Comments

I happened to be one of the people randomly chosen for the Wellington Regional survey of opinions on the amalgamation options. As the now published results show, an overwhelming majority of Wairarapa people opted for a stand alone Wairarapa council. While on the evidence currently available this was not my personal preference, I am not at all surprised at the finding.

The questions were mainly straight forward; ‘do you prefer (a) or( b)?’ without any mention as to the financial or other consequences of each option. (Rather like a car questionnaire asking do you prefer BMWs or Chinese Cherrys – without taking into account the various costs). Nor does a telephone interview give the interviewee much time to think about such issues as financial implications.

So, not surprisingly, the majority opted for the feel good option of going it alone. This could well prove to be the most expensive – nobody knows. Running such a major opinion survey before even the most basic costings have been made, and published, is a nonsense.

And yet, in a double page advertisement, sponsored by our council, under the heading: ‘ What Wairarapa thinks’ is stated ‘a common theme has emerged, Wairarapa people have a strong preference for a single Wairarapa Council’.

The council is being disingenuous in using the result of such a faulted survey. The problem is that shouted often and loud enough the ‘results’ become self fore filling. I am aware that there is a Wairarapa group organised to campaign for a stand alone Wairarapa Council, they will be happy to see these unsubstantiated findings being promoted.

When can we expect some hard financial numbers on the various options? When can we expect some indication of representative allocations on the suggested amalgamations? It is quite disingenuous of the investigation group to be running opinion polls before these, and other salient facts, are published.

We could well study the result for Auckland’s Rodney District which, like Wairarapa, is country perched on the outskirts of a city. Rodney was dragged, much against its will, into the Super City amalgamation. Rather to their surprise, and no doubt delight, they now find that their rates have dropped dramatically. There are preliminary figures which show that a similar case would apply for the Wairarapa.

The point is that it is vital that financial projections and representation proposals for each option are well published before resident’s opinions are sought. Why was this regional survey run before these figures had been so produced?
Mike Beckett