This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.
Aaron: We’re going to turn now to our first interview for the day. We’ve got mayoral candidate Aksel Bech. Good morning, Aksel.
Aksel: Mōrena
Aaron: So, you’re running again.
Aksel: I am, yes.
Aaron: Why run again?
Aksel: Well, it’s a good question, and a fair one. Let me say I was really pleased to have had the mandate from Raglan [last election]. I took about a third of the votes here, with Ra and Jacqui coming in neck and neck for the other spots.
Aaron: I never actually checked — did you win Raglan?
Aksel: I won Raglan. I won everywhere but the old Franklin ward — from Pokeno, Tuakau, down to Port Waikato, West Coast. That’s what put Mayor Jacqui in. So yes, I was pleased with that mandate.
I was disappointed not to be able to offer service, and watching from the outside — if things had gone brilliantly, if I’d been a happy chappie as a ratepayer — I might not have put my hand up again. But I felt there were reasons to stand: some of that empowering of communities we talked about last time just didn’t seem to happen. Plus, of course, the whole cost of living crisis, and rates contributing to that, which is really distressing in a lot of communities.
Aaron: So how are you running the campaign? Are you being critical of the current mayor?
Aksel: I try to focus on the issues, but as an outsider there probably are greater elements of that. My message last time was very much about complex times ahead — which was true — and that I had the skills and experience, both from two terms on council and from business, to see us through that. That message obviously didn’t resonate sufficiently.
But when you sit from the outside, it’s natural to ask, “Hang on a minute — how did rates go up 19% cumulatively over that period, 40% for targeted rates? How did debt double? How did that happen?” Those are questions you ask from the outside. From the inside, there are lots of reasons and explanations, which are not so apparent to the outsider.
I am trying to stay positive, because ultimately you can’t be motivated by negativity or just wanting to come in and cut. For me, the message is the same as last time: is being on that journey of devolving power, pushing it to the lowest level possible so there’s voice, choice, and control at the community level. That’s what really motivates me.
Aaron: Right at the start, you were saying which parts of the district you did well in, and that you didn’t do that well up north. But then, well, that’s Jacqui’s territory. That’s where she comes from.
Aksel: The old Franklin put in a Franklin mayor, in effect. And everyone asks the same question, right? “How can you possibly represent Raglan, you don’t live here?” But I get asked the same thing in Maramarua or Te Kauwhata..
Aaron: It’s a very tough and very diverse district. It’s a weird district, actually — it almost makes no sense in a lot of ways. Take Tamahere, for example. They do their shopping and working in Hamilton. They probably don’t feel they’ve got much to do with the rest of the district at all.
Aksel: Well, actually, I’ve moved without moving house. You might be interested to know — because of the expressway, I now live in Matangi, in the same house.
Aaron: All right, well done. Back to the northern part of the district — are you campaigning quite hard up there? That’s what I want to know. Do you know if you have support up there that you didn’t have last time?
Aksel: I think the community has, to some extent, recognised that the things I talked about before — skills, experience, competence — actually count for more than just being geographically conveniently located. That might sound a little harsh; I’m not trying to be negative. What I am saying is, to be a valid choice, people need to see you, to eyeball the person saying, “Vote for me.” So I am trying to be active in that community.
And I think that community, like many others, is disappointed. Some of those communities are quite different from Raglan. Take Te Kauwhata, for example — it’s a very new community, 250-square-metre sections, whose rates at $5,500. That’s kind of shocking. Three Waters is what’s pushed most of that.
Aaron: Well, that’s what I was going to ask you. You said the debt has doubled — is that because of the upgrade of the Three Waters infrastructure?
Aksel: That’s a big chunk of it. The debt was about $178 million when I left in 2022. It’s now going to hit $345 million, according to the pre-election report the council itself put out. There are two big wastewater plants in there — the one here in Raglan and the one in Te Kauwhata — about $30 to $40 million each. But there’s still a lot of daylight on top of that to get to $345 million.
That’s the first point. The second point is OPEX, which also contributes to…
Aaron: What’s OPEX?
Aksel: Operational expenses — staffing costs, the cost of running the organisation. That hits directly, because you have to charge it every year. You’re not paying that down like you do with a loan. Debt you can spread out; OPEX has to be funded every year. And most of that funding — 66% — comes out of rates. Salaries are an annual cost.
In fact, I think I shared with you the LGOIMA I did on this, because I didn’t want to be making things up.
Aaron: Yeah. And for people who don’t know, LGOIMA means…?
