By John McDonald (CityWatch NZ Editor and Hamilton East Ward Candidate)
Part 1 of this series was relatively simple to write. It is not difficult to ‘debunk’ Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) when they are desperately trying to convince the public that ‘councils wasting money’ is a myth, and that “Every dollar of rates goes back into your community” is the truth.
Part 1 of this series largely covered the financial claims on LGNZ’s “Common myths about council” webpage. In Part 2, we are going to have to dig into a diverse range of topics. These topics, raised by LGNZ, include: “Council consultation is fake”, “20-minute cities”, the “United Nations”, the “World Economic Forum”, councils are “borrowing money against your home”, how property revaluations impact rates, and if the “Sovereign Citizen” groups are right about the legal status of your council. It is going to quite be the ride as we rush though these topics, so make sure you hold on to your foil hats.
In these articles each section of LGNZ’s ‘mythbusting’ webpage will be quoted and followed by my commentary which will address LGNZ’s numerous false and misleading statements. LGNZ might even be accurate in a few of their claims covered in Part 2. All the large quotes in this article are directly from the “Common myths about council” webpage.
Myth: Council consultation is fake. They’ve already made up their minds.
Truth: Councils are required to consult and what you say can make a difference.
It’s easy to feel sceptical about consultation processes, but they’re not box-ticking exercises. Councils are legally required to ask for public feedback on long-term plans, bylaws and major projects.
And yes, public submissions do shape decisions. Councillors are required to consider submissions with an open mind, and often change proposals or delay decisions based on what people tell them.
It is a very common view that consultations are a token exercise and that the council has effectively made up their mind on a particular plan or project.
A “legal requirement” and “box-ticking exercises” are not mutually exclusive. I think many consultations are both, the consultations are not genuine because the Council staff are pushing their preferred outcome. Local authority staff working towards a largely predetermined outcome is known to occur. They do a token consultation to fulfill the legislative requirements, while the council is extremely reluctant to make significant changes to their plans.
Underhanded marketing of projects and bad faith dealing with the public are known to occur. I often draw attention to the cartoon-heavy (and light on critical details) brochure used to inform nearby residents about the “improvements” project on Te Aroha Street and Ruakura Road in Hamilton City. The raised crossings, project cost, and numbers of carparks to be removed were all conveniently left off the brochure.
The phrase “targeted consultation” is also being used by council staff. This indicates that selected groups are consulted, rather than the wider public. A biased result to such consultation activities would be expected, and is likely the intended outcome.
Some projects can be changed based on community feedback, and I encourage communities to try. It is possible, though it can take considerable effort. It can become a protracted and adversarial battle against the “preferred option” supported by Council staff and/or consultants.
Myth: Councils are trying to trap people into 20 minute cities.
Truth: Good urban planning is designed to give you more freedom, not less.
Some people have claimed that councils are working to trap people in zones where they’re not allowed to travel more than 15 or 20 minutes from their homes. That’s not true.
The 20-minute city or 15-minute neighbourhood idea is a planning concept. It’s about designing communities where everyday things like schools, shops, parks and health services are nearby. So if you want to walk, bike or take public transport, you can.
You’re not forced to stay within 15 minutes of home. It’s about choice. If you’d rather live further out and commute, you can.
When discussing the topic of 15-minute cities or 20-minute cities, I often use the “carrot and stick” metaphor.
The 20-minute city is mostly on the “carrot” side of the metaphor, it is largely positive marketing and the encouragement to change travel behaviours by making things nicer and more convenient.
Who can argue against encouraging more walking, cycling, and public transport use by providing shops, services, and amenities near people’s homes? It sounds pleasant, and in many cases it is similar to what city and town planners have been be doing for over a hundred years. Look at the locations of parks and schools in your town or city.
However, 15-minute cities or 20-minute cities policies are often implemented alongside blatantly anti-car policies. The situation in Paris is a clear example because the Mayor campaigned with an explicit anti-car agenda. The Mayor of Paris was more upfront about her goals than many councillors and mayors in New Zealand.
