Manukau vs Tonga

The NZ Herald had a story yesterday on the division in Manukau City Council over the Mayor unilaterally approving sending staff to Tonga to help rebuild their capital after the riots.

While the story is balanced in that it talks to both camps, it fails to mention what I regard as the key aspect of the story. For that you need to go to a blog.

There you find out that the town planners being sent to Tonga are rather needed back home. You see the Council reports it only processed 50% of resource consents within the regulatory deadlines . That’s an appalling figure – only half done within the time set down in law!

Now if they were processing 95% of applications within the legal time limit, one might be more open to helping out Tonga, but when they are so appallingly failing in their own city within their own statutory deadlines, that makes it a no brainer to not remove essential staff.