|
📌 View
Online | 🚀 Share
on Facebook
Hi Friend,
Happy
Saturday! Welcome to the first Taxpayer Update of 2026. As
you'll see, the team are back into it fighting for transparency and
accountability of how taxpayer and ratepayer money is being
spent.
EXPOSED:
Local councillors pocket HUGE pay hikes while rates explode
💸
While many
Kiwis struggled to afford the summer treats, no such concerns the
country's local councillors, according to the
latest ratepayer dashboard published by your humble Taxpayers'
Union.
Over
summer, the team snuffed out the 2025 salary and meeting honorarium
"entitlement" hikes for every New Zealand council. Let's just say
you'll need to be sitting down for this...
While inflation was 2.7 percent during the 2025
financial year, local councillors merrily accepted a 9.8 percent (on
average) annual adjustment to their pay! For mayors, it's little
better, with the average Mayoral salary jumping 8.5 percent for the
year.
👉
See how much your local councillors and mayor have paid themselves
here
Meanwhile,
the figures listed do not include the extra allowances mayors
and councillors get as top-ups: phones, laptops, printers,
milage (literally they get reimbursed for driving to work!), and even
childcare allowances - which
allows councillors and local board members to claim up to
$6,000 per year from ratepayers for childcare.
Performance pay, yeah right!
🤪
While local
council decision makers sit pretty, local ratepayers are still being
hammered. Remember
the average rates bill is up 34 percent over the last three
years!
Take
Queenstown-Lakes District Council. Local ratepayers have copped an
average rates increase of more than fifty percent in just three years,
and the Council has the largest per-capita debt burden in the
country. Yet those councillors are pocketing the second-highest pay
rise in the country, and the mayor ranks ninth. 🤔
The reform
Local Government Minister Simon Watts won't touch 🫣
The real
issue here isn't actually the councils, it's the fault of the
Government for screwing the scum against ratepayers. Successive
Governments have appointed professional
bureaucrats and career
politicians onto the "independent" Remuneration
Authority.
The system
of broken. The whole regime is designed to prevent pay being tied to
performance or outcomes. Ratepayers (and taxpayers) aren't just denied
representation, the Remuneration Authority is one of the few
public agencies that is not even subject to freedom of information law
– so they never have to show their working.
Friend,
sunlight is the best disinfectant - and the more the voting public
understand how local government is turning from 'public service' into
'highly paid entitlement', the more pressure there will be to fix
it.
There are
some easy fixes we'd start with: first, councillor and mayoral
remuneration should be set once a three year term, not hiked
every year.
Second,
councils should be given the option to turn
down these annual pay increases. That way ratepayers would
know whether councils are serious about easing the pressure on
households.
See
how the pay packets of your local representatives compare
here.
Auckland
Council at its best: watering a rainstorm 🌧️
This week, in the midst of the massive rain storms that
have been battering the North Island, an Auckland Council contractor
was spotted watering a tree.
Yes, you
read that right. Not a drizzle. Not “cloudy but dry”. Proper summer
rain - the kind that has gutters overflowing and streets flooding -
and Auckland Council had a bod out watering the plants.
Auckland
Council’s response was a lame “We all make mistakes.” Sure.
But this one is less “oops” and more perfect snapshot
of how local government operates and the misaligned
incentives.
While rain
is hammering the city and drains are struggling to cope, someone is
being paid to do a task that is not only unnecessary, but actively
pointless. If there was ever a moment to apply common sense, this was
it. Wouldn't the time have been better spent clearing drains,
checking stormwater grates, or preventing the flooding we all end up
paying for later?
ACC’s plan
to avoid a $26 billion hole: do the basics… faster 🏃♂️💸
This week,
the Accident Compensation Corporation - ACC - has admitted the quiet
part out loud:
if nothing changes, its deficit is on track to blow out to a
staggering $26 billion by 2030.
The word
hole is an understatement. $26 billion is equivalent to
$12,700 for every Kiwi household in forecast
overspending
The
solution? ACC now says it will focus on rehabilitating claimants
faster and getting people back to work sooner, including hiring
hundreds more claims managers and pushing for more “active
participation” in recovery.
That all sounds sensible, but raises a rather
obvious question: why wasn’t ACC doing this
already?!
The
blow-out isn’t because Kiwis suddenly started injuring themselves
more, it’s because claims have dragged on longer, weekly compensation
costs have ballooned, and long-term liabilities have exploded. The
deficit has always been a management problem, not an accident
problem.
And
while ACC insists this won’t mean cutting cover, we all know what
happens next if the numbers don’t stack up: higher levies on workers
and businesses.
