Monthly Archives: October 2026

07/10/2026
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Culture, Local body politics, Social ecology

OF FORESTS AND FISHERS

Great forest trees do not live just for themselves. That is true of all species actually. Every living being is part of an interconnected web of life, a moment in a never-ending flow of energy, each one contributing to the integrity of the whole. The great trees though, like the rimu, the totara, the kauri, the miro, the puriri, these are more than just a part of the web. They are key nodes, cornerstones of the ecosystems of which they are part, a haven for birds and bats, for insects, epiphytes, lichen and moss.

That famous question that asks: ‘if a tree falls in the forest and no-one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?’, is nonsensical. When a tree falls, the whole forest hears it, or more accurately feels it, not just through the many ears that live there but through the multitudinous connections of mycelia, insects and birds that science is still struggling to understand. In some ways the forest is one living entity, as is each tree and bush that makes it up, and every cell that makes up each tree. As is the planet itself.

The same is true of people. We are all part of the social fabric, and our deeds ripple out from us in ways we can never fully understand, to influence the world around us. We are all of us more influential than we know. But there are some individuals who are like the canopy trees in a forest, of a stature that allows them to play a grand role and to give comfort and shelter to those around them.

Four great people of this ilk have fallen in the last few of weeks. I attended the tangi and funeral of two of them but it was not my place to speak, so I would like to offer a brief acknowledgement here. The first is Ta Hirini Mead, a scholar, strategist and leader not just for his own people of Ngāti Awa but for all the people of Aoteara. E te puna mātauranga, e te pou tokomanawa, kei te mihi, kei te mihi, kei te mihi. Moe mai rā.

The second is Malcom Campbell, past Mayor of Kawera and Regional Councillor. Malcom was a fierce advocate for the Kawerau community, known for his blunt talk and his love for his people. Rest in peace my friend.

The third and fourth are not locals, but their loss deserves a mention even so. Professor Whatarangi Winiata of Ngato Raukawa and Ta Tamati Reedy of Ngāti Porou were both leaders of the highest calibre. I know that many from this District travelled to attend their tangi, and so we farewell them and acknowledge their passage from this realm. Haere, haere, haere atu rā.

Te hunga mate ki te hunga mate, te hunga ora ki te hunga ora.

Every mighty tree must eventually fall. That is the way of all things. It is the gap they leave in the canopy that allows sunlight to reach the forest floor and new growth to flourish. This cycle of life and death, of renewal, growth, maturity and decay, is the bittersweet blessing of being alive. As I enter my 60th year I find myself reflecting on the hourglass of my own life, uncertain of when it will run out of sand. What things do I want to spend my remaining years on and what will I leave behind?

I do not know how many years I will get to be Mayor of this beautiful place but in that time, here are some things that your councillors and I are trying to achieve: To be open, transparent and accountable; to be fiscally prudent with public money; to serve all our communities equitably; to make decisions with future generations in mind. I am aware that I am very lucky as Mayor to have such a great team of Councillors to work with, locally connected Community Boards members, and committed and professional staff.

I have written many times now about the focus on getting rid of our Council operating deficit. That means making some hard decisions.

One example in the introduction of boat ramp fees. Council needs to find new ways to pay for some things. The Harbour Fund has become an almost mythological source of money for harbour expenses, but here is the reality check. The income from that fund – mostly rent from endowment land – is about $2.2miilion a year. All of that money is spent on ports and harbour related renewals and maintenance. In the past there has been a small surplus but that is no longer the case. Rising costs are not being matched by rising income, and the lease arrangements make it impossible to shift that dial quickly.

Currently around 11% of ports and harbours costs are recovered in fees and charges, the rest is (almost) paid for from the Harbour Fund income. To just keep providing what we currently provide, given rising costs, we either borrow money to pay for it all (making our operating deficit worse) OR we put rates up OR we charge a small fee to users.