Aksel: It’s sort of like the Official Information Act request,
Aaron: But at the local body level?
Aksel: Yeah. Basically, you ask for things that should be publicly available, and the organisation generally obliges. Sometimes they decide it’s not, but usually they release it.
Aaron: And that showed you there have been a lot of staff hired?
Aksel: Yes. There are 67 more staff — it’s gone up from the high 300s to the mid 400s in three years. The cost impact of that is rates. My rates, your rates, have to fund another $12.2 million a year in staff costs.
Worse than that, the number of people making more than $100,000 is up by 80 — 82 to be exact. So when you contrast that with the 67 new staff, it means we’ve got more queen bees and fewer worker bees. There’s been a shift.
I’m not saying they’re all not doing anything, I’m just saying,from the outside, I don’t understand why an organisation that’s essentially doing the same work it used to do now has so much more cost.
Aaron: Has the population of the district grown?
Aksel: It has, yeah.
Aaron: But when it grows, shouldn’t staff grow proportionately?
Aksel: No, not proportionately.
Aaron: Or are you saying it hasn’t?
Aksel: It’s gotten disproportionate by a long way.
Aksel (continues): So this is the negative side of the coin — asking questions in a way that can feel inherently negative. But there is a flip side, a positive. I think we can genuinely do things better. We can genuinely devolve power to community boards and to organisations like Raglan Naturally, who actually understand what they want, what they need, what they can afford, and can deliver in a way that’s much better.
A wastewater plant is always going to be delivered by council — it’s too big and too complex. But there are a whole bunch of other things that matter for the amenity of life where actually Raglan has a proven track record of doing better than council. Waste minimisation is a good example. The collaborative way the wharf redevelopment has happened is another.
Those are examples of where the community knows better than council sitting somewhere else, working it out, and then giving you a choice of a yellow one or a green one at the end — with four weeks to decide.
Aaron: Yeah, I notice that whenever staff want to do something, they don’t know anything about our community because they don’t live here. So they have to do a report first before they can even think about what happens next. And that’s frustrating from within the community. You’re like, “Well, of course it’s going to be this,” because we just know. You could do it any other way.
Aksel: And that’s my answer to the previous question about how you can be relevant in such diverse and different communities. My answer is: I’m not trying to be the local in every community. I’m not trying to understand everything myself. I’m trying to give effect to the local voice — to get out of the way of the local voice, because the locals do know.
Aaron: So how do you do that? You’ve been inside this council before. You know how its mechanisms work. How do you actually give power to our community boards? Right now, they’re advisory bodies, apart from their $14,000 discretionary fund for community groups. What do you change?
Aksel: There has to be a cultural shift within council itself — to accept that in the master–servant relationship, council is the servant. I think it forgets that. Obviously there are things like issuing consents or food hygiene certificates where it is the regulator, the “master” if you like. But most of what council does should be supportive, enabling, facilitating — or just getting out of the way of the community when it wants to get on with something.
How do you do that? I think the best work we did in my time on council was the Blueprints — community master planning. The next stage, which hasn’t happened, is for those documents to actually have standing. A planner or consenting officer must give effect — that’s the technical term — to those documents. Currently, they just say, “That’s interesting, but I have to give effect to all these other things,” and the Blueprint sits to one side.
So giving effect to that is key. There are other elements too — things like participatory democracy and deliberative democracy, which we don’t use much in this country. Citizens’ assemblies, citizens’ juries, greater use of referenda — all ways to deliberately and directly give power back to the community. Instead of a staff report, you get a report from the community.
Aaron: Okay, but would the community board have more powers, though?
Aksel: Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. For example, we’ve got what used to be the Wellbeing Trust — the dividends from that fund, which are now called the Blueprint money. That’s additional; it’s not like the discretionary fund that comes directly out of rates collected from this area. This comes from the dividends of a bigger endowment, which now sits with Momentum Waikato.
Why do we have staff writing reports on what’s best for a community? Why not distribute some of that money directly to community boards and committees? Maybe it needs a joint sign-off from the ward councillor and the community board, for example — but then you can get on with it.
As you know, a group of volunteers with $1,000 can complete a project. Council can spend the same amount just putting out road cones — and then the money’s gone. Nothing actually gets done.
Aaron: We were talking about this a few years ago, and I’m aware of it all the time. Every time we criticise council, I end up saying, “It’s not a personal attack on the staff — they just don’t know our community. I wish they’d all come and live here so they understood us.”
