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Te Rangi e tu nei

 

Te Papa e takoto nei

 

Tatou Katoa te hunga ora

 

Tena koutou katoa

 

Te whare e tu nei, Takina, tena koe

 

Katahi te whare miharo!

 

CEO Susan Freeman-Greene tena koe

 

Tumuaki Sam Broughton tena koe

 

E nga mana, e nga reo, e rau rangatira ma

 

Tena koutou

 

Tena koutou

 

Tena koutou katoa

 

I’d like to start by acknowledging all our local government leaders from across Aoteaora and thank you for the work that you do on behalf of your local communities.

 

Elected with your own mandates to deliver on the priorities of your local communities, you deserve a respectful partnership with central government and I’m sorry you didn’t get that this week.

 

I was reflecting on the important role local government plays while parliament was debating a motion to congratulate New Zealand’s successful Olympians earlier this week.

 

I was considering how many of those athletes would have started their sporting careers at a local swimming pool, on a local sports field, riding on a cycleway or in a local clubrooms.

 

That lead me to wonder how many of the stars in our film and television sector made their first appearance in in a local council provided theatre, how many of our tech entrepreneurs spent time after school in a computer clubhouse, how many of our top scholars first discovered their love of books in a community library, or how many of our local hospitality businesses rely on foot traffic from local community facilities for their income?

 

Passionate people chase their dreams and we should celebrate their successes, but the support they receive from their local communities should be celebrated too.

 

Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini.

 

My success is not mine alone, it is the success of many.

 

Local councils will always have at their core of their work the provision of the infrastructure we all rely on everyday like roads, water, and waste disposal. But their role, your role, in building thriving communities and providing social infrastructure is also vital to our quality of life as a nation.

 

It's all very well to describe a community swimming pool as a nice to have when you have your own pool in the backyard, but the majority of our local residents aren’t that privileged.

 

You might not value the local playground if you can afford to buy your kids whatever experiences they want, but most hard-working parents can’t do that.

 

You might not think a Library is a core service when you can afford to buy whatever books you want, but not all of our local residents can do that.

 

Given the difficulty the Prime Minister seems to have understanding the significance of our own history as a nation, he might like to visit his local Library and they could lend him a few books on the Treaty of Waitangi.

 

If he did that, he might conclude that when local communities decide whether or not to have a Maori ward, central government should respect that decision, just as we do a decision to establish or abolish a general ward, a rural ward, a community board or a ward committee.

 

In my introductory remarks I acknowledged Takina – this amazing convention centre that is helping to boost our local economy here in Wellington, creating jobs and supporting local businesses. And unlike the convention centre the previous National government bequeathed Auckland - we didn’t need to increase gambling to make it happen.

 

Like most politicians I love the opportunity to engage with our ethnic communities at the many festivals and celebrations held across the country every year. I’ve yet to hear any of the politicians who take to the stage criticise the council for helping to provide the means for those events to take place.

 

So let’s be clear about what the Prime Minister’s speech earlier this week was really all about – politics.

 

After decades of being told by central government to keep rates low, local governments are now facing the reality of a burgeoning infrastructure investment backlog and that’s flowing through in higher rates bills.

 

Rather than look for solutions to that challenge, the current government are instead focussed on apportioning blame.

 

They cancelled the work of the previous government to limit rates increases by delivering water infrastructure more efficiently and now they are trying to distance themselves from the rates increases that flow from that decision.

 

Let’s face facts. Many councils across the country simply don’t have access to the kind of funding they need to get on top of an infrastructure deficit that has been decades in the making.

 

Lambasting today’s local government leaders, who by and large are working really hard to grapple with challenges they themselves have inherited, is cheap and petty politics.

 

Slogans aren’t solutions, and apportioning blame seldom moves things forward in a positive way.

 

We need an honest conversation between central and local government about how we are going to pay to fix up our infrastructure, and central government walking away from that conversation is an abandonment of their responsibilities.

 

An honest conversation would force all of us to face up to some inconvenient truths. For four or five decades now we’ve run down our assets and underinvested in growth. Blaming today’s local government leaders for that conveniently ignores the role central government has played in setting the rules of the game.

 

In the two decades I’ve been in politics I’ve lost count of the number of politicians on the centre-right of the spectrum who have chastised councils for increasing rates, while offering no alternative solutions for how to fund the work that needs to be done.

 

The result is the work we can’t see – the pipes and water treatment plans, have often end up deferred, delayed, or just not contemplated at all.

 

But it’s not like central government’s record is any better.

 

Just look at our schools and hospitals, which are run down, over-crowded and in many cases, well past their use by date.

 

Or look at our electricity infrastructure, where paying out billions of dollars in dividends has been prioritised over investment in new generation and new infrastructure.

