Kate Hawkesby: My hero of the week

I have a hero of the week this week. In the wash up from the local body elections, and although very excited about the country's newest and youngest Mayor 23-year-old Ben Bell of Gore, which is quite an achievement - my bouquet goes to Rotorua's new Mayor Tania Tapsell. 

Absolute go-getter, smart, considered, hardworking and really passionate about her city. She’s the sort of Mayor you feel happy for, irrespective of any political direction, just because they feel like they’ve earned it. 

They deserve to be where they are, they’re in it for the right reasons. Not platitudes and empty words, but for the real and right reasons. 

She’s gone hard all along on emergency housing and it speaks volumes she got voted in because that’s exactly what the people of Rotorua are focused on right now. 

It was a travesty of former Mayor and Labour stalwart Steve Chadwick to allow emergency housing to get so bad in Rotorua. She’s left an absolute headache and a nightmare for Tapsell to try to undo. 

But within her first week in the job she’s already fired a salvo at the Government over its demands for landlords to bring houses up to healthy homes standards, while allowing vulnerable families to stay in unhealthy and sometimes unsafe emergency motels. 

So it’s one rule for us and one for the Government it seems. All this at a huge cost to the taxpayer, as we know. 

Well sadly the Minister Carmel Sepuloni didn’t know exactly. When asked in an interview what it’s costing the taxpayer, she said “a lot”. Which isn’t that helpful.

It’s also disturbing she doesn’t know that figure off the top of her head instantly, but that’s what's to be expected from a Government obsessed with spending other people’s money and not caring too much about having any accountability for it.

The most disturbing thing Sepuloni does is defend the emergency housing. How can anyone standing on what used to be Golden Mile and is now derogatorily referred to as MSD strip, look at that, and defend it? 

When challenged on the shocking condition and accommodation standards of some of these motels that the Ggovernment’s funding, Sepuloni said basically it’s not their problem. 

She pushed it back on council and said it’s a council issue, those regulations happen at council level. So let’s get this straight - the Government handed the city of Rotorua this problem, and it is a problem, it’s a big undeniable shambles of a problem, they then made the problem worse over a sustained period of years and then they sit back and go, ‘oh now that’s your problem Rotorua’. 

They’re going to ‘have conversations’ with Iwi and council apparently. And I’m just so glad for Rotorua that the person they’ll be having those ‘conversations’ with, is Tania Tapsell. 

I have a feeling it will be a darn sight tougher for the Government than dealing with Steve Chadwick. 

So I wish Tania well, she’s agitating for action on this – among other things, within her first hundred days in office, and I hope she continues to get the momentum and drive she’s going to need for this battle. 

Not just on the emergency motels but all the crime associated with them and with getting back Rotorua’s long held reputation as the fantastic tourist attraction it is.

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