Colleen’s news
I went to the quarterly Zone 4 meeting in Palmerston North on 25 August. This is our Association’s opportunity to hear about and understand issues for the Associations from New Plymouth across to Wairoa and down to Wellington. Nine of the 19 associations attended the meeting .
Speaking to Presidents around the Zone, I have found most have many issues in common; the increasing number of elderly poor, insufficient affordable housing for the elderly, increasingly unaffordable rents and those in Council-owned accommodation not entitled to the accommodation benefit. The reduction in aged care beds concerns all associations, whether or not that be from a shortage of nursing and caring staff.
Some people in their 50s are not preparing or do not understand how and what they need to prepare for their senior years. More people will be retiring with mortgages and other debt arrangements. There is no crystal ball – we have to take what we know and use it to our best advantage, and assist those who seek help.
The first order of business at the Zone 4 meeting was the election of the Zone 4 Representative to the Grey Power Federation Board. I was elected to the position for a 2-year term. The Zone thanked Lew Findlay for his extensive work as Zone 4 Representative. The Federation Board met 28-30 August so I had my baptism to the work of the Federation.
The Board comprises the Federation President Jan Pentecost, Vice-President Pete Matcham, Acting Federation Secretary Ross Fallen, and Treasurer Bill Raynor. Each of the seven Zones elect a representative, who sits on the Board. All Board members have portfolios and I will be working particularly on future planning – strategic priorities – and marketing which includes membership. I have skilled colleagues to work with.
Membership is a key issue for the Federation. Grey Power has lost members over the years for a variety of reasons. Strength in numbers supports our work as an advocate for those aged 50+. If you have friends you think would like to join Grey Power please be in touch with us by telephone 04 595 6255 (leave a message) or by email membership@greypowerwellington.org.nz
Prospective members can join Grey Power Wellington Central online directly by using the link https://greypowerwellington.org.nz/grey-power-membership/
The annual membership fees are: Individual $25, Couple $30 for year 1 April to 31 March. As agreed at the AGM, from the beginning of the 2023 financial year, 1 April 2023, the membership fee will be: Individual $20, Couple $30.
Your Wellington Central Grey Power Association needs committee members, particularly a Meeting Secretary, Secretary, Treasurer. We have four committee members doing the work of at least eight people. Shared work is never onerous! Contact us using the details above to support the work of your Association.
Colleen Singleton, President
Xmas lunch
Our Xmas lunch is at the Grand, 69 Courtenay Place, on Wednesday 23 November at midday. As usual we will subsidise each member’s bill to the limit of $20 (excluding drinks). Please rsvp to membership@greypowerwellington.org.nz
For your diary
25 September to 1 October Seniors Week events: https://www.acwellington.org.nz/events/
8 October Deadline for local election voting
12 October at 1.30pm: A talk: Retirement villages, the pros and cons. Tararua Tramping Club, 4 Moncrieff St, Mt Victoria
23 November at midday: Grey Power Xmas lunch at the Grand, Courtenay Place. Please rsvp if you are coming to membership@greypowerwellington.org.nz
Grey Power Federation AGM
The Grey Power Federation’s 2022 AGM was held over two and half days from Tuesday 26 July to Thursday 28 July at the Brentwood Hotel in Kilbirnie.
The Federation’s has four officers, president, vice president, secretary and treasurer with each holding office for two years, with election for two of these in alternative years. This year the positions of president and treasurer were due for election and only one nomination for each was received, being Jan Pentecost, the current president and Bill Raynor from the North Shore for treasurer. Long serving treasurer Roy Reid had decided not to stand for re-election. The meeting confirmed both in their respective positions for the next two years.
The key business of the meeting was to consider and accept the reports of the past year’s activities from the President and Treasurer (including the financial statements for the year ending 31 December 2021), the Stand Alone and Standing Committees and National Advisory Groups, a total of some 17 in total – the main these were accepted without much discussion.
Between consideration of reports a range of invited speakers addressed the meeting. Those from the new Aged Care Commissioner Carolyn Cooper, Suzy Morrissey from the Retirement Commission and John Collyns from the Retirement Villages Association were of particular interest. The Minister of Seniors, Ayesha Verrall was unable to address the meeting in person, instead she provided specially prepared video, which was shown twice.
The meeting also considered a number of remits, six constitutional and 10 policy – 10 were supported overwhelmingly, two by a narrow margin, three defeated including one overwhelmingly and one withdrawn.