The proposed boat ramp fee is a once off charge of $20 for locals, just to get people logged into the system, and for out of towners who don’t pay rates in Whakatane District it would be $20 per day to use the Whakatāne ramp and $10 for Thornton or Ōhope. As good neighbours we are looking at extending the local rate to people in Kawerau and Ōpōtiki as well.

Compared to all the other costs involved in taking a boat out fishing with your mates, this is not a lot. Sports teams pay to use the fields without complaint, community groups pay to hire meeting spaces, kids pay to swim, and while none of that pays the full cost of providing those facilities, it’s a contribution. A boat ramp fee is the same.

There is no risk that this will cost more to administer than it brings in. It would use license plate recognition, run by an experienced outside provider who returns $17 to Council for every $20 they take in. If we want to get rates rises to a manageable level, these are the kinds of things we are going to have to try.

(Mayoral Column from the Whakatāne Beacon 11 June 2026)

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07/10/2026
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Local body politics

STORMS, TRACKS AND COFFEE

STORMS, TRACKS AND COFFEE – GOOD SYSTEMS FOR THE WIN

Last week we started getting warnings of a storm coming our way, followed immediately by a cyclone. We have a great emergency management team in Council and they provided regular briefings as the situation unfolded. During my brief time as mayor we have already been through a couple of storms but this looked like being bigger. Then I got influenza.

It came on quickly. A scratchy throat one day turned overnight into cold bones and deep, painful coughing that felt like it was ripping my throat and causing my muscles to ache from the spasming. It drained my energy and my motivation and rendered me useless for a number of days. With the cyclone approaching  I delegated my mayoral authority to Deputy Mayor Julie Jukes. There was no way I could be around other people and risk infecting those working in emergency response.

Julie did an incredible job as the Acting Mayor. She made the declaration of a local state of emergency, on advice from the Emergency Management Controller, and handled all the media interest – local, national and even some international. Media is the lifeblood of any politician, so it was with deep sadness that I told radio and TV reporters when they rang my cellphone that they’d best speak to Julie. When you delegate, you have to allow that person to do their job and not get in their way. The best I could do was attend the local and national briefings on-line and put information out on social media to support the official emergency management messages.

The system worked as it should. Local decision-making by a responsible civic leader listening to good advice from the EM team, accessing national level support and information via the Minister, and clear and regular information and communication for the community. Highly skilled staff and contractors were on call to handle problems as they arose, coordinating with fire services, police and we even had some army unimogs arrive to help. Thank you to everyone involved. Emergency management is all about being able to work together.

Of course, it also relied on local communities being able to make good decisions for themselves and willing to look after each other. I saw locals reaching out to each other on social media to offer a place to evacuate to. People checked in on neighbours, friends, family. Rangitihi Marae opened its doors as an evacuation centre with other marae on standby if needed. Let us never forget what a great community this is. Social connections are what resilience is made of.

The storm with all its landslide risk brought to mind another issue that I have been personally working on, with others in the community and in council. When Ngā Tapuwae o Toi / Toi’s Track was taken out by landslips in 2022 and 2023 the council investigated how best to reinstate it. Just before work was due to begin another slip took out another section, which caused work to pause. With such a slip-prone cliff face, what would it take to get a safe and robust track back in place? And how often would it need to be rebuilt?

Beacon readers will know that those geotechnical and engineering investigations came to council recently. The cost for council to rebuild a track that is now sheer cliff face in places, is prohibitive, with the almost certain likelihood of doing it all again in a short space of time. So, we’ve been very lucky to have a group of local people who have put their hands up to help. They have said that they can source volunteer expertise and labour, and funding from the local community to pay for engineering design and to fix the track.

This is an incredible opportunity to get a much-loved track reinstated without it costing ratepayers an arm and a leg. Councillors, and council staff, are eager to see this happen. As well as the community interest, staff have been working (with others) on getting the track recognised as a one day walk of national significance. This would bring visitors into our district to help boost local tourism operators and other businesses.

