If you're in Auckland and waking up this morning feeling poorer, it's because you are. It's because we all are.  

CVs down 9%, rates are up 6% at the start of the month – that's an extra 223 bucks a year. Now the CVs aren't the market value, obviously, but the market value of our houses has also dropped.  

And so it's right that we feel poorer, we are. But spare a thought for Wellington – CVs down 24%, rates up 17%. No, thank you.  

Everyone's asking why are we paying more when our houses are worthless? The answer is just because it's how councils collect money, and they have few options to do it any other way.  

I saw a graph yesterday in defence of councils – this is a tax as a percentage of GDP,  over the last 130 years, since the 1800s. The blue line was central government. They tax us through income, y’know, spending via GST, a whole bunch of stuff was up around 30%, peaked at about 35% of GDP.  

Greedy. Disgraceful. Poor. Old in orange. Your Councils basically flatlining for the last 70 years at 2% of GDP. This is why they want more options to make money, like charging rates on government buildings in their districts. Because yes, the government doesn't pay rates at present. Bit rude, isn't it? We have to.  

It's why Wayne Brown wants other levers to pull, like bed taxes. But here's the problem: they have a good argument for more funding streams, but they keep blowing up their sympathy with dumb, expensive, useless stuff like cycleways, and raised pedestrian crossings, and road calming measures, and food scrap bins we have to pay for. The list goes on.  

The problem councils have is that nobody wants to give more money to somebody who wastes it. For as long as that keeps happening, their sympathy tank is on empty. 

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