The Independent Local Government Rates Inquiry panel has released its report. This provoked a brief flurry of media attention, a few mild comments from local authorities and an audible, collective sigh of disappointment from ratepayers.
The report’s authors claim that “this is a report that creates an agenda for change”. I hope it does nothing of the sort: my rates bill is high enough already. The 96 recommendations contained in the report include: proposals for user-pays charges for water, private sector involvement in funding infrastructure such as roads, more flat charges for services, increasing the local authority petroleum tax, and removing the business differential for rates. The report states that “the panel does not support removing GST on rates”. It also recommends “making more use of debt to finance long-term assets (including infrastructure bonds)”.
The Panel’s chairman, David Shand, spent eight years as a public financial management specialist for the World Bank and the IMF so I suppose it should come as no surprise that the report has a strong flavour of the “structural adjustment” policies promoted by those organisations.
The Democrats for social credit submission to the Inquiry was comprehensive. It called for the removal of GST on rates. It fully explored the benefits of central government enabling local authorities to borrow interest-free money from the Reserve Bank, thereby reducing the cost of new projects, virtually eliminating intergenerational debt, reducing rates and ensuring the completion of necessary infrastructure projects as and when they are needed. A full and thorough explanation of the Community Credit Programme was included. The Inquiry was urged to request the government to source local authority capital funding utilising the RBNZ instead of commercial trading banks. The DSC submission offered a forward looking, practical, simple solution to a key driver of rates increases. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was a sound, workable alternative.
Instead, the Panel has produced a report which advocates the use of the same tired, failed policies of the purveyors of right wing, market-driven economics. The challenge for the Labour-Progressives Government will be in resisting the temptation to act in accordance with the report’s recommendations. Ratepayers struggling with an increasing rates burden will hope that this report is filed away somewhere dark and inaccessible.
New Zealand is an island nation. We are in the position of being able to set our own standards, determine our own direction and live according to our beliefs without unduly affecting any other nation. We can make our own rules. Our geographical isolation liberates us: we can please ourselves, and act courageously in our own best interests.
Unlike the Local Government Rates Inquiry report, Democrats for social credit monetary reform policies give New Zealanders the freedom to choose an independent future.
Written By:
Stephnie deRuyter
Party Leader