The Projects and Services Committee resolved that the best way forward was to “seek proposals from the community for the repair and re-establishment of the existing track or alternative routes between West End and Ōtarawairere…” The normal way to seek proposals for work like this is through a “request for proposals” (RfP), which outlines exactly what a proposal needs to meet all the cultural, legal, financial and health and safety obligations. Having good process for this kind of thing is important. A few of the issues include that the track goes through an area of incredible historical and cultural significance, so an Archaeological Authority from Heritage NZ is needed for every piece of work, based on a very detailed work plan, and only council can apply. The land ownership is complex, and full engagement with Tangata Whenua is necessary. The proposal needs to contain financial information and it needs to come from a trust, or incorporated society or some other legal entity with its own banking accounts, that can hold the project despite the comings and goings of individual members.

Putting the RfP together takes careful consideration and a series of steps to ensure its robustness. Council has a lot going on, and a cyclone is one of many things that can interrupt a normal work plan. So, it’s taking time, but we’ll get there. I am confident that with the passion and enthusiasm coming from the community, and the real desire of councillors and staff to see this happen, we will get a great outcome.

The last thing I want to mention is that I will be having my first ‘Mayor’s Coffee Morning” next week. I’ll be at Robert Harris Cafe on The Strand with some of your local councillors on Friday, 24 April from 9.30 to 11.30 to hang out, chat about any issues you want to raise, answer questions and listen to your concerns. Please come down and introduce yourself. I look forward to meeting you.

(Mayoral column for the Whakatāne Beacon 14 April 2026)

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07/10/2026
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Local body politics

PRUDENT FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

One of the big differences between being a Councillor and stepping up to the Mayor role is operating at a regional level. This is especially true with all the reform coming at us from Central Government. The need to work together and to speak with one voice (as far as possible) has made the Bay of Plenty Mayoral Forum, the Eastern Bay of Plenty Joint Committee, and similar groupings more important than ever. We need to be in there and we need to be active participants.

We are fortunate in the Bay of Plenty to have a friendly and collaborative Regional Council Chair and group of Mayors. The ability to work together and support each other is important not just in times of trouble, such as when we sent people over to Tauranga after Mauāo took a number of lives earlier this year but also as part of our advocacy to Government. This is on top of ‘business as usual’.

BOPLASS, for example, is a company owned by nine councils around the Bay of Plenty, East Coast and Taupō focused on shared procurement and shared services. By investing around $30 000 per year our council has saved some $225 000 each year in operating costs – close to $4 000 000 over the life of the company. I and the other Mayors in the Bay of Plenty believe that there are more savings that can be found by working together in other ways. We have asked our respective Chief Executives to look for opportunities to do that and report back.

Talking with Mayors from around the region, and across the country at Local Government New Zealand hui, has showed me that although small Councils like ours face some pressures that the big Councils don’t have, all Councils face very similar issues around the country. One Mayor that I was speaking to – a first term Mayor like me but who had never spent time as a Councillor – was worried about how he was going to explain the latest rates increase to his voters. He was elected on a promise to cut rates and was now facing the reality that he could not deliver.

I am proud to have been elected on a platform of hard but honest truths.

Here in Whakatāne we have just adopted our Draft Annual Plan budget with an average rates increase of 9.4%. This is the amount agreed in 2024 in the Long Term Plan and this new Council has not changed that. There was inflationary pressure to put rates up more, but this Council has been united in its commitment to finding greater efficiency in how the Council operates. We asked our staff to find savings and they have done so.

Throughout the organisation our staff are really focused on doing more with less. As a result, we have not just managed to avoid a larger rates increase than projected but found additional savings. Councillors then faced a tough decision – use that money to reduce the rates increase, or to reduce the operating deficit.

The operating deficit has been in place since covid. Basically, the Council has kept rates increases lower than they might have been by rating less money than was needed to pay the operating costs and borrowing to make up the shortfall. Of course, this just locks in higher rates increases in the future, to service a debt that just keeps growing. Borrowing to pay for capital assets is one thing – like taking out a mortgage to pay for the house. Borrowing to pay for operating costs is like taking out a mortgage to pay for the groceries. Like a blood-sucking vampire, sooner or later that will come back to bite.

