Giving away money not the solution to our stadium problem

I was very disturbed to see that some councillors - including both of my local - voted to give away $10m of public money to Eden Park with no strings. There was an alternative of making this a loan which would've been paid but this was narrowly voted down.

Mt Eden needed help and consolidation of the loans was necessary. But giving away money wasn't.

It's also unbelievable that many of the same councillors who complained about $900k spent on a stadium report voted in support of a $10m giveaway (instead of the far more sensible loan).

Is this another example of our elected leaders saying one thing but doing another?

We deserve better than this.

Rates reform as urgent as ever

We urgently need to reform local government funding. I've campaigned on this for years and will continue to until it's resolved.

As this story in Newsroom shows, the current model doesn’t work and is holding us back while punishing ratepayers (current and future). No one wants to pay high rates but councils need funding to provide infrastructure for future growth. Otherwise we end up in the mess we have today with our transport, water and housing decades behind the current demand and our environment and people suffer.

There are plenty of alternatives including funding from central government such as a portion of GST earned in the region.

However any change requires government to engage. I understand that there is a review underway (one of the many) but what we need is commitment and action.

Rising sea levels are putting our infrastructure at risk

Local Government NZ has released a report that shows the massive risk to infrastructure from climate change.

"At only half a metre [sea level rise] there is estimated to be $2.7 billion worth of council-owned infrastructure at risk - and that doesn't count the private buildings, the government buildings, whatever that's on top of that that's being served by that infrastructure.

"It goes right up to at three metres of sea level rise, it's estimated about $14bn of council-owned infrastructure at risk."

This is great leadership from Local Government NZ - the risk to infrastructure from Climate Change is very real and we must be planning for it now.

For Auckland with 1m seawater rise, they estimate:

• $1.4B for water (drinking, storm and wastewater)

• $78.75 for roading

• $373m for 390 public buildings (community facilities, council housing, council offices, playgrounds and significant other buildings/facilities).

Auckland has begun planning for this but we need to move faster. These costs are substantial and local government cannot shoulder this cost alone and requires a coordinated response.

Read the full report here.

KiwiBuild has built up expectations but not much else

I’ve always been sceptical that KiwiBuild could deliver on its promises to deliver so many homes so quickly. My father and grandfather were both in the building industry and it’s never as simple as nailing some planks together.

There were a lot of big promises, especially during the 2017 election. But there was very little details of how it would work and we’ve seen this unravel over the past year. Affordability, volumes, locations and process - the details on these have all shifted as reality set in. Some of this is how it was reported by the media but Labour did very little to correct the misunderstandings.

For those of us wanting solutions to the lack of housing, I was hoping that Phil Twyford would pull something out of the bag, somehow stand up an entire construction industry and deliver hundreds of homes in a short timeframe.

But realistically I doubted it would happen.

The government needs to admit they were woefully under prepared for the challenge they set themselves and reset expectations. They need to admit that it’s not an easy task and work with the wider construction industry to address the problems within KiwiBuild but also general building industry.

It's arrogant to think that government ministers can sweep in and solve the problems without properly engaging with those in the industry.

We (UnitedFuture) campaigned for government to work with the industry to address the issues, not attempt to steamroll over them. Perhaps the government will consider this now