Mike's Minute: Yet again, we don't care about local body politics

The great dichotomy of local government is on display right now and seemingly no wants to address it: The turnout in Tauranga was pathetic.  The latest example of us not giving a monkey’s is Tauranga.  No democracy because the last lot were so hopeless they got replaced by commissioners, and yet when given the freedom to choose, the real winner was complacency.  And yet the biggest issue in our economy at the moment and our battle with inflation is the local council.   It is also insurance, but rates play an outsized role in why this non-tradeable inflation is stuck at 5.4 percent.  Tradeable inflation is now virtually non-existent, but we still aren’t cutting interest rates, we still aren’t breathing life into the economy, we are still living through recessionary-type misery. Why? Because people like councils are handing out rate rises that if offered up by literally anyone else would never see the light of day because they would be out of business.  So see the connection?  They are outsmarting us.  They know they can do whatever they like – 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent – in some cases in some areas you are talking about 100 percent – a doubling now.  Do we like that? No we do not. We gnash our teeth and moan and whinge and complain and yet what they have worked out is they have little if anything to fear because no one will do anything about it.  You want proof? Look at Tauranga.  I mean look at any local body election turnout. It’s less than a half. Sometimes less than a third. We literally don’t care.  It was almost tragic last week when once again the Finance Minister asked – pleaded – with councils to do their bit and contain their inflationary ways.  Will they? Of course not. Why would they?  They have us by the balls because we are lazy and complacent.  The Government have done their bit on spending. We are doing our bit by bleeding councils. They claim a million different reasons for their actions. And to be fair some of it I have sympathy with. Underinvestment is a real issue.   But what they have done is seize the moment, played on our weakness, jumped on the inflationary bandwagon and charged the bejesus out of us.  And because we are slack – they win. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.