Tag Archives: WDC

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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29/08/2025
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Local body politics

What the heck is up with the rates?

Rates are going through the roof and people are struggling. Even so, I’m going to say something that most mayoral candidates won’t admit. Rates are going to keep going up and anyone who promises that they can stop that happening is lying to you. The Government would sack the council and install commissioners if we did what it would take to stop rates increasing.

Let me explain. Rate rises are being caused by three things: increased debt levels, inflation and the need to upgrade our water infrastructure.

First our debt levels have risen. All councils use debt to pay for long term assets like infrastructure, as a way of spreading the cost over the life of the facility. Recently our Council has been borrowing money to pay for operating expenses – the day to day costs. That’s like borrowing money to pay for groceries and is something I have opposed. In fact I led a revolt of councillors against the mayor’s plan in 2023 to borrow even more to keep rates down. That debt has locked in substantial rates increases for the next few years.

Second, we have all seen the cost of living rise due to inflation. Council costs have gone up more than households because of the kinds of things we spend most of our money on eg. construction.

Third, we need to upgrade our water infrastructure. For decades the council has underinvested in this and it’s now catch-up time. This will be the biggie for the next few years. I will write at another time about possible pathways forward but the reality is that the government standards have changed and we need more expensive systems to meet them. Estimates are that we need $200 million over the next 10 years and it won’t stop there.

It is incorrect to say, as some do, that rates rises are because council spends money on “nice to haves” like the council building upgrade 3 years ago, the Mitchell Park upgrade, the Boat Harbour and the Rex Morpeth redevelopment. The council building work, which was primarily about earthquake strengthening the Emergency Operations Centre, adds about $50 a year on the average rates bill. The Mitchell Park upgrade costs the average ratepayer less than $2 a year to provide some decent public toilets and add drainage. The Boat Harbour wasn’t funded out of rates at all. At the Rex Morpeth / War Memorial hub the Council has only budgeted money for essential maintenance such as fixing the leaking roof. There is also a small amount to rescope the proposal to something more affordable and to develop a plan to get outside funding to pay for it.

If you look at the council’s budgets, almost all the money is spent on core functions such as hard infrastructure (roads and pipes), community services (the library, swimming pool, sports fields, community halls etc) and things that central government requires us to do. Despite what some candidates say, the only way to stop future rates increases is to not upgrade water infrastructure. That would put the community’s health at risk and put us in breach of the law. It would almost certainly lead to the sacking of the council and the appointment of commissioners.

Cutting out all the so-called “nice to haves” won’t make a significant difference to the rates, but it would suck the life out of our district. I do think there are other things we can do to help control council costs, but they are not enough to stop rates rising. These include:

Less use of outside consultants. It means more staff if we want to bring more things in-house but it would save us money and retain expertise in the organisation.


AI is changing how people work across the globe. We need to carefully make use of new technology such as AI to boost productivity.

The Mayor needs to champion our district. They need to work with outside funders to help pay for community assets, leverage relationships in Wellington to unlock government funding and get the councillors working as a team.

Finally we need to work with other councils to pressure government to fix the funding model for councils. Taking GST off rates and / or returning a portion of the GST raised in a district back to the council would help a lot, as would the Government paying rates on its properties.

I have said that I want Council to be more open and transparent. I won’t spin a story to try to win votes. If anyone is telling you that they will cut rates, ask them how.


(Published in the Whakatāne Beacon 29/8/25)

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10/03/2023
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Climate change, Local body politics, Social ecology

Building a resilient future

Sometimes people don’t need more facts. What they need is a plan.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to realise that we face multiple challenges in the world today – environmental, economic, political and social. Climate change is far from the only problem, but it is probably the most significant, because it makes everything else much worse. Many of us have been talking about this for decades, and slowly gaining traction, but it wasn’t another rigorous, scientifically conservative, well referenced report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that seems to have tipped the balance. It has taken a cyclone of unprecedented scale to bring home the real cost of our, and the world’s, inaction.

The science tells us that we still have a brief window to stop runaway climate change. That means we can still prevent the sort of feedback loops that would probably bring an end to homo sapiens 10,000 year experiment with civilisation. If they kick in, we just won’t have the abundance of resources, including the food surplus, to make cities work.

So it give me great comfort to know that the window still exists. That’s a helpful fact. Now what we need is a plan.

