The Platform NZ’s Post

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Alright. And we are joined now in our letter from Wellington where all things mayor would seem to emanate from, from Tony Randall. He joins us now. Tony, you're there. Good. Good morning to you. Good morning. Have you seen the the sun is already? Have you seen the sensible sentencing? Trust Green Party boardings yourself or not? No, I haven't. It's a look. It's been buzzing around Wellington. No, I sort of remember back when there were people wondering where the time of the pool was going to run as a councillor and number of people came to me and said no, no, she should become an MP, she can cause less damage there. Ohh well the the key for what? You wait for what's probably true though to be fair. I mean opposition MP's don't have a lot of influence as a general rule, do they? But they sit around your council table. That's a vote you don't have, isn't it? Yes, and I think they many of them you just don't hear from at all and it seems maybe like and when you do hear from them, it's usually bad news and I guess Timothy Paul, there's no exception. Well, listen keeping the center right according to the polls in in front. So no one's complaining about that. Listen, you also talking about the Greens. You're saying that. The minister, sorry the you've having the next scrap between. The mayor, the Green, Labour councillors and the government has already underway. It's to do with. It's to do with lowered speed limits. Now this is an issue throughout all of New Zealand, not just Wellington. But what's the Wellington problem? Well, the one the the previous government, you probably might even remember, they came back out and said we need lower speed limits across all the cities. You need to have speed plans that lowers everything to 30 K because of safety and you need to do it right now. We are schools involved. And all of a sudden, all across the country, councils are spending money to lower speed limits because unilaterally, without any risk assessment or even demand from the schools, you know, every school had to be safe. And all of a sudden we had a number of roads, I think about 11 roads that were affected by this. The government, the new government came out and said we we're gonna reverse these things out. These ones out for, for a certain set of roads. They've got a set of criteria and there are three roads in South Wellington that the current government says you need to reverse out this previous governments blanket speed rule. And the mirror is decided to fight this for safety reasons, which you know, is a really a puzzle to me because they weren't put in for safety reasons. They were put in because the previous government mandated us. And now the current government's undoing the mandate really. Is but I OK, so are they is it those? I mean, there are, I think Nelson, which is, you know, led by Nick Smith has got something about actually says, well, some cases are reducing the speed limits, particularly around schools and things like that was a good idea. Are there particular streets that you're talking about? Are they dangerous if they go back to what they were? Well, not really one of the interesting things about the 30K speed limits. Uh. Is they're often ignored. And you know, by, by people and, and according to a story, ironically, that came out the same day by the mayor. Yes, this is remarkable. Listen to this one, everybody. OK, go, go. Tony Chang, tell us about the story. But, but really, I think this is a, I mean, there were put in for ideological reasons, uh, there wasn't a risk assessment. In fact, as far as I can tell, there's nothing to stop the mayor and councillors deciding to do a risk assessment for those roads to check to see whether or not the speed limit should be 30 K. Just you doing the normal process that we do with all the roads and no problem. If they find that the, that there is a safety issue, then I have no problem with putting A30K speed limit in seriously. The safety of children of course is always paramount, so you just want the proof that there is a problem before you start to find a solution. You know it's not a high bar. Tony, we're having, you're having problems listening to, you're having problems listening to me, I think because I'm talking to you. Can you hear me? Yeah, I can. I can hear you. It's a little bit difficult, but I can hear you. Is it because there's a lag in between our conversation or because you're surrounded by people making a noise? Well, I'm quite in a quiet room, so no, no, it's the former. I hear what you're saying. OK. The Mayors Carr in Wellington has been caught speeding on multiple occasions, but no one knows who's driving it. What the Hell's that about, Tony? Yeah. This is a race under the Goma, people asked. You know, Weiner, count City Council cars. Uh, exceeding the speed limit and it seems that a number of them have been exceeding the speed limit on a regular basis, including the Meyers car. The now look, I mean, as we just talked about, most of the time they're exceeding, exceeding the speed limit from 30 kilometre an hour areas where the road is being reduced because the suburban center or outside of school. But the the issue that's come up is that there's no record of who was driving, which is, which is a concern. So, so I've actually as as deputy chair of audit risk. And, and safety, I've already raised a request for information about what is happening and whether the process needs to be changed so that we know who is speeding. And especially, you know, there are a number of occasions where speed limits are are you know, 20 kilometres, kilometres an hour above the speed limit. Not in the MERS car, so as I know, but certainly other council cars. Now that's getting to be dangerous. I mean seriously, I mean ambulance and fire engines are not allowed to. Above 20K, above the speed limit really, and this is a critical emergency the the. Really, the whole thing is is really. Uncomfortable I guess from from my perspective, but you know the hypocrisy of the Me's car being caught speeding regularly and 30 kilometres an hour areas. Isn't lost on me when the merest championing the say the cars need to be that slower than 30 K to be safe. I need to remind you, Tony, that the Environment Canterbury chairman ECAN chairman Peter Scott, resigned from his position as chairman of the Environment Canterbury after his council provided Carr was recorded exceeding the speed limit. On a number of occasions actually. 678 times to be fair. How many times has the mayors car been discovered to be exceeding the speed limit? Well, over the time period and I'm not sure how long it is. I think it might be over between July 2022 and November 2020. Fourth, that's a year and a half and it was called, it was shown to be speeding under the GPS system. We're not talking about her getting a ticket. It was speeding about 30 times during a year and a half. It's not 678, is it? No, no, look. And, and there are times when I can imagine, you know, late at night, the town's closed, there's a 30 case speed limit. People do go a bit faster than that when it's safe. And, and I'm got no evidence the mayor is an unsafe driver. I just think it's a little bit hypocritical for her to be speeding when she calls on everyone else not to. No, but umm, I, I sort of have some sympathy for. So listen, The thing is it's very interesting in the case of Peter Scott, the Eken Chairman and of the mayoral car of Tory Farno, as you rightly point out, there are no speeding tickets given out in this particular case. This is a GPS system that's applied to those particular cars. I'm going to ask you a question because I discovered this about Otago. Your Tango Regional Council. Here's a bit of a scoop, everybody. Their chairman had, and still probably does have their council provided car. With a GPS attached to it. But the chief executive of the Otago Regional Council, who also has a council, provided car. Doesn't. Does the chief executive of the Wellington City Council have GPS aligned car do you think Tony? I would think that they would, but I don't know and it's an interesting question worthy of risking. If your Deputy chairman of the audit Committee, how many cars are given council provided cars and Wellington City Council and how many of them have GPS attachment to them is the measures their speed. So how many officers get cars or councillors? No officers. You'd only have one councillor presumably, and that would be the mayor. We have. I don't know. I think we've got, we've got about 100 cars, I should think 50 or 100. We've got a lot of cars, yes, but some of them are employment packages given to the chief executive and to your senior managers at the Wellington City Council. That's what I'm suggesting to you. So what? I'm suggesting most of them, yeah. Most of them working cars because we've got obviously got officers who are going out doing building consents. Yeah, no, no, no, no, I'm not interested in that. But that's the reason why you have the speed thing there. Just in case you can't sell cars are systemic speeders. No, no, no. What I'm trying to suggest is that there might be a double tier system here where governance members, elected members with council provided cars can have their speed measured. But senior executives, including your chief executive, might not, as was the case that the Otago Regional Council.