I commend our Councillors this year for making the tough but financially prudent choice to use the savings to reduce the operating deficit. This will save substantial amounts of money for ratepayers over the next few years.

We also agreed to put some of those savings aside for contingencies. We know interest rates may well start to climb and the Israeli / US attacks on Iran are already sending oil prices higher. We have been trying to insulate the Council as best we can from these kinds of global disruptions. We have been moving our vehicle fleet towards electric and hybrid motors which both save money on maintenance and fuel and help stave off oil price spikes. We have also been installing solar panels on our buildings where they return a positive net financial benefit and reduce dependence on generators.

We have also been trying to support community groups who have the potential to take over some council functions. For example, the well publicised community interest in reinstating and maintaining the Ngā Tapuwae o Toi Walkway is one example of how Council might be able to support and facilitate the enthusiasm and skill in the community to achieve an outcome that Council would find it difficult to afford from rates. There will always be some tension between Council’s ethical and legal obligations (such as Health and Safety accountability) and community desire for action ‘yesterday’ but with good will and patience on both sides I think we can get a great outcome.

Finally, the committee structure that I established last year includes a Community Grants and Funding Committee. This builds on the committee that was already in place to bring all of Council’s community grants under one roof but extends its remit to identify external funding opportunities for Council projects. Given the demographics and economics of this district we benefit more than most from strong social infrastructure that supports community resilience. Those very factors also make it difficult for us to afford it. A committee that helps identify potential grants, loans, philanthropy, commercial sponsorship, and other funding mechanisms will support having community facilities that we collectively benefit from without burdening our ratepayers too much.

Our Councillors and staff are highly motivated to find cost savings and innovative ways of operating and funding the things our communities need. We are committed to being fiscally prudent AND socially conscious. We won’t get everything right and we’ll be marked by the voters in just over 2 and a half years. I hope you think we passed.

(Mayoral column in the Whakatāne Beacon 13 March 2026)

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07/10/2026
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Local body politics, Racism

WALKING TOGETHER

I was chatting with a couple of guys in Murupara a while ago, waiting for an event to start. One of them was telling us that he farmed a piece of land that his father had been balloted after World War II. That is when land was given to returned soldiers, to rehabilitate them back into civilian life. The Government wanted to channel any discontent into hard work. And work hard they did.

I looked at our other companion. He was from Ngāti Manawa. I knew that his father had been maimed in that war and had returned home to Murupara to find his tribal lands taken and given to Pākehā soldiers. Māori were not eligible under the land scheme. I wondered what he was thinking. He showed no outward animosity and our farmer friend showed no awareness of what it might mean to him. He had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn’t stolen the land. His father hadn’t either and probably had no idea that it was even stolen. They had been given an opportunity and had used it to build a productive farm over generations by the sweat of their brows.

It was such a telling illustration of our country. One set of people dispossessed by a government that saw them as incapable and undeserving. Another set of people who had worked hard to make a good life but had no idea of the injustice that they had benefitted from. In that gulf between those worlds I see a huge amount of graciousness from tangata whenua, like the pōwhiri that we were attending, which welcomed everyone into the ancestral house and treated us all with respect and care.

Māori / Pākehā relationships in this country cannot be simplified into good guys / bad guys. Real life is more complex, interesting and rich. But it can be useful to step back and look at the broad picture. Waitangi Day gives us an opportunity to remember where we have come from and reaffirm where we want to go as a nation.

It is important to understand that Māori never did cede sovereignty in Te Tiriti. The Māori language version of the Treaty of Waitangi – the one signed by most Rangatira and the one that takes precedence under the international legal doctrine of contra proferentum – clearly affirms the sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga) of hapū. Hobson’s Choice and other groups can try to rewrite history but Governor Hobson’s own words at Waitangi in 1840, recorded by eyewitness William Colenso, state clearly that the British were not seeking to make laws to govern Māori. They were seeking only to govern their own unruly people that had come to this land.