The policies that make life more difficult, more restrictive, and/or more expensive for car users and owners are currently not blatantly trapping people inside their neighborhoods. Instead, the policies usually make travel along certain routes or through certain areas of the city more difficult. This can include charges, fines, permits, checkpoints, and rationing traveling passes on certain routes. Such systems require monitoring of travel and automated ways of dealing out payment demands or punishment for non-compliance. This is where the “Smart City” surveillance technology and the “internet-of-things” (IoT) become important as tools to manage the travel behaviour of people. This becomes the “stick” for managing digital compliance.
I encourage people to focus more on the “stick” side of the strategies, the disincentives and punishments that are being used to “encourage” changes in peoples’ travel behaviour. This is described in terms of getting people to “mode shift” away from car use and ownership. There are aims and agendas in council and NZTA documents to reduce “vehicle kilometres travelled” (VKT) by cars and ensure that “financial incentives and disincentives support mode shift”. Removing carparking spaces and road pricing is partially motivated by a desire from councils (and their consultants) to disincentivise private vehicle travel and ownership. That is explicit in documents such as the “Hamilton-Waikato Metro Area Mode Shift Plan 2020” and “WSP Future Ready® 20-min city in Aotearoa”.
The “stick” part of 20-minute cities, Smart Cities, and related ‘anti-car’ polices are mostly about making it harder and more expensive to own or travel by car, at least in the current implementation and in public documents. Attempts to condition the wider population into asking permission to travel, to accepting user-pays roading, registering to get something which was “free”, and to “download the app” is well underway in New Zealand and many other countries. A gradual and deliberate change of societal norms is currently occurring, rather than a sudden change into a society where you are forbidden to leave your 20-minute neighbourhood. However, the COVID-19 Lockdowns mean that the prospect of being confined to your city in a declared emergency is now recent history, rather than some far-fetched and distant scenario.
Myth: Councils are following a global agenda.
Truth: Councils answer to their communities, not overseas organisations.
You might have seen claims online about councils pushing a globalist agenda. These ideas often reference the United Nations’ Agenda 2030 or the World Economic Forum (WEF).
Councils do not take direction from either the UN or the WEF.
Agenda 2030 is a set of global goals that all United Nations countries – including New Zealand – agreed to back in 2015. It’s aimed at ending poverty, protecting the planet, and improving wellbeing.
Some council goals, like building affordable housing or cutting pollution, might overlap with Agenda 2030. But that doesn’t mean councils are working for the UN. It just means councils care about the same things local people do like healthy kids, decent homes, and clean rivers.
The UN sustainable development goals initially, and superficially, sound like good ideas. On a range of different issues, I often ask people to look past the superficial marketing and into the substance of a matter.
There exists various ‘organisations of influence’ that operate at various levels and are pushing “transformational changes” on societies around the world. I have previously drawn attention to the “UN Mastermind Groups” and the UN Systems Staff College boasting about their influence.
A good stating point for looking into global agendas is reading Danish MP Ida Auken’s essay titled, “Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better”. The essay provides a vision of the future and was published back in 2016, on one of the World Economic Forum’s blog sites. I consider it recommended reading as an introduction to many of an issues we are currently facing, especially in urban environments. When you read Ida Auken’s essay, ask yourself three questions:
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Do you want that future for yourself, your family, and your city?
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Is it looking like that vision of society is being implemented today?
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Are you being given an informed choice about the creation of that type of society?
Regarding UN Agenda 2030 and New Zealand politics, it is worth watching Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s keynote speech to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s 2019 Goalkeepers Event.
Although I have never voted for the ACT party in my life (and probably never will), I acknowledge that former ACT MP Murial Newman raised some important concerns back in 2020 about that particular speech by PM Arden. A major concern we both share would be around whether the Prime Minister was being upfront with New Zealanders about the agenda that was profoundly reshaping the country. Was PM Arden saying something different in New York, compared to what she was saying to New Zealanders?
