Council Development Contributions

Uh, absolutely, and really keen to talk that through. In your introduction, you sort of made out there was a choice of a rates cap or a RAS. I don't see it as an either or. I see them as complimentary. And I can exactly understand the frustration of government with local government. There were some fascinating figures that Westpac Bank published uh earlier this year, Heather, and they were brutal. Over the last 25 years, our country has had 83% inflation. Food's gone up a little bit more at 85%. Power bills over that 25 years have gone up by 173%. But the clanger was over the last 25 years, rates have gone up by 300%. So I'm not one of those in local government that's in denial. We've got a problem. And then you've got to talk about well, what are the solutions? And look, I have sympathy with the government. It's quite a blunt tool, the rates cap, but they're frustrated because local governments are big, sort of like a super tanker. It's really hard to move and to adjust to the times. And whether it's been households or businesses or central government, uh, they've changed tact and everybody's had to tighten their belts, and there's a frustration that local government hasn't done the same. So I get that. The only bit that I think we are missing is the number of areas where central government regulation is actually driving up some of our costs. And if we really good example would be the water regulations. So my council is now having to pay about an extra $500,000, highly duplicated between the Department of Internal Affairs monitoring our water. Now we've got the new water regulator, and we've got the Commerce Commission, and of course it's all user charging. So my little council of Nelson is having to spend about 450 grand a year paying for these regulators to duplicate the work of that. In other areas, you take an area like the national guidelines, and on this we're making some progress around the road cones. Can you believe Heather that we spend about $800 per household on uh road safety management when you add up what is spent by councils, plus by the New Zealand Transport Agency, and I'm also on an energy trust that is responsible for our power lines. It's many of these regulations, and the part that I'd love, whoever is the government to do is actually have a group sitting down with local government and central government and identifying those regulations that drive out costs for the ratepayer. I give the government credit. Uh, there was that move by David Seymour to get rid of the stupid regulations that require councils to regulate hairdressers. Now, not only did that cost every hairdresser, which is just a cost that gets passed on when I get my little bit of remaining haircut, but the um also there was a cost of the rate payer. Uh, that is we only got about 50% cost recovery. That's a good move. I think there are over 50 things, likes of those silly hairdressing regulations that we could get of that would actually make a difference to some of those things that are driving rates up too quickly.