A very good letter to the editor in The Herald taking on Team Luxon

A very good letter to the editor in The Herald taking on Team Luxon over the power grab from Big Government. Wilson’s article was very good and echos my very serious concerns about the lack of alternatives those blasting away have to offer.

Shallow politics

Thank you Simon Wilson for a well-reasoned factual counterpoint (NZ Herald, August 27) to Christopher Luxon’s soundbite lambasting local government which, according to several other superficial media commentaries, was “good politics”.

Apart from a few potshot examples, we have no idea what the Government believes are “luxuries”. If it’s not pipes, roads and rubbish, it must be all those things local governments provide that add quality to our day-to-day living. Like parks, swimming pools, pleasant streetscapes and walkways, events, libraries, galleries, and, yes, God forbid, cycleways.

All these things and more that local government does its best to fund mainly from the very limited financial toolbox of rates, which as Wilson points out, the Government doesn’t even pay on its own properties.

Given the cost burdens that local governments have had to manage in recent years through natural disasters and huge building and construction price increases, all while central government continues to present a deaf ear to their pleas for other financial tools, the reaction of mayors and councillors to Luxon’s shallow “good politics” was hardly surprising.