That has been my main focus since first being elected to Whakatāne District Council in 2016. In that first term the council agreed a set of principles to govern how we respond to climate change. We asked the people of Whakatāne for feedbaack, and we got strong support. In my second term on council we agreed a set of strategies, targets and action plans. Again these got strong support. The result has been both reduced council carbon emissions and substantial work on adapting to climate change. Last year we agreed on a reset of those strategies – a shifting of gears. You can expect to have your say as part of that work.

I need to add here that I didn’t do that work by myself. The success of the programe is really down to the highly talented staff that work and have worked at WDC. What I provided was the political leadership that allowed staff to do their jobs well.

The next phase of the climate change work needs to engage our communities better. If we have learned anything from the array of disasters that Whakatāne District and other areas have experienced, it’s the need for resilience in the face of an uncertain future. At the heart of resilience is community.

National and regional agencies, and the council, are important in terms of emergency response and long term recovery, but it is our willingness to look after each other that is the most critical. It is when we check on the neighbours because we know they may need a little help, or get stuck in where we see the need, that we see the best of us. Great examples are the Community Emergency Response Teams in action, or springing up, in places like Edgecumbe, Matatā, Waiohau, Thornton, Galatea / Murupara, Awatapu and Manawahe. Marae, who fling open their doors to become critical parts of the emergency response infrastructure, are another. It is a reminder of how blessed we are in the Eastern Bay to live in communities where people look out for each other.

Adapting to climate change isn’t just about disaster response. Council’s job is to make sure our infrastructure is both robust (strong) and resilient (able to spring back when parts of the system fail), but that’s just one part of the story. Given the impacts that Cyclone Gabrielle is already having on things like food supplies, how do we build a more resilient economy in the Eastern Bay? It’s not just about food sovereignty – we need to build strong local economies, that cycle resources (including money) around and around the community as many times as possible so as to extract maximum value.

WDC Council members were privileged recently to hear from Jacob Kajavala of Industrial Symbiosis Kawerau about the work to build synergies across businesses in Kawerau (and increasingly beyond). They work with workforce development training, recruitment and employment, and growing industry and opportunity. These kinds of collaborations across local businesses have great potential to build a vibrant local business ecosystem which provides some buffer from international economic shocks because they are grounded in strong and enduring relationships.This could be a building block towards a true circular economy, where upcycling applies to resource flows (eg the waste from one enterprise becomes the feedstock for another) people flows and financial flows.

It’s just one example of how the Eastern Bay of Plenty has the ingredients we need to build a strong, resilient, interconnected, prosperous and ecologically grounded sub-region. We just need a positive vision and leadership.

First published in the WhakatāneBeacon 8/3/23

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11/10/2022
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Local body politics

Nandor Tanczos calls for parliamentary inquiry into LG voting paper shambles

Widespread reports of people not receiving their voting packs in time for the local government election have led Whakatāne District Councillor Nandor Tanczos to call for an inquiry into the shambles.

“I heard multiple accounts of registered voters not receiving their voting papers in time for the election” said Nandor.

“Some households received papers for a couple of people while others in the family missed out. Some people got their papers the day before close of voting, way to late to post their votes in. People who updated their details on-line still had papers go to the wrong address.

“Council staff in Whakatāne did their best to take up the slack, with a drive in voting booth on the day and staff at the service centres trained to assist with special voting, but NZ Post let the country down.

“Postal voting is a challenge for many people as it is, with a lack of post boxes and an unreliable service, especially in rural areas. For people to not even get their voting papers is completely unacceptable”.

“Parliament needs to take this extremely seriously. Your right to vote shouldn’t be dependent on random chance, whether the papers turned up or not. There needs to be a full examination as to why this was allowed to happen, and what will be done to make sure it is different next time” said Nandor.

“Maybe postal voting has done its dash and we need to do local government elections differently”.

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10/06/2022
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Local body politics

3 waters reform – an update

District councillors have been getting a lot of campaign emails recently about the Government’s 3 Waters reforms. They come with no reply addresses, but they deserve a response. This is my open reply to those emails, and update for the community on 3 Waters reforms.

I’ve written about this before but as a quick reminder, the 3 Waters are: drinking water, waste water (mostly sewage) and storm water (mostly rain run-off). It’s not about who owns the water itself or water quality, but rather who controls the pipes, pumps and drains that moves it all around and treats it.

Local councils around the country have generally not invested what they should have in water infrastructure over the decades and things are starting to get desperate. I guess they hoped the Government would bail them out. This reform is the Government’s response. It basically brings control of all council owned water infrastructure across the country under 4 super-sized water service providers. We will be part of one that covers most of the middle North Island.