The meeting was well organised and conducted in a positive spirit, Jan Pentecost and other chairs allowing time for adequate questions and expression of opinions. The meeting concluded its lengthy agenda before the scheduled close midday on Thursday.
The September issue of the NZ Grey Power Magazine contains a detailed report on the AGM highlights, including the details of the policy remits passed. This issue also contains report of Carolyn Cooper’s address.
David Cuthbert, Vice President.
The ups and downs of retirement villages
If you’re downsizing, one of the possibilities is a retirement village (the preferred term is residential village). Normally we have a speaker from the industry, but this time we have someone from the other side: the Residential Villages Residents Association, who have been lobbying for changes in the industry to make it fairer for residents. Glynis Denz will talk at the Tararua Tramping Club, 4 Moncrieff St, Mt Victoria, on Wednesday 12 October at 1.30pm. All are welcome. Refreshments will be provided.
What happened when the Association lobbied MPs
Seniors Week
25 September to 1 October Lots happening, see: https://www.acwellington.org.nz/events/
Our 2021/2 financial report
It’s online here (pdf)
Local elections
You should have received your ballot papers by now; all you have to do is fill them in and send them off by 8 Oct (hopefully doing some research first).
Covid medicine
It’s now available to most seniors and you can get it from your local chemist, but you need to start it no later than 5 days after you show symptoms. More information here.
Jobs corner
Census workers required for forthcoming census.
Managing and maintaining quadricycle hire on the waterfront. This is a hands-on position – both matching people to cycles and ensuring they are always maintained. The job involves working weekends and school holidays and occasional other times by arrangement. Email margotlynthomas@gmail.com
Cost of living driving retired seniors back to work in the UK.
Economists have crafted online fake job ads and found that those incorporating age-related stereotypes discourage older workers from applying
Scamwatch: beware 0900 numbers
As told by a member: An elderly relative (in his 90s) received a phone call asking him to ring them back on the number they gave (a 0900 number). He was trying to be helpful, as they said they were doing a survey on older people. He said that they got him to ring back over several days, and had him on the phone for hours.
So now his phone bill has several hundred dollars added. I rang Spark for him, and they did eventually offer to would reduce his bill by 50%. But they wouldn’t help identify the culprit, wouldn’t block 0900 calls on his line, nor take any action against this scammer.
Library corner
Magazines are increasingly only available online through your library card. The very wonderful Oldie magazine has just joined the ranks. Sad! Although it does make it more accessible for those with PCs.
Oil on troubled three waters
Reprinted from the December 2021 Tauranga & BOP Grey Power magazine. We think it’s a good guide to the issues.
In 2016 a waterborne outbreak. of gastroenteritis hit the town of Havelock North. Around 5,500 of the town’s 14,000 residents were estimated to have become ill. Forty-five were hospitalised, and four people died and as a result the government decided that national standards needed to be implemented across all three waters – drinking, wastewater and stormwater.
The Water Services Bill was passed into law last month. This Act regulates the supply and quality of drinking water in New Zealand and will impose considerable compliance costs on both public and private water suppliers.
The Government proposed the Three Waters infrastructure reforms and New Zealand would be divided up into regions and local authorities would be asked to make a decision in stages about whether to opt in or stay independent.
As requested by the government, councils across the country have gone through a process of discussing the merits of the proposal and providing feedback to the government. A number of councils decided that they didn’t want to participate. They are mostly the ones with large investments in their capital infrastructure and relatively easy access to water compared to some other districts.
In October the formal “second stage,” of councils deciding whether or not they were in or out, was taken off the table.
Even before this decision, the Three Waters reforms had become a “cause celebre” for a number of organisations. The National Party, as the official opposition, were naturally against the changes.
ACT and some individual lobby groups have jumped on the bandwagon and cries of “Stop the Steal” and “Hands off our Assets” became prominent in mainstream and social media.
Three Waters has become something of a political football. Sadly the “let’s solve the problem” aspect has become lost in the win or lose battle to score points, gather votes and defeat the other guy.
Is there anything good about Three Waters? Infrastructure assets are liabilities as well as assets. If they are not maintained, depreciated and renewed, they fail to work and when they do, it can be spectacular and catastrophic. Ask the citizens of Wellington how they felt when they had sewerage running through their streets.
