John Tamihere
Everywhere you look in this country you are slapped by taxes. If you were to add all of central government’s hidden taxes like car registrations, warrants of fitness, diesel and petrol tax, or payments to doctors and schools, PAYE and GST, you’d have to wonder where the hell all our money goes.
There never seems to be enough to fix the problems across the spectrum and, most importantly, to our humanities.
But add the real elephant in the room — council rates — into this equation, and the burden on Kiwi wage and salary earners is starting to become unbearable.
Take our largest city, Auckland, which has a population of 1.4 million. It is managed by one of the best paid and largest bureaucracies outside the central government’s silos of health, welfare, education and justice.
The thing with councils is, they are monopolies and their leadership often tries to compare itself to the private sector. An example of this is Auckland City Council chief executive officer Stephen Town comparing the number of his well-paid staff who earn over the $100,000 and $200,000 wage packages with employees of Spark, Fonterra, Air New Zealand and even Fletcher.
At least with the companies mentioned by Town, there is some competition — the council has none.
What’s also interesting to note is that these companies are not funded by taxpayers or ratepayers, yet they all have greater scrutiny, exposure and accountability.
Auckland City Council calls itself a parent and employs about 7200 people. Wellington and Christchurch combined employ 5000 people.
But the 7200 employed by the Auckland Council does not include the huge councilowned monopoly companies: Watercare — which employs around 1000; Panuku — which has around 150 staff; Ports of Auckland — 500 FTEs on the job; Regional Facilities