| Rotorua Lakes Council | 9.2% | 30 March - 30 April | |
| Ruapehu District Council | 4.92% | 26 March - 26 April | |
| Selwyn District Council | 4.9% | 29 March - 30 April | |
| South Taranaki District Council | 4.73% | 31 March - 7 May | |
| South Waikato District Council | 7.7% | 22 March - 26 April | |
| South Wairarapa District Council | 15.3% | 31 March - 30 April | |
| Southland District Council | 10.15% | 12 March - 14 April | |
| Stratford District Council | 4.25% | 24 March - 2 May | |
| Taranaki Regional Council | 9.9% | CLOSED | |
| Tararua District Council | 9.82% | 12 April - 12 May | |
| Tasman District Council | 4.54% | 24 March - 24 April | |
| Taupo District Council | 6.5% | 15 March - 16 April | |
| Tauranga City Council | 7 May - 7 June | ||
| Thames-Coromandel District Council | 7.1% | CLOSED | |
| Timaru District Council | 10.5% | 10 April - 10 May | |
| Upper Hutt City Council | 4.8% | 26 March - 26 April | |
| Waikato District Council | 9% | 7 April - 7 May | |
| Waikato Regional Council | 7.3% | 1 April - 30 April | |
| Waimakariri District Council | TBC | ||
| Waimate District Council | TBC | ||
| Waipa District Council | 4.1% | 26 March - 27 April | |
| Wairoa District Council | TBC | ||
| Waitaki District Council | 21 April - 21 May | ||
| Waitomo District Council | 21 April - 21 May | ||
| Wellington City Council | 13.53% | 6 April - 10 May | |
| West Coast Regional Council | TBC | ||
| Western Bay of Plenty District Council | 12.0% | CLOSED | |
| Westland District Council | TBC | ||
| Whakatane District Council | 23 April - 23 May | ||
| Whanganui District Council | 5.7% | 29 March - 30 April | |
| Whangarei District Council | 6.5% | CLOSED |
Louis sits down with Kathryn Marshall of Williams Corporation, a residential property developer, to find out whether an extended bright line test and the removal of interest deductibility will lead to more affordable housing. Kathryn makes the case that the real solution is in tackling consenting processes at local councils.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
Jordan Williams gets 30 minutes with the Climate Change Commission's Chair, Dr Roderick Carr at their offices. He is joined by Matt Burgess, the Senior Economist at the New Zealand Initiative think tank to put to Dr Carr many of the criticisms of the report.
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
Jordan is joined by Ian Harrison, Principal at Tailrisk Economics for a discussion on the Climate Change Commission, the benefits of an ETS and why the commission is wrong about Electric Vehicles.
Read Ian's submission here: http://www.tailrisk.co.nz/documents/ClimateChangeCommission-13march.pdf
You can subscribe to Taxpayer Talk via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, iHeart Radio and all good podcast apps.
Hamilton City Council staff members have been visiting classrooms and harvesting submissions from children on the Council’s Māori partnership strategy, the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union can reveal.
We have been contacted by a Hamilton ratepayer who was perplexed to discover the name of his 13-year-old daughter among the publicly-listed submitters for the Council’s ‘Pillars of Wellbeing’ strategy.
It turned out that the student and her classmates at Rototuna Junior High School were visited by a Council staff member who spoke to them about the proposed strategy for engaging with iwi, and then prompted the children to fill out forms which were subsequently processed as formal submissions.
The Council has confirmed these school visits to media previously, but until now it wasn’t clear that the Council’s goal is to harvest submissions from school children.
In fact, this propaganda campaign had a marked effect on total submissions. A Council meeting agenda reveals that 20% of submissions on the strategy came from children below the age of 16, and a further 7% from 16-19 year-olds. The vast majority of submissions supported all aspects of the Council’s strategy.
This is a local council rigging its own consultation process in the most cynical, abhorrent way imaginable.