These will be owned by local councils and run by independent boards. Like councils, tangata whenua get some high level representation, but it’s limited. The main idea is that economies of scale will get the much needed work done cheaper. There is some debate about how big those saving might be, but there will almost certainly be some. It also gets cheaper loans and big urban centres will cross-subsidise smaller populations like ours.

It’s important to remember that these changes are driven by Wellington. For people sending emails to local councillors, it would be more effective to send them to the Minister for Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta, since she actually gets to decide. We do not.

Which is what Whakatāne District Council did. We sent a letter to the Minister, and met with her on zoom. We made very detailed comments about what we saw was wrong with the reforms. These included concerns about the over-all approach, the governance arrangements, the lack of clarity about key aspects and the lack of say for our communities. I wrote a detailed article about this in the Beacon a few months ago. We were unanimous that we were against the proposals.

I want to emphasise this because there is some misinformation being put about. We were unanimous that we opposed the reforms. We did disagree on whether to join ‘Communities 4 Local Democracy’, a break-away group of councils, but that was just about whether it would be an effective advocate for Whakatāne’s interests. I still don’t think they have been, but we did end up joining them.

Almost everyone agrees some reform is needed though. It’s really about what that should look like. Local Government has not done a good job with water in most of the country. Recent letters to The Beacon about rates have highlighted the issue. Some people already find it hard to pay their rates bill, and so councillors are twitchy about putting rates up more than they need to. The true cost of that is underinvestment in water and other infrastructure.

We all hate rates rises, but good water infrastructure is expensive and it has to be paid for. Some people point to the Civic Centre Earthquake Strengthening, or the Commercial Boat Harbour development as places to save money, but both of these have very little impact on rates. I’ll write another piece about why and also why they are both so important. What is driving rates rises now is the need to catch up on investment in water infrastructure. Whakatāne is actually quite well placed compared to many councils, especially when it comes to drinking water, but the bill is still eye-watering. So I can see why the Government wants to take investment decisions out of the hands of politicians. The problem, of course, is that means less local accountability.

Our council has made our objections clear and specific, as have others. The Government actually listened to some of those and while they remain committed to the overall reform, especially the 4 big water service providers, they have made quite a few changes. There will be a review after 5 years. There will now be a subregional voice and consumer advocates embedded in the structure. They’ve made it harder to privatise by requiring a unanimous vote of all shareholding councils to do so. To name a few.

In response to National’s promise to roll back the reforms if they win the next election, it will now require a 75% majority of Parliament to do so. This will be almost impossible to achieve. So regardless of our opposition, the reforms will go ahead and they will be locked in. Labour has burned too much political capital already to turn back, they have introduced the bill to Parliament, and they have the votes. As a council our responsibility now is to make sure our communities are not disadvantaged. We are a small fish in the water services pond. By developing our infrastructure investment plans to the point where they can easily be picked up by the new entity, we can influence the work programme and make sure that the needs of our communities don’t slip to the back of the queue.

Critical projects like Matatā waste water, Murupara waste water, finding new sources for our drinking water supplies, are vital to the well-being of our communities. It’s a big program of work to get them ready to hand over to the new provider, but doing it well means our communities don’t lose out to the bigger urban centres. And this is just the first stage of a programme of local government reform. We need to keep communicating as clearly as we can about these big, complex issues. Being smart, adaptable, solution focussed and strategic is going to be important for the council for the foreseeable future.

Published in the Whakatane Beacon. 10/6/22

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02/12/2021
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Local body politics

Whakatāne District Council votes for vaccine pass for council facilities

Yesterday Whakatāne District Council voted 10 – 1 to require a vaccination pass to enter all Council facilities excluding parks, reserves, playgrounds, cemeteries, the Murupara outdoor pool, and public toilets that are not inside a Council facility. This sets out why I voted the way I did. It is not my speech word for word, more like a mash up of the 2 different times I spoke.

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I want to start by reminding us of the context of this discussion. NZ has had very low rates of covid infection to date. This has allowed us to keep fatalities low, as health services have been able to cope. This is very different from many other places where health services have been overwhelmed by covid cases.

This is now changing, and our national strategy is changing as well, as infections are increasing. I don’t envy Central Government decision-makers, who have to balance people’s civil and human rights, with the right to life, and their obligations to protect the community. I haven’t agreed with all their decisions, but I think we have to start from a basis that they are trying their best to balance those different needs. But it is difficult, and our very success has made NZers complacent. Add to that the misinformation that is circulating, often originating in overseas interests who want NZ to fail.

