Andrew Bydder: The Councils’ Gold‐Plated White Elephants

Imagine a gold‐plated Rolls Royce for one million dollars. NZTA offers to give you $500,000 towards buying it, because it has a five‐star safety rating and your current car only has four stars.

Andrew Bydder: When Staff Massage the Data

Elected councillors or MPs are easily manipulated by local or central government staff because the staff provide the information that guides decision making. Selective data, even falsified data, can dictate outcomes.

The same applies to the general public. PR spin on public consultation is used to guide people towards the desired outcome. Staff don’t want your opinion: they want your votes on the survey to justify their predetermined decision.

They don’t consult you: they insult you.

Andrew Bydder: Councils Have to Break the Spending Addiction

Councils love spending other people’s money. But if it goes on for too long, the public get annoyed at rates rises and vote out the councillors. That’s how it is supposed to work. But everything changed after the GFC. Councils discovered a magic money tree!

The Local Government Funding Agency (LGFA) was created in 2011 in response to the Global Financial Crisis. Banks had stopped lending to everyone, which caused problems for debt-funded council infrastructure programmes.

Andrew Bydder: How to Fix Our Councils (Part Five and Final)

Hamilton City Councillor Andrew Bydder has written a lengthy and detailed article for the Good Oil to help readers concerned about our local councils to get prepared for the next LGNZ elections. This is part five and the final. [Ed.]

PART E – HOW DO WE MAKE THE CHANGE?

“Somebody has to start, so it may as well be you.”

Andrew Bydder: How to Fix Our Councils (Part Four)

Hamilton City Councillor Andrew Bydder has written a lengthy and detailed article for the Good Oil to help readers concerned about our local councils to get prepared for the next LGNZ elections. This is part four. [Ed.]

PART D – WHAT ARE THE SOLUTIONS?

Andrew Bydder: How to Fix Our Councils (Part Three)

A guide to help concerned citizens organise for the next election. The system is broken.

Hamilton City Councillor Andrew Bydder has written a lengthy and detailed article for the Good Oil to help readers concerned about our local councils to get prepared for the next LGNZ elections. This is part three. [Ed.]

PART C - WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS?

Andrew Bydder: How to Fix Our Councils (Part Two)

A guide to help concerned citizens organise for the next election. The system is broken.

Hamilton City Councillor Andrew Bydder has written a lengthy and detailed article for the Good Oil to help readers concerned about our local councils to get prepared for the next LGNZ elections. This is part two. [Ed.]

PART B – BACKGROUND

Andrew Bydder: How to Fix Our Councils (Part One)

A guide to help concerned citizens organise for the next election. The system is broken.

Hamilton City Councillor Andrew Bydder has written a lengthy and detailed article for the Good Oil to help readers concerned about our local councils to get prepared for the next LGNZ elections. This is part one. [Ed.]

I spent 30 years working with councils from the outside as an architectural designer and property developer before being elected to Hamilton City Council in 2022. I fought the ever-increasing bureaucracy that transformed resource consents from simple one-page applications to expensive year-long 1,000-page multi-consultant battles having no discernible benefit other than covering staff butts.

Andrew Bydder: They Are Out of Control

Councils are out of control. Not just Hamilton City, but across the Waikato. The truth is in the numbers. On Three Waters alone, they have collectively projected $7.5 billion in costs over the next decade. Divided across the Waikato population of 320,000, that is $23,438 per person.

But a quarter of that population live in rural areas with their own water tanks and septic systems, who rightly won’t be paying for services that they don’t have. This leaves the figure for a typical family of four in our towns and city at a crippling $125,000.

Can you afford that?

Andrew Bydder: Council Admits Cr Bydder Was Right

Thanks to all the Cambridge people who stood up with me and everyone from around the country who supported us. I will keep fighting.

Waipā District Council has issued a press release (6 November 2024):

Andrew Bydder: An MSM Headline Lies, Again

The government imposes an obligation only to encourage Māori to participate in the decision-making process, which means they get a chance to vote like the rest of us.

We are all used to MSM’s bias and trickery but it still galls me to read headlines such as RNZ’s “Hamilton City Council votes to retain Māori wards”. No. We voted to have a public referendum, knowing that the majority of our citizens are not racist and will get rid of race-based politics at the next election.

Andrew Bydder: PM Luxon Nails NZ Councils

People with competency need to stand. This is my request to those that read this: the nation needs you to front up. If you are unable to stand as a candidate, get behind competent people who will. They need support.

Prime Minister Chris Luxon fronted the Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) junket in Wellington with a message of hard truths.

Andrew Bydder: This Is a Bridge Too Far

The sleepy, leafy suburbs of quaint conservative Cambridge were torn apart by the Waipa District Council’s infamous BLUE BLOB.

Residents awoke to the local newspaper’s report about a new bridge location and the shifting of the town’s main arterial route through their back streets. There was no prior notice and the exact details were covered by the large blob of blue over a map, but the council was adamant that this was it. So adamant that they described four options of their own invention, with no public input, selected their preferred one and gave the residents a choice between Option C and… no, that was it, just Option C.