It was only when large numbers of settlers arrived and a new Governor was appointed that an attempt was made to assert British authority over Māori communities. There are plenty of good history books, and Waitangi Tribunal reports, that document the way that successive Governments used legislation, debt and war to take Māori lands and resources, and destroy their political and economic structures to force them to come under the authority of the Crown.

Our own history in the Whakatāne District is full of terrible things that were done to local iwi and hapū. That includes the deliberate desecration of some of their most sacred places by previous incarnations of the Council. While there have been real efforts over the past few decades to acknowledge these wrongs and to stop adding to the list, we continue to deal with a legacy of local authority decisions that ignored Māori interests, concerns and authority. As mayor I am still grappling with some of these issues today. I am aware that although the population in our district is around 50% Māori, their voices have historically carried little weight in council decisions. We have made it a collective priority in the last few terms of council to address that.

Our Māori Relationships Strategy – Te Toi Waka Whakarei – outlines what we need to do as a council to build better relationships with iwi, hapū, and whānau. It starts with building our own capacity to engage and listen, and it means taking on board what we hear. It’s a journey but we are already seeing some progress. Instead of fighting – in court, in the media and around the table – we are starting to work together. At the end of the day, we all want the best outcomes for our communities.

We have an opportunity to do something really significant as a district. We can show how to live together with integrity as Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. We can create political and social processes and institutions that marry the best of Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākeha. We can demonstrate what it means to be bi-modal and multi-cultural by simple virtue of our demographics and the strength of our connections with each other. We can show the world an alternative to the hatred and fear being fostered to keep us all distracted and divided.

(Mayoral column in the Whakatāne Beacon 26 Feb 2026)

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07/10/2026
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Local body politics, Parliament

LOCALS, NOT WELLINGTON, SHOULD DECIDE THE SHAPE OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

People keep asking how I’m finding it being mayor. As you can imagine, it’s been hectic.

I had a fair idea of what I was in for, but it’s definitely been a case of hitting the ground running. We’ve had a weighty induction schedule for the new Council, plus a variety of mayoral activities and Christmas events. We are almost at the end of the year, which is always a busy time as things wind up. (Thanks go out to staff who keep essential Council services running while most of us are at the beach).

On top of that, the government has recently dropped an avalanche of reform on local government which is taking a lot of my focus. Most people agree that some change is overdue and what the government is proposing is not all bad, but the timeframes are tight, the details are often fuzzy and there are some real barbs in there. With some ridiculously short timeframes, I encourage everyone to speak up. We shouldn’t allow Wellington to dictate how local decisions get made, without having a say.

The “Simplifying Local Government” announcement has been touted as delivering the most significant changes to local government since 1989.  Under this proposal the Regional Council would stay in place for now but the regional councillors would be replaced by the mayors from across the region sitting as a Combined Territories Board (in our spare time I guess). These CTBs might or might not include independent commissioners, who might or might not have veto powers. The CTB would also have a two year deadline to design the future shape of local government in the region, which could include amalgamations, unitary authorities or other options. The timeframe is unclear, with mixed signals about this coming from Wellington, but submissions close on 20 February.

So there is lots of uncertainty – the batter is still raw in the middle of that particular biscuit. Still, it’s an opportunity for us all to have a think about what local government could look like, because whether under this government or the next, we can expect change.

There is a case for simplifying things.  Most people don’t understand what the different parts of local government do and it can lead to a lack of alignment across councils. We do need to make sure that whatever we end up with has democratic representation, protects the environment and community values, and ensures tangata whenua participation.

Rates capping is another government announcement. Under this proposal annual rates increases would be limited from 2029 to a “target range” between 2% to 4% per year. Councils wishing to exceed the cap would need approval from a central-government appointed regulator – and only in exceptional circumstances such as disaster response.  

It’s easy to see why this sounds attractive. People are hurting and double-digit annual rates increases are unsustainable, but it could backfire. In Australia rates capping has led to underinvestment in core infrastructure with ‘variations’ every few years to compensate, leading to massive rates spikes. It means that communities get very little say about what their councils do and at the end of the day councillors need to be accountable to our voters, not to Wellington.