Councils often ignore their local communities (or the majority of the local community), and many policies do not arise naturally from the values and priorities of the local community. These policies and agendas come from somewhere else. People have the right (and obligation) to figure out where these policies and agendas are coming from, then discuss those issues with others.
Councils may not be following some UN agenda directly. However, it is well-known that councils usually do whatever central government makes them do through legislation. Central government can also use financial incentives to influence a local council’s decisions. Often the ‘free money’ from central government comes with conditions… and lasting consequences. Hamilton City Council’s rush to install so many raised platforms and in-lane bus stops (despite community opposition) was fuelled by “Climate Emergency Response Funding” (CERF) and the lure of a 90% NZTA subsidy on each project. These subsidies were used in some creative accounting schemes to get the City deeper into debt as well.
LGNZ often publicly complains about “unfunded mandates” imposed on them from central government. Those complaints prove my two main points; that councils often follow central government instructions and that enthusiastic compliance with those instructions is facilitated by financial incentives. If central government embraces some kind of UN or WEF agenda, there is a good chance that councils will be made to follow by legislative requirements or encouraged to follow by financial incentives.
This brings me to a strategic concern with councils getting themselves into bad situations financially, with extreme levels of debt and decades of deferring critical maintenance. Financially distressed councils will be vulnerable, and more easily pressured into adopting policies that the local residents find objectionable (such as congestion charges and the privatisation of critical infrastructure).
Myth: Councils are borrowing money against your home.
Truth: Your property is not used as security for council debt.
Some people think councils are using private homes as collateral when they borrow money. This isn’t true.
Councils borrow money to fund big projects – things like pipes, roads and community facilities. They don’t do it recklessly, and they don’t borrow against individual ratepayers’ homes. Instead, councils secure loans against their ability to collect rates revenue. This is allowed under the law, and it’s how lenders know councils can repay their loans.
This is technically how the legislation is written (See section 115 of the Local Government Act 2002). Rates, and the ability of the local authority to collect rates into the future, are being used as security for the local authority’s debt.
The homes of ratepayers are not directly used as security. However, homes are considered rateable property and rateable properties are charged rates.
If you cannot, or do not, pay your rates the council will go after your property or the mortgage attached to your property. So effectively your house is under threat from your council’s debts and the rates increases being used to service those debts.
In some ways using rates (and the future toil of ratepayers) as security for a Council’s debt, could be considered worse than the council directly using property as security. Words such as debt-bondage, involuntary servitude, and slavery spring to mind when an organisation is committing the future labour of someone else to pay off their debts.
That councils are borrowing recklessly is a valid opinion. People can point to a number of well-documented cases as evidence to support that sort of opinion, from event centres to sewage treatment plants.
Myth: Property revaluations are a council cash grab.
Truth: Property values change how rates are split; not how much is collected.
Councils are legally required to revalue properties in their area every three years. This job is done by independent valuation companies, and the timeline is signed off by the Office of the Valuer-General, not the council.
Some people believe councils use revaluations to increase how much they collect in rates. That’s not how it works.
Councils decide the total amount they need to collect based on their budgets – usually through a long-term plan that’s reviewed every three years. Then, property values are used to work out who pays what share of that total.
So, if your property increases in value more than the average in your area, your rates bill may go up more than others. If it goes up less than average, your share might drop. But the total pot of money the council collects doesn’t change just because house prices do.
From what I can gather, LGNZ is technically correct about how rates revenue is collected based on property values. This is how the system operates (at least in theory or on paper) and it is commonly misunderstood by ratepayers. This is one of the more accurate claims by LGNZ on their “Common myths about council” webpage. LGNZ might actually be debunking an actual myth in this case.
Property revaluations can also hit people hard financially and sometimes those revaluations appear arbitrary. These days, the property valuations are potentially done by some AI-assisted operation based in another country.
Myth: Councils aren’t real legal entities.
