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Speaker 1: What are councils, local councils, regional councils. It's a simple well,

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Speaker 1: it should be a simple question. What is their purpose.

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Speaker 1: I've always believed take away my rubbish, put the street

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Speaker 1: lights on, you know, when I go to the toilet.

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Speaker 1: You can take that away too, that's part of your job. Roads, rubbish, sewerage,

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Speaker 1: swimming pools. Maybe a library, although I think we've got

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Speaker 1: the internet now, so why do we need libraries? But

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Speaker 1: that's a debate for another day. A big scrap in Rotru.

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Speaker 1: I was reading this over the weekend over Gaza. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: notices of motion, petitions, meetings, interrupted, staff involved, and I

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Speaker 1: asked myself, what has Rotrua Lakes Council got to do

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Speaker 1: with Gaza. They're calling for a ceasefire and they're one

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Speaker 1: of dozens of councils across the country who are doing this.

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Speaker 1: Listen to the Meyertania tapsles interaction with Councilor Maxwell, who

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Speaker 1: was trying to get this over the line. Could I

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Speaker 1: have then, no, that is Counselor Maxwell. Counselor Maxwell, I

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Speaker 1: caught Counselor Maxwell. I rule that that is not an

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Speaker 1: urgent item. This clip's apparently gone viral, probably the first

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Speaker 1: time anything from a council has gone viral. And don't

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Speaker 1: get me wrong, please, deaths and the extent of the

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Speaker 1: retaliation by Israel completely out of whack, heartbreaking, unimaginable, suffering. Please,

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Speaker 1: I am not casting judgment here on the issue at hand.

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Speaker 1: I'm simply asking is Netan Yahoo, is Biden listening to

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Speaker 1: the thoughts of Rotordo a lake's council and if not,

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Speaker 1: should they be talking about things like this? So if

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Speaker 1: councils were on top of their core business, this wouldn't

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Speaker 1: matter to me. But you've got budget blowouts. This is

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Speaker 1: just it, or to do it, by the way, budget

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Speaker 1: blowouts on a sewerage scheme. You've got in Buller thirty

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Speaker 1: one percent rate increases. In Hamilton, you've got nineteen percent

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Speaker 1: rate increases. You've got an average of fifteen percent rate

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Speaker 1: increases across the country. You've got infrastructure problems, you've got

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Speaker 1: sewage running into the ocean and totong and they've just

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Speaker 1: held an election the first time they could vote, I

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Speaker 1: think in five years, and they were in the thirties

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Speaker 1: and turnout and you wonder why, I mean, people obviously

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Speaker 1: don't have a lot of faith in their councils and

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Speaker 1: what are they doing? And it's not just Garza. There

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Speaker 1: are other issues that councils often jump on, like things

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Speaker 1: to do with the UN. And I mean, is that

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Speaker 1: your purview. We've got a representative, We've got a permanent

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Speaker 1: representative on the Security Council, the UN Security Council, a

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Speaker 1: permanent representative who can make statements on our behalf, on

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Speaker 1: behalf of the government. Isn't that why you do it?

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Speaker 1: Are they focusing on local issues? Shouldn't they only focus

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Speaker 1: on local issues after all? Aren't they local councils. For

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Speaker 1: more from News Talks at b listen live on air

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