The Resource Management Act (RMA) is being replaced by two bills – the Planning Bill and the Natural Environment Bill. This is not very different in principle from the reforms that the last Labour-led government introduced although some of the details differ. They centralise a lot of the planning functions, and remove a number of protections for things that our communities value. They also make councils potentially liable for compensation if rules protect things like sites of significance for Māori, ‘outstanding natural feature / landscapes’ and places with high natural character.

Again, you can see the attraction. Everyone wants to do what they like on their own land. The problem is that people often don’t like their neighbours to have the same right.

A lot of the purpose of the reform is to support development and make it easier and cheaper for private landowners to do things. That could be a good thing but it needs to be balanced. Savings to individuals at the cost of pushing those costs and compliance onto councils – which drives up rates. At the same time the government intends to cap those rates. The maths doesn’t add up.

The next column will be in 2026 – time flies. On behalf of Councillors I’d like to wish residents, and visitors, a happy and safe holiday period. Kia haumaru, kia hari ngā hararei.

(Mayoral column for the Whakatāne Beacon 19 Dec 2025)

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07/10/2026
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Local body politics

WE’RE IN THIS TOGETHER

It is a great honour to be elected mayor of the Whakatāne District. I am mindful that it is the whole district that I serve. Draw a line from Wainui to Otamarākau, Murupara, Minginui, Maungapōhatu to Matahī and back and that is roughly the border of our district. We are young and old. We are Māori (50%), and we are Pākeha / Tauiwi. Our people originate from the Pacific, Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. We are artists, entrepreneurs, farmers, community leaders, educators, health professionals and everything else imaginable. We are friends, family and neighbours.

As mayor I aim to connect with all our communities. I plan to write regularly in the Beacon and be active on social media. You may have seen one of my ‘Facebook lives’ already. I’ll be on the radio and I’ll also be out around the district, kanohi ki te kanohi, face to face. If you see me at a community event or at a coffee morning come say hello.

One of the things that people often talk to me about is the cost of the rates. Many people in our communities are struggling to pay the rent, groceries and other bills and rates don’t help. People are hurting and they want to see council doing what it can to make rates affordable.

Unfortunately, that’s not easy. There is a tsunami of legislative reform coming at us from central government, all of which will chew up massive amounts of staff time and energy and cost ratepayers money. Inflation and interest have a big impact as well. But the biggest factor is the cost of deferred spending on infrastructure. It’s catch-up time and it hurts.

Spending on so-called ‘nice-to-haves’ like repairs to the Rex Morpeth Hub sports facilities and the drainage and toilet for Mitchell Park add very little to your rates bill – maybe $3 a year. I do think there are better things we can do to control spending but they still won’t bring rates down. Nevertheless, the council needs to be frugal with ratepayers’ money. I highlighted a number of things during the election that I will be doing as mayor to help control costs and I’ll write more about those in a future column.

The other thing that worries me as a new mayor is the possibility of a significant natural disaster. This week’s storm warning didn’t turn into anything major but we’ve always had big weather events in this district and they are coming more often and more intensely. And it’s not just climate change and storms. Earthquakes, tsunami and wildfire are all risks we need to prepare for. The personal, and financial, cost of such events can be significant for communities and for council.

These challenges are also opportunities, a springboard to build local resilience. Watching our communities respond to natural disasters is inspiring. Marae fling open their doors to feed and care for people, farmers get out on their tractors to clear blockages, family and friends house displaced people. Stronger local communities go hand in hand with an economy that is sustainable and that creates shared prosperity. The question is not how we survive these challenging times but how we thrive, together.

The people of Whakatāne District have elected a great bunch of councillors, with a range of skills, experience and perspectives. Every person around the table brings something of value. Add in the extraordinary potential of our diverse communities and we have a recipe for something great. We are in this together. Let’s get the place humming.

(Mayoral column for the Whakatane Beacon 21 Nov 2025)

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