Aksel: Yeah, but they can’t. Just like the mayor can’t be everywhere, staff can’t be everywhere. So surely you defer to the people whose money it is in the first place, and who do know. That’s the difference between local governance and local government.
Local governance is people wanting to have a say in the things that matter at their local level. We have this inherent drive to make the place we live better for ourselves, for visitors, to be welcoming and to provide the amenity we need. That’s local governance — that’s thousands of years old. Local government is a creature of legislation. And right now, it’s messy.
Central government — that’s the other thing. I come back a bit grumpier than before. Local government has become the whipping boy of central government.
Aaron: Okay, so I want to have a discussion about this.
Aksel: Are you sure we have enough time?
Aaron: No, we don’t. So I’ll briefly give some background.
The Taxpayers’ Union — which is an astroturf lobby group representing interests that aren’t everyday people, I’ll just say that — has run a very effective campaign saying “rates are too high.” But there’s no nuance in their debate. No questions about value, like whether we’re getting value for money. No explanation that rates are about to rise because government pushed the Three Waters upgrades onto councils. None of that.
So what’s the game? What’s the end goal? To me, it looks like taking power away from the council sector and concentrating it in central government. I haven’t looked into it in great detail, but why else would you run a campaign like this?
And there’s been attempts to disempower Māori through legislation, like the Treaty Principles Bill. I feel like the same thing is happening here — a desire to concentrate power in the hands of central government. And New Zealand doesn’t have checks and balances like other countries. No senate, no congress, no president, no federal system or anything.
So, that’s some background for you. What were you going to say?
Aksel: I’m not sure there was a question at the end of that. [laughs] I think what we’ve seen over the last year or year and a half is the government feeling it has a greater mandate directly with local communities and ratepayers than with local government. Not with taxpayers — but with ratepayers. In other words, they feel they can speak more directly to ratepayers’ interests, and councils are becoming less relevant. They’re sidelining councils quite deliberately, I think.
And low voter turnout kind of makes their point. If only 30% of our district — third lowest in the country — can be bothered to turn out to vote for ward councillors and mayors, then maybe people have disengaged from council processes. Government has felt like there’s a vacuum to step into.
Aaron: People might be sidestepping central government and using the power within local bodies. That’s a genuine issue, I’d say. Is that what you were saying? I’m just not quite sure.
Aksel: No, not so much. This discussion about what the “core business” of councils is — what I call services — is really interesting.
Aaron: I haven’t seen a real discussion, I’ve just seen slogans.
Akel: Yeah, you’re right, and the slogans go: “roads, pipes, and rubbish — anything else is a vanity project, stop doing it. Councils have no mandate in the social wellbeing space, get out of it, stop wasting money.” That’s been the message.
Now, the Local Government Amendment Bill — it’s not quite called that, but that’s effectively what it is — has just closed for submissions. I made a submission. And as soon as they tried to reduce council’s role to those three things and put it into legislation, guess what? They ran into trouble.
Because then you ask, “What about parks? What about museums? So museums are core business but Cemeteries are not” And suddenly it’s not so simple.
Aaron: So this is people making it up as they go along, clearly.
Aksel: Absolutely. And there was a whole bunch of other things — libraries, for example, thank goodness they were included. But once you try to reduce it all to three points and put the slogan into law, you realise it’s a bit tricky.
And the worst part is, there’s a bullet point at the end that just says “any regulatory function.” Well, there are about 40 things on there. Government requires councils to do things like license alcohol premises, provide food hygiene certificates, issue dog registrations, and so on.
Aaron: This is all in other bits of legislation too, which they’d have to change to make it work.
Aksel: Well, no. They’re just saying, “Whatever we decide, local government, you have to do. And by the way, there won’t be any money with it, so just raise a fee for it.” Which, of course, adds to unaffordability. Those are government’s vanity projects.
I probably shouldn’t use this example, because I haven’t done the homework on it, but let me venture onto thin ice. If you’ll indulge me.
We used to have an issue with kids drowning in home pools. It was terrible — nobody wants that. Government, I don’t recall if it was left or right, introduced rules requiring fences around home pools. The fence had to be designed so a five-year-old couldn’t enter without an adult or proper supervision. That was a good thing. And it worked — drowning stats at the time went down quite significantly.
Then, maybe six or seven years ago when I was last on council, the government of the day said, “Actually, we want you to inspect those fences every three years, and you’ll have to charge for it.”
Of course, there was massive pushback from the community: “Why are you coming onto my property? Why are you charging me $150 for this? It’s terrible.” Lots of resistance.
