All Blacks Business Class Reduction

Heather, I hope that Katie Bradford gets the T V and Z head political job. I like her and I trust it. She's she is the business, eh? We're very lucky to have her. 524. Now we need to talk about Waitukey District Council and the fact that they're considering raising rates by 45%. You'll have seen this pop up this morning. Story's actually been going on for a few days now. And if you've been following the story, you'll know that there were originally four options that Waitucky District Council considered. 9% rates increase, 19%, 27%, or 45%. They decided not to go public with the 9%, and they decided to only open up the consultation on the three most extreme options. Because let's be honest, 19% as your rates increase in one go is crazy. 27% is crazy. 45% is off the reservation. By my calculations, at 45% increase, they're asking ratepayers to go from paying on average about 3700 in their rates bills annually to about to close to 5400 dollars. So from th 3,700 to 5,400 roughly, that is a 1700 in 1700 increase just in one go like that. That's nutty. I mean, if that doesn't tell you that councils have absolutely no appreciation of the fact that they're forcing people to sell their houses by ratcheting up their rates, Bill, nothing will. And if that doesn't tell you that councillors have no understanding of the value of money, nothing will. Clearly, they're not going to do 45%, right? They're only putting it out there to scare people into understanding how expensive councils are to run. And that's true. But this is ridiculous. This makes the council look ridiculous. Because this is a council that blew half a million dollars on designing and rolling out some squiggly lines for its rebranding last year. It has got 10 marketing and comms staff for a population of only 25,000 people. It pays more than half its staff, over a hundred thousand dollars. Nearly a quarter of the staff there are either in management or in comms, not front line at all. Now, this council might have been trying to point out to people that running a council is expensive, but what it has done instead is it's just helped the government, isn't it? Help the government's argument that councils needs to need a rate scap to rein them in. Because 45% in one go. I mean, come on.