Not content with extorting more money from ratepayers to pay VOLUNTEER STUDENT COUNCILLORS they are now contravening Government Directives and actively promoting Maori Wards through the district and to anyone who will listen.
Where are you Simon Watts? You have been missing in action since you took over the Local Government Portfolio from the very active and competent Simeon Brown who got things done. The Hastings District Council would not buck against his directives!!!
Act’s local government spokesman, Cameron Luxton, is doing his bit to stand against the Council by disagreeing with what they are doing and saying `the council needs to stop the rollout of the videos on the Hastings council’s official social media channels’.
Maybe Cameron Luxton should take over the Local Government Portfolio because at least (like all other ACT MPs) he gets off his arse and will get things done. He also said:
“If councillors want to promote Māori wards, they should do it on their own time and their own dime, not hijack the council’s official channels to push a divisive agenda,” Luxton said.
“Let the people decide. That’s the whole point of a referendum.”
Thank goodness the awful Mayor of Hastings Sandra Hazelhurst is standing down later this year because she condones this and it was her unethical Casting Vote that resulted in Volunteer Student Councillors were paid. It seems she did not front on this matter but is quoted as saying:
mayor says ‘we make no apology’ for them.
Them being the Maori Ward Promotional Videos.
Here is a link to the full Hawkes Bay Today article I stumbled across and it inlcudes the promotional video..
Like the Mayor Tania Kerr is retiring at the end of this term and I call bullshit on her claim that Maori Wards are the same as Rural Wards – they are not because Maori can stand and be elected in Rural Wards but I cannot even stand in a Maori Ward.
In conclusion and on a different issue Hastings District Council are so PC and inept that they will not move on people living in cars less than 50 yards from the Childrens Playground at Cornwall Park. What started with one car has increased to three because the Council does not care!!!
It is probably only a matter of time before who knows what happens.
No Minister 
Simon Watts is a useless muppet who is all in on net zero. No point in expecting anything good from him.
You are so right Harry.
Watts measures up with Mahuta as a useless Local Government Minister and what is more Mahuta offered an agenda based on nepotism.
Watts offers nothing and Councils are walking all over him.