That’s a government intervention. But who’s asked the key question: how many five-year-old drownings have been prevented since that extra compliance was introduced? If the answer is, “We’ve saved lives,” then great — thumbs up, government you saw something and saved it. But if no lives have been saved, then it’s just more compliance. More government vanity projects pushed onto councils, which adds to unaffordability.
Aaron: So there’s an issue of mayors needing to push back on government. Because government says, “Your rates are too high,” but at the same time, “You have to do Three Waters.”. How do you push back on that? Because as mayor you’d represent about 92,000 people. That’s not a lot. They wouldn’t rate you very highly, would they?
Aksel: No but Future Proof helps.
Aaron: What is Future Proof?
Aksel: Future Proof is a formal collaborative arrangement between Waipā, Hamilton City, Matamata-Piako, Waikato District, and the Regional Council in this area. It’s a way of speaking to government with a united voice.
It arose out of wanting the expressway funded — from Auckland down to Hamilton, as it is now, or to Cambridge. When every district — 67 of them — scraps for its own share of money, it’s easy for government to say, “You’ve had your turn, now it’s someone else’s.” But when one region speaks clearly, with an aligned and articulate business case, it’s much more powerful.
And let’s be honest: the “golden triangle” from Auckland down to us and across to Tauranga holds more than half of New Zealand’s population and more than half its GDP. This is an important region. We generate a lot of wealth, along with providing an amazing lifestyle — whether rural, coastal like here, or urban. There are a lot of good things happening here, and we are economically significant.
Aaron: What about this — I feel like I’m the only person saying it. Rates are becoming more and more unaffordable, and I think that’s true. But it’s also part of a wider economic pattern — the housing crisis, which you know well because you’ve been involved with it; people this winter struggling to pay electricity; and for decades, kids turning up to school hungry. There’s a wider economic picture.
In my wildest daydreams, I just want the mayors to push back at government and say, “You’re not running the economy very well. Stop blaming us for people’s inability to pay rates.”
Aksel: Yeah, that’s right. And if there’s no social mandate for councils, and “wellbeing” is about to be removed again from the legislation, then who is going to lead in that space?
Aaron: I think that’s an abdication of the responsibility of leaders. What other culture in history has allowed leaders to say, “We don’t care about your wellbeing”? Leaders like that don’t usually last long.
Aksel: No. And that goes back to my point about local governance versus local government. I’m very supportive of returning to that. It means the mayor has to stand up for the community and articulate its frustration back to central government.
Unusually, as you’ll know, 96% of every tax dollar in this country goes centrally. Only 4% goes anywhere else.
Aaron: I didn’t realise it was that low.
Aksel: Within the OECD, it’s extreme. And every time central government pushes something onto local government, they just say, “Raise a fee for it. Charge for that service. Bill it into general rates.” None of that tax take gets shared.
The classic example for Raglan is coping with visitors in summer. Economically it brings opportunity, but with a new wastewater plant, all those toilet flushes are effectively paid for out of targeted rates across the region — disproportionately here because of visitors. Why is there no bed tax, or no mechanism for keeping the GST?
Aaron: I tried to introduce that in the last district plan. It just got ignored. But it was only me saying it, and one person doesn’t… Anyway, I want to come back around to this rates issue. Everyone agrees people are having difficulty paying. What can we actually do about it, given that government’s got its momentum up and we’re not going to see a wholesale change in the economy anytime soon?
Aksel: No, that’s right. And you’re right. Ultimately, the issue is significant. When I was with Habitat for Humanity, I spent a year working in affordable housing. Actually, I’ve been lobbying in that space now for five years. Because whatever issue you look at, housing is normally part of it.
In some countries, particularly the Nordic ones, they have a “housing first” approach. You start by solving housing, because you can’t address anything else until people are well housed — in a warm, dry, appropriate home.
But the issue of rates affordability now is really significant. It was the largest driver of CPI in the last set of statistics Stats NZ put out. It’s real. People are making choices about whether to keep the power on, or maybe go without food themselves to feed the kids. We’re in a bad spot. And you’re right — ultimately it’s because we don’t make enough money. We’re not productive enough as an economy.
Aaron: But I want to argue that there is enough money being made — it’s just being siphoned off by large corporate organisations. The amount of money in the banking system alone that gets funnelled back to Australia could do a lot of good.
Aksel: So let’s agree we’re not going to solve that here.
Aaron: Yeah, sorry. Yes. I just wish this was part of the discussion.
Aksel: Yeah, sure. No, and I don’t disagree with you. But in terms of the things we can affect — which is a useful place to start.
