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Ryan Bridge: Will rate caps actually work? · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This rates cap. How's it actually gonna work? I had
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Luxon on my Herald show yesterday. We'll get an announcement
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: coming in the next few weeks on this. But ask
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: any mayor, and not the ones who like disco Loes
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and Golden Miles, but any mayor that already does the
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: basics stuff. They are cutting their cloth. Tim mcindo and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hamilton I spoke to the Tutedhoom mayor yesterday. They all
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: say the same thing. We are doing the basics, we've
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: cut the silly stuff, and we don't know how this
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: is going to work without bankrupting local government. RIMA reforms
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: will be a big part of this. Luxeon's talking about amalgamation.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: If there are fewer consents needed or consents are streamlined,
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: do we need so many councils with a back office
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: bigger than Kim Kay's booty. Probably not so. Less work,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: especially for regional councils. Could lipeose some cost out of
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: the system, that'd be good. Then there's the back office.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: More generally now the Tatdom mayor, his name's Scott Gilmore,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: interstant guy. He made a good point that about double
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: up that we've got going on. We have something like
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: sixty seven territorial authorities in New Zealand. All have their
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: own finance departments, All have their own comms teams, not
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: that they talk to us. All have their own legal teams.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: The full kitten kaboodle. Can they combine the back office
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a bunch across a bunch of councils and save some
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: cash that way? He reckons they can, and to his credit,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: he's already talking to his neighbors about doing exactly that.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: But even with no frills and just upkeep on the basics,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: residents are still staring down the barrel of double digit
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: rate increases or at least north of seven percent, which
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: as we know, is more than inflation. So a rates cap,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: like a move on order for rowdy rough sleepers on
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Queen Street might sound like a good idea, but is
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: it fixing a problem or simply moving it down the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: road for somebody else to have to clean up. For
• 1:52
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• 1:59
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