Julie Fairey (she/her)

Fab thx!

#nzpol

Can anyone point me to the clip of Tze Ming schooling Bishop on whst neoliberalism is when he tried to be all “what are words anyway”? Tia fellow nerd(s)

Saw a v cute dog run ahead of their person, to hide in the long grass, unaware they had on a neon pink top, bless.

Anyone else got local Nat MPs getting all up in local govt issues while assidously avoiding local concerns about central govt ones like health, education, stalled Kāinga Ora builds, policing? Got an MP having a public meeting about speed bumps on a street that’s had them for about 20 years 🤦🏻‍♀️

Back of an NZ post parcel bag with “Ms S Santa” in the from field (and a crossed out portion to maintain Santa’s Secretnesz)

Proof of Present! Thank you Secret Santa, it has arrived!

A rates cap ensures two things: 1. Future councils may not have the resources to do necessary things. 2. Due to 1 above, the rates will always increase to the maximum value.

Rates caps are service cuts. They are intended to force Councils to adopt the Government's ideology - austerity and privatisation of assets.

The government does not believe in local democracy. #nzpol

Yes - and if rates unaffordability edge cases are the real concern the first solution would be increasing the rates rebate cap for low income folks. In AKL you can already get rates postponement until sale relatively easily.

I'll be very interested to see the analysis Mnr Watts has that shows a rates cap range of 2-4% is viable. And any evidence that rates are currently in the unaffordable range. I ask council staff every time if the rates proposed are within the affordable range (as % of income); so far always yes.

The argument about staging in particular; they explicitly know that that is not possible. It's been addressed repeatedly in staff and legal advice. The legal framework does not allow it, and yet they keep raising it as if it's an option. It's another delay tactic and adds confusion.

AKL's situation on withdrawing MDRS has been v different from Chch's, despite reports today suggesting otherwise. Mythbuster coming soon from Council, I understand Minister had already told Herald it was different before they published. Sigh. PC120 process doesn't need more misinfo tyvm.

1. PC120 is a step forward to a compact city thats more climate resilient but it needs community input to improve it so please submit esp w your local knowledge. 2. Eden Park is hard, w community support for more but a need for balance for nearby residents on noise & transport. Govt process sucks.

It's been A Week. Between PC120 and Eden Park I've had hardly a moment to think or reply to emails and it's eating away at me. Two councillor clinics to do tomorrow, and one on Sunday morning, and then an arvo with the most junior associate and some rocks.

We look so good compared to [checks list] Hong Kong which [checks notes] launched a citywide uprising in the face of the world's largest authoritarian government riding a nothing-left-to-lose mentality captured by the line "7k for a house like a cell/you really think we out here scared of jail?"

… Holyoake also started to wake up, the rude bastard, and I had to whisk the red sealed paper off Muldoon back to Holyoake. TLDR; Dream drama about dead National MPs sucks. /FIN ps I know Muldoon wasn’t Holyoake’s deputy; my mum was never an MP either 🤷🏻‍♀️

… which in my dream world gave him his authority as PM so I reluctantly took it from him and put it by the still sleeping Muldoon (not dead, I checked). Then Muldoon and my mum and Mysterious MP started to wake up and I was trying to tell him the PM was dead, he was now PM, when…

… and they argued and argued, with Muldoon being totally awful, until all five of us fell asleep in the chairs we were sitting in. I woke up before the others and Holyoake was slumped in his chair and I thought he was dead. He was holding limply a rolled up piece of paper w a red seal on it…

Kids maybe don’t read Marilyn Waring’s book chronicling her time in the National caucus before bed; I dreamt that my mum was an MP and she and another MP were having this ongoing argument w Muldoon who was deputy PM and Holyoake was there too as PM and I was trying to facilitate…

Screenshot of table of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world using the Demographia multiplier measure which you can find in readable format here: http://www.demographia.com/dhi.pdf It shows that out of the 94 cities surveyed Auckland is the 12th most unaffordable in the world. There are 82 more affordable housing markets than Auckland.

When someone says Auckland's housing isn't so unaffordable by reading out other cities that are worse, and it's basically this list. These are the MOST unaffordable housing markets in the world. There are only 11 housing markets worse than Auckland, on this measure (which has it's issues). 😠

I'm dealing with this atm in a number of Auckland issues, where folks with evidence and expertise (and who will deal w the mess) are incredibly frustrated because there is just no point in advocating for change or raising stuff in consultation because govt won't listen.

Seymour was claiming he was getting emails about X but then was unable to produce much, so now they are both pivoting to phone calls which are much harder to disprove. It's all so cynical, I hatez it.

... were in the existing Standing Orders. Others were in response to long standing gripes, came out of workshop discussions the week before, or reflected practice eg people had been using speeches sometimes & not being pulled up on it even though not supposed to in rules.

The "thirty new Standing Orders" he referred to are in fact reformatting. There were quite a lot of wording changes and moving things around in the document to make it easier to use. The key changes were summarised in an accompanying table provided with the agenda. A number of changes mentioned...

FTR for those who were watching Auckland Council's Governing Body earlier and there was a big blow up by Cr Lee about the new Standing Orders - he didn't attend the (open) workshop on it last week where we had some very robust discussions, which staff then captured in the changes put to us today.

Auckland mayor gives green light to advisory panels Tāmaki Makaurau Mayor Wayne Brown has endorsed Auckland Council’s demographic advisory panels for another three-year term, validating an important aspect of the council’s governance structure through ...

If you live in AKL please check out this amazing opportunity - I supported the Advisory Panels last term and they are amazing folks who get a chance to have real influence on Auckland Council's organisation and politically. ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2025/11...

I'm interested in the idea that it is very progressive, can you explain that further to me please? I can see how it could be, but also it's a bit worrying when it's backed by some very Not Progressive groups... just trying to get my head around it :-)

Checking this morning some of that has been cleared up overnight, still a few claiming there's no gender element (which folks are pushing back on), some saying we get abuse because we are useless or it's scrutiny of our incompetence. Wishing physical harm on someone is not fair criticism imho.

It ended up back up on the Herald's FB page and they had to heavily moderate the replies, with a bunch of ones that were allowed (and were imho ok) saying I'm too sensitive, that abuse comes with the job, and that cyclists are the problem. Sigh.

Ok have confirmed that Auckland Council can decide to shift to land value same as other councils now. There was a restriction some years back where we had to use capital value but that's gone now. Interested in the idea it might be more progressive, anyone aware of any other info than the CGA stuff?