I’ve talked a lot about shared services in this campaign because it does my head in, particularly having sat on the outside for three years and watched. In this Future Proof sub-region — which people travel across seamlessly — we’re not aware of the boundaries. If you drive into Hamilton, you don’t suddenly think, “Oh, that’s a different council.”
Aaron: There’s just a line in the ground somewhere.
Aksel: Where my house is, I’m a five-minute walk from Hamilton City, a five-minute drive from Waipā, and I live in Waikato. It’s nonsense. My community of interest is all of that.
But in that area we’ve got five CEOs, five CFOs, five marketing teams, five comms teams, five rating teams, five sets of building inspectors. Five, five, five. Do you think it might be possible to find some efficiency there? I do.
Environment Waikato — if you think back long enough, the precursor to the Regional Council — used to send a rates bill with one line for them and one line for us, on the same bill.
Aaron: Oh really?
Aksel: Yeah. Why don’t we do that again? It’s been done before. And we’re now doing it with water, with the CCO with Hamilton. Water is tricky, complicated, a big thing. If we can do it with that, can’t we do it for something like licensing food trucks?
Aaron: So do you know how much this would save?
Aksel: I don’t, but I know it’s a good chunk. Probably half of those rates-funded services, or staffing costs, are related to things other councils also provide their own version of. There have to be savings in there. And coming back to the $12 million extra we’re spending on staff — surely some of that is duplication with other councils.
So that’s a big one. I also think we need to look at the breadth of services we provide. So it’s not just roads, rubbish and pipes. It’s more than that. Is it what people actually want? Do they value it, and do they want to pay for it? These are difficult financial times for our community.
Aaron: What’s something you think we could give the flick?
Aksel: I hate to throw things out there without being back on the inside and understanding it fully. But take building regulations as an example. We’ve got one Building Act for the whole country, yet Waipā, Hamilton City, and Waikato District have interpreted it differently. So we end up with bespoke regulations, and we can’t easily swap building inspectors. There’s been work to harmonise that into one set of rules, and I think it’s near completion.
Aaron: I know people on building sites have struggled with this.
Aksel: It’s the same Act. So I would think in that area, there’d be a solution coming. It’s taken five or six years, and it started when I was [last] in council. That’s way too slow
Aksel: The demise of the regional economic development agency, Te Waka is another one where we did have a regional approach. The reason we did that is because if an Auckland business wanted to relocate — because they couldn’t get the space, or their workers couldn’t afford housing — and they wanted to come into the Waikato, I don’t think it’s right that Waipā would be saying, “Hey, come down to us, we’ll give you a break, we’ll make it easier. Come around the airport precinct.” Waikato District will be saying, “No, no, no, you want Northgate at Horotiu,” or maybe, “Think about Ohinewai, where Sleepyhead is.” Hamilton will say, “Oh, the new Ruakura Superhub.”
We shouldn’t be fighting each other. We should be working together to make the Waikato attractive as a whole. Then people can enjoy the jobs and economic uplift that results. So the idea was: pool our money, and try and do it more efficiently.
That’s not where our council is now. They’ve created their own economic development agency with a number of staff. I’ve heard the mayor speak about that as one of her achievements, but I just see us heading toward having 11 of those across the Waikato region. I wonder if that’s really the most efficient way to do it.
Aaron: I know you were talking with someone about this yesterday in Raglan — John sent me an email saying I had to follow up with a question. How much cooperation are you going to get from the other local authorities? Are other mayors or mayoral candidates campaigning on the same issue?
Aksel: So actually, this time John’s been snookered — and that doesn’t happen often because he asks very difficult, thoughtful questions. But the Waikato Times ran an article over the weekend where the Waikato Chamber of Business put this exact question to the mayoral candidates of Hamilton. I’ve spoken to them individually as well, and they’re all pro–amalgamation.
Aaron: of services, in the way you’re talking about?
Aaron: They’re more hesitant about democratic amalgamation.
Aaron: What does that mean?
Aaron: In the past we’ve looked at Auckland, where the Regional Council and four city councils merged into one. That raised big questions: how is local voice preserved? Who do we vote for? Will my councillor even be mine anymore?
So let’s put that aside. Let’s call that Democratic representation — how my voice is heard. Service delivery is another. And amalgamating services into a shared-service model is something we can do quite quickly. It doesn’t require legislative change. Your democratic representation stays the same. Governance oversight stays the same.
