In meetings with business associations, residents, business owners, teachers and principals and volunteer organisations at the front line, one thing has become clear.
The budget, as it’s been proposed, would do irreparable damage to our city. As one business association put it to me, it’s also just bad bloody business.
I don’t want to exaggerate something beyond its real possible effects. In this circumstance I don’t have to.
The proposed Annual Budget, which went out to consultation for the month of March, would: permanently cancel more than 1,000 buses per day, while also increasing fares, rip out one third of public bins in our parks, permanently close 32 Citizens Advice Bureau, permanently close 10 Kauri Kids early childhood centres, slash the Natural Environment Targeted Rate and the Water Quality Targeted Rate, gut libraries, arts and culture funding and slash local board discretionary funding, amongst other brutal cuts.
The budget would not only further entrench inequality amongst our low and middle-income Aucklanders who rely on these social services, but also contribute to worsening climate change and less resilience to future weather events.
Notably, there are no cuts proposed for anything that may be enjoyed by the bigger end of town, such as the hundreds of thousands spent on contractors to the Mayor’s office, or the $3 billion in Council-owned and therefore ratepayer subsidised golf courses.
As your MP for Auckland Central, I’ve spent the past two years regularly working with Auckland Council, our local boards and Council Controlled Organisations to resolve local issues and ensure our community issues and resourcing are fed up the food chain to Parliament.
This has included saving The White Lady food truck, helping navigate expansion of outdoor hospitality dining licences throughout Covid protocols, ongoing work to restore the St James Theatre, supporting community gardens, developing community housing projects, cycling networks, lighting and safety infrastructure and growing an advocacy and support hub for people experiencing homelessness and food insecurity.
Council’s Budget, as proposed, would make all of this work all the more difficult. It would eviscerate foundational components of the fabric of our city, which once gone, we would struggle to ever get back.
That’s why I wrote to all Auckland-based MPs (who make up a third of Parliament) to ensure that they too were informing and mobilising communities of what’s at stake. This Council budget is the most significant thing to happen to Council since the widely-opposed Supercity amalgamation. It’s the most austere and significant local government budget in my lifetime.
It’s not ‘business as usual’ and it shouldn’t be treated like that. The Budget proposal is contrary to every foundational and widely-consulted policy plank underpinning the work of the organisation, such as the 30-year Auckland Plan, Long Term Plan, Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri: Auckland's Climate Plan, City Centre Masterplan and more.
It should not be rushed through as it is being, under the auspices of a typical Annual Budget, because it’s in fact the most radical change to local government direction in this city in decades. Think, a parochial version of the 1984 Douglas Government budget.
Talking to officials and some elected members, it’s also clear that cuts have been asked for in some areas beyond what the budget line even is, pointing to a totally inept grasp of what’s actually even happening within the organisation.
Tuning into some local board ‘Have Your Say’ events, you’ll find that even our local councillor has not been provided with any meaningful information on this supposed, well-reported but so-far largely unchallenged “$295 million hole” or rationale behind the indiscriminate cuts.
In fact, Auckland Council non-rates revenue has continued to increase year-on-year these past five years, even throughout the pandemic. Rates revenue has also continued to increase. Auckland Council have a gold-standard AA rating, and are well-below their own self-imposed debt limit of 290%.
Ironically, as economist Bernard Hickey has pointed out, “If [Council] were private companies, they would be accused of having ‘lazy balance sheets’ by the shareholders and told to take on much higher debts and accept credit rating downgrades,” to get a far better and more efficient job done.
Whatever hand we’re dealt, I promise you I’ll continue to fight as long as I have the privilege of doing so, for our communities and city. Please feel free to reach out to me or my office if you would like to join in, or have any questions. (Chlöe Swarbrick)
Chlöe Swarbrick, T: 09 378 4810, E: chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz
www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick
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