Many councils have a long history of underinvestment in their critical infrastructure. Why? Because infrastructure investment is long term, 30-50 years or even longer in same cases.
Local body politicians are elected for three years, and their decision-making is often based on getting re-elected rather than the longer-term needs of their own community.
According to former Tauranga Mayor Tenby Powell, discussing Three Waters in a Newsroom article, “Too many local politicians lacked expertise, and lacked any vision beyond their three-year re-election cycle.” Where I live in the Thames Coromandel District, our budget for water infrastructure maintenance and renewals over the next 30 years is nearly 800 million dollars. For some councils the challenges of providing water infrastructure are significant. A small ratepayer base combined with large visitor numbers at peak times puts enormous pressure on resources.
Limited access to fresh water sources, mountainous and often steep coastal terrain, scattered rural populations and a limited ability to store water in large quantities can mean severe water restrictions in times of drought.
One of the stated objectives of Three Waters has been to spread the cost of providing services over a longer period and level the playing field between councils that have easier access to freshwater and to funding, and those that don’t.
A council with a river running past the front door and 150,000 ratepayers can provide water at a cheaper rate than one with 30,000 ratepayers, limited access to water and a mountain range in between.
Our Thames Coromandel council is carrying $152 million of debt and many councils around the country have considerably more. We have limited ability to borrow for infrastructure investment and ratepayers with no appetite for double digit rates increases.
“Good decision-making is critical for getting the most from infrastructure: We need to prioritise the infrastructure that will make the biggest difference to economic, social, cultural and environmental wellbeing and support a high-quality life for all New Zealanders.
Infrastructure is not free and someone must pay. We have to spread these costs fairly, both across and within generations, so that those who are benefiting are paying.” Dr Allan Bollard – Chair of the NZ Infrastructure Commission.
The total estimated cost of Three Waters investment for New Zealand over the next 50 years could be as high as $185 billion dollars. Funding for this investment is complicated and comes with conditions from the lenders, one of the reasons why the “ownership,” control and management structures proposed by the government have become so complicated and removed from direct council influence. It’s called “balance sheet separation”, and the argument is that if we don’t do it, we don’t get the money.
Under the current proposals, a “Regional Representative Group”, made up of local authority members and mana whenua, will vote on appointing an independent panel, and that panel will itself appoint board members to govern the local three waters entity.
This somewhat complicated and difficult to understand governance model has become one of the major points of contention with Three Waters.
There are also very real concerns about how much influence smaller councils would have in the allocation of spend. If, for example, they are just one of 22 councils in a district with no seat at the governance table, how does their voice get heard? Some of the rhetoric in social media, and some of it sadly amplified by certain politicians, has become blatantly racist. Claims of Māori charging for water, of a hidden agenda to give Māori co-governance, royalties and control over water and over the whole country have been rife through some parts of the internet. We live in an age where misinformation and rumour has a louder voice than fact and properly researched journalism.
At the time of writing (December 2021) the Minister of Local Government, Nanaia Mahuta, has appointed a working group to settle issues over how the four new water entities will be run. The group will consist of nine mayors – including Auckland’s Phil Goff, Christchurch’s Lianne Dalziel, Lower Hutt’s Campbell Barry, WBOP Garry Webber and Nelson’s Rachel Reese – and nine Māori representatives.
Mahuta, in a statement, said the group had been appointed to take a “fresh look” at how the Government proposes the four new water entities it intends to create will be governed.
Three Waters has elements which could be of significant benefit to some councils who are struggling to pay for infrastructure, if the governance and management issues were sorted out. The investments are huge and the consequences multi-generational.
“(Grant) Robertson says when it comes to Three Waters there will be “hundreds of billions” raised over a multi-decade horizon to bring that infrastructure up to scratch and provide for growth. The official projection is $185 billion over 30 years but that is now expected to rise. The debt will be raised on the balance sheets of the four new public-owned entities.” The communication and messaging around Three Waters has been confusing and perceived by some as condescending.
The voices against Three Waters are loud and persistent, however there have been few, if any, alternative solutions offered. This leaves smaller, underfunded local authorities with limited options apart from increasing rates to levels which will bring councils to crisis point in some cases.
The way forward is unclear, and there remain many unanswered questions around, not just the Three Waters Reforms, but how they will affect the future make-up, functions and revenue streams of local authorities in New Zealand.
Compiled by Len Salt