 

Or look at state houses, where central governments, usually National ones, have prioritised dividends over investment in maintenance and the building of new homes.

 

The last Labour Government was determined to be bolder than that. We made big investments in schools, hospitals and housing. And did put in place a longer-term pipeline of work.

 

Big investments take time to show results. I stand by the investments made and the ones we were yet to make in the future of our country. I wasn’t interested in prioritising investments that I could be guaranteed to cut the ribbon on. We need to think longer term when it comes to investing in our future as a country.

 

It’s ironic that the current government are now talking about wanting bipartisan consensus after axing, often with little justification, so many of the investments that were underway when they took office. 

 

Things like one in six public homes being built by our Labour Government. By next year, in less than 18 months, this government will have taken us from a position where we were building record numbers of new state houses to a position where we are once again building none.

 

We made commitment to new hospitals for Dunedin, Whangarei, Hawkes Bay and Nelson. Projects that will take years to complete, but are vital nonetheless.

 

We delivered thousands of new and upgraded classrooms, with a full pipeline of work ahead. The new government have cut over $2billion of work from that pipeline. 

 

When we left office, funding was earmarked for future investments of $71 billion. That’s on top of the $45 billion we had already invested.

 

We had set aside over $6billion to assist local communities address the resilience challenges they are now facing due to climate change and the increasing prevalence of extreme weather events. Sadly that was one of the first things to be cut by the incoming National government.

 

The central government can’t keep loading more and more onto local councils and then attack you because you don’t have the means to pay for all of these additional responsibilities.

 

When floods, cyclones and other natural disasters hit communities, I’ve yet to hear anyone complain the local council was too prepared and that investments they had made in mitigation and adaptation were nice to haves.

 

We need to end the cycle of apportioning blame, thinking only short term, and avoiding the tough calls we need to make now if we want a better future for this amazing country.

 

We need to make some big calls, and these big calls need to be backed by proper investment. That simply won’t happen if we continue to constrain Government spending to such a narrow percentage of GDP.

 

It also won’t happen if the government continues to run down our construction sector. This week I asked the Prime Minister about how in a year, he’s overseen the monthly number of new building consents drop by 26 percent, 6,000 jobs go from the building and construction sector, and 57 percent of construction businesses are now reporting difficulties with procurement and work consent conditions, up from 36 percent last year.

 

Of course, Christopher Luxon did his best job of not answering the question and deflect blame – a common theme with this government.

 

Yet Civil Contractors New Zealand CEO Alan Pollard recently said, "We have this strange situation where there's a mountain of infrastructure work that the country needs, and it's coming"— then goes on to say—"but since the election, everything has stopped effectively."

 

The new government has been more interested in scoring points against the last one than it has been in maintaining momentum and fixing things up.

 

We must have the realistic and adult conversation about borrowing.

 

Borrowing for day-to-day consumption isn’t something we should do, if avoidable. Particularly not for tax cuts. An exception perhaps being a global and deadly pandemic.

 

But borrowing to fund investment in infrastructure and assets for the future is something a government shouldn’t be so afraid to do.

 

We should boldly get behind projects we don’t see ourselves cutting the ribbon on. We should invest properly, instead of deferring or delaying and never beginning.

 

Public Private Partnerships and other private sector equity still doesn’t side-step the fact that someone still has to pay – that ultimate bill usually either falling on central or local government or the kiwi consumer.

 

The Future of Local Government review rightly found that there needs to be changes to our outdated rating system that gives councils more tools in the toolkit to fund the investments they need to make.

 

This is a conversation Labour was having with the sector. The new government came in and called it woke nonsense.

 

A sustainable future model with councils to build the infrastructure needed, invest in placemaking and operate local services without burdening so heavily on rates is something we should all be working towards.

 

City and regional deals are a great idea, but we need to be upfront about how we will fund them. If the financial burden once again falls back to ratepayers, they are doomed to fail.

 

Looking to the future, the reality is New Zealanders voted for change last year. But I don’t think what Kiwis are getting, is what they thought they voted for.

 

There is no thought and no care in the decisions this Government is making.

 

Labour has a lot of work to do to develop our policies, and make sure that the manifesto we do put forward at the next election is realistic, achievable, and affordable. So we need your help finding solutions to the problems the local government sector faces.

 

The current government may have walked away from the future of local government review, but we’re still very much at the table.

 

I will commit us right now to no unfunded mandates in local government. If central government wants something done then we must back you to do it.

 

But if you want something from us, you must bring a solution along with the problem.

 

Now is the time for creative thinking, new ideas, and a bold vision for the future and that is what Labour will provide in 2026.