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Speaker 1: Governments decided to cut back on a number of emergency

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Speaker 1: housing motels. Consents won't be renewed for six of the

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Speaker 1: thirteen remaining motels. Consents for the other seven will lapse

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Speaker 1: at the end of next year. Now the rot rue

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Speaker 1: me at Tony Tapsil is well this time you're very

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Speaker 1: good morning to you, very.

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Speaker 2: Good morning to you as well, and it is fantastic

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Speaker 2: news for us.

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Speaker 1: Indeed, has this been coming for a while? Was this

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Speaker 1: always going to be announced at some point that this

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Speaker 1: where you were heading generally?

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Speaker 2: Look, I think this current government was very clear in

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Speaker 2: their election campaign that they did need to address the

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Speaker 2: emergency housing motels and all to do that, I have

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Speaker 2: had a number of months discussions with the ministers on

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Speaker 2: how best can we do this, and I think the

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Speaker 2: plan at their delivery, fortunately is a plan. There's transparency,

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Speaker 2: and they're brave enough to put a number on it.

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Speaker 1: And you're happy with the seven waiting until the end

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Speaker 1: of next year, you can live with that.

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Speaker 2: Look, it took a little while to get me around,

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Speaker 2: to be honest, I think our community we're expecting the

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Speaker 2: previous government to end this in December, which was the

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Speaker 2: original commitment, but we are realistic. People have to go somewhere,

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Speaker 2: so we do believe that by the end of next

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Speaker 2: year things will be covered. But fortunately the plan is

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Speaker 2: actually a rapid reduction, so by this time next year

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Speaker 2: there will only be four motowns. And I think that's

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Speaker 2: the confidence our community was looking for before that there

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Speaker 2: is actually a plan in place.

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Speaker 1: Good. What's it look like now, Fenton Street, et cetera.

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Speaker 1: Does it look materially different from its worst days or not? Oh?

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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, And ful feeling in town is actually much

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Speaker 2: better as well, because, of course, when we had the

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Speaker 2: fifty motils, which is what we started with, there were

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Speaker 2: a number of social issues in the city too. We

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Speaker 2: are seeing those reduced. We now have eighteen motiles altogether,

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Speaker 2: including six of the emergency housing which were the bad one,

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Speaker 2: so we still have some work to do working on

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Speaker 2: all of the motils in.

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Speaker 1: Also, do is there some reputational damage to be fixed

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Speaker 1: up over a period of time or will this bounce back?

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Speaker 1: Do you think?

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Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, And that's what we were most concerned about

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Speaker 2: when this first started happening, is if all everyone was

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Speaker 2: hearing about was the motils in altogether. But we are

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Speaker 2: still a fantastic destination. Fortunately in the last summer and

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Speaker 2: lately tourism is bounced back and pretty confident. But actually

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Speaker 2: what we do need is also to restore the reputation,

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Speaker 2: but bring in the additional resources that we always needed,

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Speaker 2: which was more police to deal with these issues of

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Speaker 2: social housing as well.

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Speaker 1: Good stuff, Tony, good to catch up. Appreciate it very much.

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Speaker 1: Tony Tapsell a much brighter, happier mayor of Rotarua under

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Speaker 1: a different government. It's amazing what attitude does, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to

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Speaker 1: news talks. It'd be from six am weekdays, or follow

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Speaker 1: the podcast on iHeartRadio.