If ACC
wants taxpayers to believe this turnaround plan, it needs to prove it
can manage claims efficiently without simply clipping the
ticket harder.
So one
we'll be watching closely... 🧐
New Report
Peeks into the Books: MPs’ Expenses Compared 🥸
Over the
summer break, you may have seen the
social media commentary about the
report we published on 5 January laying out the hard numbers on who is
spending what in Parliament.
We found
that MPs have spent nearly $15 million in taxpayer money over the past
21 months while continuing to withhold line-by-line expense
information, leaving taxpayers unable to see what their dollars are
actually being spent on.
Our
analysis shows wide variation in both individual and party spending.
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi recorded the highest
individual Parliamentary Service expenditure over the period at
$273,681, followed by Labour MP Damien O’Connor and Greens MP Hūhana
Lyndon.
When some
MPs cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars more than their
colleagues, perfectly reasonable questions follow. But because
Parliamentary Service spending has special carveout from the Official
Information Act (just like, the Remuneration Authority - see above!)
the public aren't allowed to access to the receipts. So much for the
right of taxpayers to know where there money is going...
Opening the
books would let the numbers speak for themselves.
Read
the research report over on our website.
REPORT:
Why Indexing Tax Thresholds Makes More Sense than Labour's 'free' taxpayer funded GP visits
📋
The second
paper we released over summer Robbing
Peter to Pay Paul’s Doctor: Why Indexing Tax Thresholds Makes More
Sense exposes how the Governments' failure to adjust income
tax thresholds aren’t to inflation, sees the average Kiwi is already
$238 worse off — and that figure will keep climbing every year
politicians do nothing.
While
Labour want an approach of taxing more to pay for a Medicard scheme
for three 'free', sorry, taxpayer-funded GP visits per year, we show
how ending bracket creep provides more effective household relief than
a universal GP subsidy.
Ending bracket creep means taxpayers
are not punished for inflation  ≠
Tourism NZ’s
Instagram celebrity splurge: $9.4 million spent but receipts
“commercially sensitive”🤫 🤳
Finally this week, our investigations team revealed
over the Christmas break that Tourism New Zealand has
spent more than $9.4 million of taxpayer money on social media
influencers since 2023.
That’s 65 so-called "influencers", promoting
everything from destination marketing to online shopping campaigns and
even Minecraft downloadable content.
Despite spending millions, Tourism NZ won't tell
us what individual influencers were paid or what taxpayers actually
got in return — they're hiding behind a filter of “commercial
sensitivity”.
We’re
assured the campaigns delivered “sky high advertising value”, but when
it comes to the evidence, they won't supply the
numbers.
Jordan joined Newstalk ZB's Summer Breakfast to
talk through the influencer spend, the refusal to release basic
figures, and why “commercial sensitivity” is becoming the default
excuse for secrecy in government agencies.
👉 Listen to the Newstalk ZB
interview here
RIP
Garrick Tremain
 Over the summer period,
we were very sad learn of the passing of New Zealand’s finest and most
influential political cartoonist of the contemporary era. Garrick
Tremain was a treasured supporter of the Taxpayers' Union, and happy
to known as a significant financial contributor. I thought it was
worth repeating Jordan’s comments to the media, in case you missed the
news:
Garrick Tremain was a national institution. His
intelligence, humour, and insight shaped political debate in this
country for generations. He had an extraordinary talent for exposing
hypocrisy and absurdity with a pen, and he did so fearlessly. His
passing is a genuine loss to us, and to New Zealand’s political and
cultural life.
For decades, Garrick's work cut through
political spin with intelligence, clarity, and unmistakable wit. His
cartoons were never merely humorous; they were incisive, challenging,
and often uncomfortable for those in power.
In recent years,
we were honoured to count Garrick as a supporter of the Taxpayers’
Union. His financial support was generous, principled, and grounded in
a shared belief that robust criticism is essential to a healthy
democracy.
The Taxpayers’ Union extends its deepest sympathies to
Garrick Tremain’s family and friends. His unique contribution to
public discourse will be profoundly missed.
Late last
year, Peter Williams sat down with Garrick for a wide ranging
conversation for our podcast, Taxpayer Talk. You
can listen via our website here (or via all the usual podcast apps
by searching for "Taxpayer Talk").
Thanks for
your support,
 |
Tory
Relf
Head of Comms
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union
|
PS.
With election year underway, we’re leading the fight to put taxpayers
at the heart of election promises. But we can’t do that without your
support. Thank
you to everyone who donated to our Election Fighting Fund earlier this
week - I can’t wait to show you what we have in store for
2026.
|