Council officers visiting schools to get form submissions is, frankly, creepy. Children will happily fill out a form without a second thought if it means they can get out for lunch. It’s also a gross violation of parental rights. Parents were not asked for their consent, or given any opportunity to request the presentation of an alternative viewpoint to the one being pushed by the Council onto impressionable students. This was an explicit and direct campaign to bring politics into the classroom, that discredits not just the Council’s consultation methods, but its ethics.
Tomorrow, Hamilton City Council’s Hearings and Engagement Committee will be meeting to discuss the results of the consultation process. The Taxpayers’ Union will be watching closely to see which councillors condemn the consultation methods.
Dear Supporter,
I’m writing with some urgency. At the end of next week, submissions close for the draft recommendations of the Climate Change Commission – recommendations that the Government has signalled it will simply adopt.
I'm not going to sugar coat this. The media haven't been doing their job and instead of critically reviewing what is the most radical reforms to our economy since the Douglas-Lange era, they're blindly cheering it along.
Here's the how the Climate Change Commission Chair Dr Rod Carr has put it:
The transformation that New Zealand will confront in the decade ahead… is going to be on a scale that will rival the transformation from our controlled and regulated economy in the 1970s through to the early 1990s. It will be on a scale of the demilitarisation after the second world war. It will be on a scale equal to getting ourselves out of the great depression of the late 1920s. And I would guess it might rival the sum of all those parts…
The Commissioner plans to up-end our economy with central planning, forcing costly regulations on New Zealanders in an attempt to change the way we live and the entire shape of the economy.
Here’s just a taste of what the Commission’s plan involves:
• Ban imports of light petrol and diesel vehicles from 2032.
• Cull dairy, sheep and beef numbers by 15% by 2030.
• Reshape cities so that we walk 25% more, cycle 95% more, and take public transport 120% more by 2030.
• Subsidise electric vehicles further.
• Ban new coal boilers.
• Ban all coal generation, regardless of security of supply.
• Ban new natural gas connections.
• Ban gas BBQs.
• Require new and replacement heating systems to be electric or bioenergy, not gas.
These measures may seem unrealistic – but with the Government having publicly committed to implement whatever the Commission recommends, we need to blow the whistle now before it is too late.
And here's the thing: according to the Commission’s own analysis, this plan isn’t even necessary. New Zealand is already on track to meet its “net zero carbon” target using existing tools i.e. the existing Emissions Trading Scheme.
In fact, the proposed regulations will do nothing to reduce our overall emissions. This is because of the way the ETS works: emissions are already capped and paid for. This means that when the Government goes beyond the ETS and uses regulations to push down emissions in parts of the economy covered by cap and trade, it just frees up credits for people to increase emissions in other parts of the economy – it’s what climate economists call the “waterbed effect”.
Here's just one example: recently James Shaw announced the Ministry of Education will spend $50 million to replace or convert 90 coal boilers in schools. According to the government this will reduce emissions by 33,000 tonnes – that is reducing emissions at $1,515 per tonne. By comparison, the ETS can remove one tonne of emissions for $39, a nearly 40-fold performance gap!
And because coal is already in the ETS, the waterbed effect means replacing the school boilers will see emissions raise somewhere else. There is absolutely no gain for the climate.
Yesterday I sat down with New Zealand Initiative Executive Director Oliver Hartwich. A trigger warning: what you will hear will make you angry.
Dr Hartwich explains the dangerous folly of the Climate Change Commission’s plan – and how they’ve refused to show their working on how much it will cost New Zealand families. Click here to listen to the podcast.
We’ve come to this issue late because it’s taken time to wrap our heads around the Commissioner’s 800 pages of draft recommendations. But we’ve now prepared a submission that, quite frankly, I think destroys the Commission’s arguments. If you’ve got some time over the weekend, I strongly encourage you to read our draft submission here.
Regardless, we need your help now to ensure the consultation process isn’t swamped by special interest groups like Greenpeace and Generation Zero, who never saw an expensive eco-regulation or tax they didn’t like.
>> Click here to use our template submission tool <<
It only takes 30 seconds.
Thank you for your support,
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The Climate Change Commission plans to up-end our economy with a highly political, centrally-planned regulatory agenda. Jordan is joined by Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director at the New Zealand Initiative, to untangle this mess.
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