Truth: Councils are established and governed by New Zealand law.
Some conspiracy groups claim that councils have no legal authority and that individuals can opt out of laws or rates by declaring themselves sovereign citizen.
This isn’t true.
Councils are legal bodies under the Local Government Act 2002. That law spells out their powers, responsibilities and duties including the ability to collect rates, pass bylaws, and provide public services.
The New Zealand court system has repeatedly dismissed so-called “sovereign citizen” arguments. You can’t just choose to ignore laws or obligations because you don’t agree with them. That’s not how the law works here or anywhere else.
I think most people agree with LGNZ that councils are legal entities. City Councils could be described as “creatures of statute”, in that they exist only because they are created by legislation.
In section 12 of the Local Government Act 2002, under the heading “Status and Powers”, it is stated that “A local authority is a body corporate with perpetual succession”.
One of my arguments is that any special powers that councils have are conditional, not absolute. They need to follow the law and be bound by legislation. If a council goes outside of those confines, it puts its legitimacy at risk.
I currently live in a block of residential units with a body corporation (or body corp) for managing the common property.
What would I do if my residential body corp management started installing things the residents and owners did not want or need, misleading the owners on critical issues, took out huge debts that the owners will be expected to pay for, and was failing to carry out routine maintenance?
I would start talking with the other owners and residents, contact my elected representatives on the body corp committee, if necessary vote new elected representatives onto that committee, put body corp management on notice, withhold my annual body corp contributions until there is some accountability, collect evidence of management wrongdoing, and try to legally distance both myself and the other owners from liability for the body corp’s debts.
Many of those responses could also be appropriate ways to deal with the larger body corp known as a council.
Caution should be used as your council is much larger and more ruthless than your typical small body corp. As previously stated, councils will go after the homes of people and the mortgages associated with those properties to obtain rates revenue. Central government will change legislation to support councils, in some cases this will be done regardless of the council’s wrongdoing. The case of the Mangawhai sewerage system is the clear example. It involved a project budget blowout, bad management by Kaipara District Council, unlawful rates demands, and Parliament leaping to the defence of the Council against the defiant residents.
“Sovereign Citizen” is a pejorative term. It is an insult that appears to have been imported from North America. Few people seriously refer to themselves as “Sovereign Citizens”. At this stage, the term “Sovereign Citizens” (or “Sovcit”) appears to be used as a catch-all category to discredit a bunch of people, concepts, and movements which are considered problematic to the established system and certain political agendas. It should usually be viewed as a propaganda term alongside “disinformation”, “misinformation”, and my personal favorite “malinformation” (“malinformation” is the information the propagandists accept is true, though still harmful to their worldviews and political programs). Sometimes these terms refer to things that are crazy or completely false. However, often they are used in an effort to discredit things which are correct, valid, have some merit, or are worthy of discussion.
I wonder what would have happened if the Mangawhai case had occurred a decade later, after the “Sovereign Citizen” slur had been imported into New Zealand. The Mangawhai group stopped paying their rates, won in court, and had the rates declared unlawful. The major political parties in Wellington then voted to retrospectively validate the unlawful activity of the Kaipara District Council.
Conclusions
Part 2 of this series was not as focused on council finances and spending as Part 1. This is because of the order of topics on the “Common myths about council” webpage. Part 2 has focused more on the lack of transparency, lack of accountability, and the underhanded way certain agendas are pushed in New Zealand. Our country has many major problems relating to local authorities and people have the right, and responsibility, to be concerned. LGNZ trying to dismiss those concerns with low-quality ‘debunking’ propaganda is yet another problem. This concludes the analysis and responses to LGNZ’s ‘mythbusting’ claims, addressing that entire webpage point-by-point. Ultimately this provides further evidence to support the defunding of LGNZ.
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Further reading on this issue:
As Paris Transforms into 15-minute City, Mayor Moves to Ban More Automobiles
KPMG International Publication – “The Great Reset: Emerging trends in infrastructure and transport”