So we have to be very careful who we listen to. Councillor Silcock mentioned a doctor who has been talking about the rise of suicides in Auckland as a result of lockdown. I’d love to know where those figures come from because I’ve just looked up the latest report on suicide rates from the Chief Coroner and that is not true. Suicide rates have been down for the last two years. Those figures only go to June, but still cover a significant period of lockdown. Mental Health Foundation Chief Executive Shaun Robinson has criticised speculation on increased suicides saying “We are aware of increased levels of distress, especially in Auckland, where lockdown is taking its toll on the wellbeing of so many people. But speculation that this will lead to increases in suicide is unfounded.”

I understand the concerns. At the start of this pandemic I was vaccine hesitant, but I have had to have a hard look at the science, at the peer reviewed studies and the advice of public health experts who have spent their lives trying to save lives. We councillors are not epidemiologists – none of us. As people in positions of responsibility should we take our advice from actual epidemiologists and public health experts, the vast majority of whom are in clear agreement, or should we just follow whatever we read on social media? Obviously we have to listen to the actual evidence, and the evidence is very clear.

Being vaccinated doesn’t mean you cannot get covid or transmit it.
Being vaccinated carries some risk of adverse side effects. But despite what you might think from social media algorithms, significant side effects are rare.

The risks from getting covid are much higher. There seems to be around 1 or 2 deaths per hundred covid cases – which is quite a lot of people if covid spreads significantly. Around 1 in 3 have serious long term side effects.

One in three.

Vaccine risks are very low compared to that.

Vaccinated people CAN get covid but unvaccinated people are much more likely to. Obviously that means they are much more likely to infect others. Being unvaccinated also means that people’s symptoms are likely to be far worse – they much more likely to have serious impacts or die. But that’s a risk people can decide for themselves. That’s got nothing to do with us as a council. What we DO need to pay attention to is the risk to others.

So when it comes to being vaccinated, people have a choice. But choices also have consequences. To use Councillor Luca’s analogy, people can choose to smoke tobacco, which increases their risks of all kinds of serious health issues, and that is their right. But they do not have a right to smoke inside, in places that put others at risk. In fact we have banned such behaviour as a country.

So we must always remember the purpose of any restrictions, which is not to punish people for their choices, but should only be to reduce significant risk to others. People who choose to not be vaccinated should not be given unnecessary or unreasonable restrictions. It’s worth recalling that government regulations say that you cannot be asked to provide your Vaccine Pass to access basic services, such as supermarkets, dairies, petrol stations, public transport, pharmacies and essential health care.

I’ve had lots of emails in the last couple of days about how valued council services are – which is great to hear. We provide really important functions and facilities. But restrictions aren’t based on how much people value our services – they are based on what is the best way to keep our community safer.

So I support the amendment to exclude open spaces from vaccine passes, as the risk of transmission in those situations is much lower. I will move an amendment to explicitly exclude the Murupara Pool as well, as that is a predominantly outdoor facility with a low density of users. Additionally I would like us to state clearly that we are committed to maintaining our services for all members of the community, vaccinated and unvaccinated, by providing alternative means of access where this is practical.

But lets remember that if our staff do get infected, they are likely to spread it to a lot of people because most of our staff engage with many different people. We do not want council facilities to become super spreader locations. In addition as councillors we have legal and ethical obligations to our staff, to not put them at undue risk and to provide a safe working environment, as far as possible.

So Whakatāne is going into the new traffic light system at red. We have recent infections and low rates of vaccination compared to other parts of the country. This puts our health services capability, in particular our ICU beds, under threat. This is not just a concern for covid cases but for all those people that will have treatment delayed or cancelled if covid cases are taking up resources. So we need to do what we can to support reasonable public health measures in a time of pandemic.

So it seems self evident to me that we need to introduce a vaccination pass system. If we don’t, some of our facilities will have to close entirely. It seems unfair to deny access to all because a small number choose not to get vaccinated. It is also likely that many vaccinated people will avoid our facilities if we do not have a vaccination pass system in place. Again that seems like an unfair outcome.

Finally I’ll say that I am aware that some of our frontline staff are already getting abuse for trying to enforce the previous guidelines. I trust they will get the support they need to handle this kind of aggression, and I ask people who disagree with the decision we are making today to not take it out on staff. Talk to those of us who made the decision.

Thank you.

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