But do you really care, if there’s a noisy neighbour, or somebody abandons a car in your street, or you want to build a shed, whether the person who answers your call sits in Cambridge, Hamilton, Ngaruawahia, or Raglan? You just want it dealt with efficiently.
Aaron: You’d care if it was Raglan, because you might know them — and that feels…
Aksel: Yeah, well, that’s right. But then we’re back at the opposite extreme of shared services. If we want to replicate that local familiarity in every town, there’ll be huge inefficiencies.
Aaron: That’s what I’m saying. The only real difference people would notice is whether it was someone they saw on the street every week, or just someone elsewhere. And at the moment, it’s just somewhere else anyway.
Aksel: And look, this is where the whole circular economy and zero-waste philosophy comes in. If you hire someone local to cut the lawns or maintain parts of town, the money goes around two, three, four times. They employ another local from time to time, they get their machinery serviced locally, and so on.
And if Mrs. Smith can’t look after a strip of grass anymore, that local contractor will probably just do it — rather than saying, “Oh no, that’s a variation to contract.” That’s the value of procuring and supporting locally. I’m totally on that page. We need to get better at it again. That’s what devolution to the lowest local level really means.
Aaron: The thing that scares people about amalgamating councils is our experience so far. Out here there used to be three committees that looked after different areas of green space (like Wainui Reserve). Eventually those were combined. And then removed. And now Council does that from Ngaruawahia. The local input has gone.
We’ve got a community board now, but there used to be a council based here. If we went to a big regional council, we fear we’d just have one community board for the whole district — and we’d lose that local connection.
Aksel: In a way, if we could go all the way back to that old model, with a town clerk who just got on with the practical running of things — fixing potholes, keeping the place maintained — without interference from elected members, that would feel more grounded. I’m not sure we can get back to that.
And with growth, some things are just too big. The wastewater plant is a good example — about $30 million was spent here in Raglan on that solution. That’s too big for a small town.
Aaron: And actually, everyone’s been complimentary about how things have worked with Watercare. Even John Lawson has said it seems to have worked, because they’ve had the level of expertise that a small council couldn’t provide.
Aksel: Exactly. And if there’s one thing I’m most pleased about, it’s the blueprints. As deputy mayor, I had the privilege of signing the contract with Watercare — a billion-dollar, 30-year contract. That was later undone, not by the District Council or the current council, but by a change in government direction.
What I’d say — and I don’t want to sound too pointed — is that one of the claims of the current incumbent is that she’s about “do-ey do-ey rather than talky talky.” That’s her phrase. She says she delivered a wastewater plant here in Raglan that had been talked about for seven years but wasn’t built until she became mayor.
Well, I think that actually illustrates the difference in approach. Because it was those seven years of talking that made the project what it is. Last time a wastewater consent here went straight to the Environment Court, and the community was deeply divided on whether it was the right solution. This time, we worked very collaboratively. I chaired community consultation meetings monthly for five years, alongside many passionate people from Raglan. And we got a fantastic solution.
Yes, it was built in the last year — but it was the six years of talking that produced something fit for purpose, that reflects the interests of this community. It’s a unique solution, environmentally sensitive, culturally respectful, and it has elements that could be replicated elsewhere.
Aaron: All right, folks, we’re talking to Aksel Bech, the former deputy mayor, now running for mayor again in Waikato District. It’s time to wrap up — So what’s your message? What’s your pitch to people about why they should vote for you?
Aksel: Yeah, so there are two sides to the coin. On one side, there’s absolute acknowledgement that rates affordability is an issue. We are in a cost-of-living crisis. Some people say, “I can afford it, but I’m not getting value for the services, so why are rates going up?” Others say, “I just can’t afford it.” We do need to look at that seriously.
The flip side — the positive side — is continuing the work from three years ago of empowering communities. Not trying to be the Raglan local, not trying to tell Raglan what it needs, but making sure council goes into that servant role rather than a master role, really listening. That’s local governance, rather than local government.
If you believe in that, then I’m asking for your vote. If you think things are tickety-boo and travelling really well, then you should probably vote for the incumbent.
Aaron: And if people want to follow up on any of this, I know you’ve got a website with quite a bit of information.
Aksel: I do, yep. And Policy.nz is also running a very comprehensive list of candidate policies. I’m out and about too — actually down at the library here for the next hour or so. I’ll put that up as a Facebook event. Anyone who wants to call in, I’ll be there. And of course, there’ll be more opportunities — including the Meet the Candidates event at the Town Hall.
Aaron: Yeah, on the Sunday. See you there. Thanks, Aksel.