Cam Slater: Luxon Gave Councils a Well Deserved Kicking

Christopher Luxon has been hitting them out of the park in the past week. Can he keep up the momentum? He will if he doesn’t get squeamish or squirrelly.

Last week was a real ripper for Christopher Luxon. He made headlines for smacking Chlöe Swarbrick around the laughing gear, telling her that he believed that Māori ceded sovereignty to the Crown. Although it was an unconvincing utterance, it was however categoric with no wriggle room.

Then he went to the Local Government NZ conference and spoke about councils and their intransigence in sorting out the basics in their dilapidated cities while pushing rates ever higher and building expensive white elephant projects.

The chattering classes were all a flutter because Luxon had finally shown us he does indeed have a spine.

Heather du Plessis Allan agrees:

Even before the Prime Minister went to Wellington’s Tākina convention centre to give local body politicians a bollocking, he must’ve known he’d come out the winner.

It’s an easy fight to win. Local and regional councils are hardly anyone’s favourite anything at the moment. Rate increases as high as 27% will do that to one’s reputation.

Luxon only said what many ratepayers have themselves said – councils should stick to doing the basics, picking up the rubbish, fixing the pipes, filling the potholes. They should cut out the weird fantasies and luxuries.

And then he asked for the kind of accountability that anyone putting money into any venture would think perfectly reasonable: rein in the spending or there will be no new money from his Government.

So far, music to the ears of frustrated ratepayers facing an average rate hike of 15% to pay for those cool new planter boxes in the middle of the road.

But what Luxon probably didn’t bank on was how easily those mayors and councillors would hand him the win when they immediately started whinging like spoiled children stopped from helping themselves to the contents of daddy’s wallet unsupervised.

NZ Herald

Manna from heaven, as predictable as it was sensible. Kick wastrel councils and councillors in the balls, then stand back and wait for the howls of outrage from the wastrels accompanied by cries of acclaim from the long-suffering ratepayers.

A notoriously big spender, Wellington’s Mayor Tory Whānau accused the PM of “punching down”, as if he was picking on her, the mayor of our capital city.

Greater Wellington regional councillor Thomas Nash tweeted that the speech “was one of the most mana diminishing, paternalistic and visionless speeches to a group of people I have ever heard”, making it about he and his mates’ feels – while completely forgetting how that sounds to the ratepayers he and his council just slapped with a 20.55% rate rise.

New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom said communities should get to spend money on “what inspires them”, because inspiration is exactly what ratepayers are longing for. If only we could spend more money on fixing those leaking pipes that inspire us so much!

In a room full of dozens of mayors and scores of councillors, none came close to mounting a decent argument against Luxon.

What Luxon has learned is valuable. He’s learned that you can kick the hell out of councils and there will be no meaningful pushback from the public. Almost universally, councils are despised. In Auckland it is the ridiculous infestations of road cones, as a glowing orange signal to everyone suffering through them, like negotiating the more than 1.5km of cones to get from Takapuna to Devonport. In Wellington the council is despised for poor water reticulation, moribund buildings and grandiose replacement.

Luxon can beat the hell out of them all day long, every day and finish each day with a shit-eating grin from ear to ear.

He now needs to learn to do that more often, and reap the benefit in the polls.

Instead, they spoke about Māori wards and the Government’s over-reach in bringing back democracy there, once again reinforcing to ratepayers struggling through a cost of living crisis that councils think other things are more important.

There was a day when ratepayers may have come to the defence of their local council and told the Beehive to keep its nose out of our communities. Those days are gone.

There are too many examples of idiotic spending.

No one but elites wants Māori wards. NO ONE. That’s a free kick right there, all day long. That, however may be a step too far for Luxon, but Shane Jones and Winston Peters will gladly take turns at taking punts to the goolies of those who push division rather than democracy.

Personally, I’d like to see Luxon doing more of this, especially in key areas that matter way more than listening health harpies and media lickspittles banging on about tobacco policy, or trans-weirdos foisting their delusions on us all.

Cam Slater is a New Zealand-based blogger, best known for his role in Dirty Politics and publishing the Whale Oil Beef Hooked blog, which operated from 2005 until it closed in 2019. Cam blogs regularly on the GoodOil - where this article was sourced.