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Okay, cool, thanks First of all, thanks for the opportunity to make a submission. I'm going to focus basically pretty much entirely, and I am speaking as an individual, not in my role as my day job role, although I might refer to some of that, but entirely about rates. And first of all, I'll just say thank you and well done in the budget because I actually see for pretty much first time I've seen it in a long time cutting back on some internal costs, and it is directly internal costs, so I think that's a good thing. The key though is that 7% is still a reasonably sizeable increase. Big issue is that it comes on top of a 46% cumulative rates increase over the last 3 years, and that is really, really significant. That is considerably higher than the national average, which I understand is about 34%, which is also obviously extremely high. I did read a very good article on Wellington Scoop this week by Councillor Compton saying that, and this is your projections apparently, over the next 10 years the combination of rates, sludge levy, and water services charges a forecast that puts you at the end of that, above the 5% of income affordability ceiling, which was recommended by the 2007 Shand Report. I do stress that's a ceiling, not a target. And I think you know, and you heard from Judy a few moments ago, that many Wellingtonians are really struggling with the rates levels as they are at the moment. All of these things should be flashing a big, very large alarm. You'll also know, referring to my day job, that the government is very concerned about rates levels. There's legislation before the House, in fact this week, the second reading of the Systems Improvements Bill that changes the functions of council, gets rid of the four well-beings again, and defines core services among other things. And all of this I think is a response to a real affordability issue, not just in Wellington but around the country. And also of course we know that there is a proposal for rates caps in the wings and that affects all of those things, water services and so on as well. I'm very well aware that councils are concerned about rates caps and the interface between those and the ability to maintain assets. I guess the thing is, it's that the priority has got to be maintaining assets before it is doing other services that are perhaps more discretionary. So, and I think councils' concerns there are fair, but we— this obviously means that there's got to be some decisions made about what you want to do and what you don't want to do, and the message is very clear that councils do need to be more disciplined. So some suggestions for you if I can. The first one of them is to reduce internal costs materially. You do have a report from Deloitte which I have had a quick look through which should encourage you to do that. You know, quite significant but should encourage you in that direction. There must be some specific areas for savings and I would pick 3 in the 3 C's: communication, cycling and climate. When you're dealing with cycleways, and there's been a huge investment made in cycleways in the last few years. One of the other things that's gone with that is a significant loss in parking revenue, which of course, you lose that parking revenue, it goes straight effectively on the rates line as well. So all of those are areas for possible savings. Then to stop as many of the discretionary projects as you can that you don't really need to do. For me, top of that list would be the Golden Mile, if that's still on the table at all, and organic waste. I'm sure there's much more efficient ways you can do that, and I have seen some examples of those as I get around the country. TK Inger, I understand the council's still involved in that. It made some sense in a fast-rising market, but not when property values have fallen so much. Rents are generally falling, and certainly they're falling in real terms. And what it does is it exposes the council and therefore the ratepayers to a much higher risk of vacancy rates and lower rental rates. During my time as mayor, we actually bailed out of some pending projects. I think we offloaded them to Kangoura because we could see that they going to cause significant losses to ratepayers. The other thing is I think that needs to have a good look at the social housing portfolio because it does— the investment looks incredibly expensive and see how you can get that cost down. A couple of things which might help you, one is that there is the earthquake-prone building legislation which is currently going through the House as well. Timber buildings and one or two storey masonry buildings will no longer need strengthening. That would help, for example, in your budgets with meaning you don't need to strengthen the buildings at Kandala Port, for example, which was a key driver for that project. I'd also encourage— quite a lot of work's been done about separating our proposed traffic management costs from projects. Now, you might think that's not material, but I've had council chief executives, not in Wellington, but council chief executives say to me that 40% of the cost of working on the roads is traffic management. If you separated those out, it starts becoming very crystal clear, and you might think about how you deliver those projects. And my other suggestion is that if you've got anything that relates to growth, you should probably reconsider it because we're the only two TAs to have nil growth in the last intercensal period. And unless something's changed dramatically, I think you should be really rethinking that. Certainly there is nothing, I haven't seen anything in either of the last two annual plans to suggest Wellington has sort of cottoned on to, officially cottoned on to the fact that we are nowhere near the 80,000, up to 80,000 new residents which is mentioned in the 2024 LTP. And so just to finish off with, in my view, the key things the council needs to focus on for the health of the city are bringing people back into the CBD to live, work, and play, and to minimise costs and debts. And I spend a lot of time around New Zealand engaging with councils, largely avoided Wellington for the last 3 years just because I thought it was the appropriate thing to do. Always wanting to understand councils' issues, challenges, and opportunities and see how I can help them. So that offer's there for Wellington too, and thanks for listening and wish you well.

Sorry, I'm not very prepared. I had a busy day. I come here to discuss the commercial rating of NB&B. I haven't had the time to look at the other matters currently in discussion. That's a new rate. It's not actually— it's been published and quoted by a number of councillors that it's an increase of the commercial rating. It's not an increase for Airbnb or for short-term accommodation. It's not an increase. It's been like this for 20 years. It's a reduction. It always has been 3.7%. I haven't seen any suggestion how it's going to be enforced. So what's the difference? It was 3.7 and never been enforced, and now it's going to be 2.6 and never be enforced. So it's a bit— it's all a waste of time. The biggest argument is why do we have differential in the city? The argument is that business use more differential than residential. This is the, you know, all affordability. Well, clearly businesses are struggling at the moment, so there's no Affordability excuse is not relevant, but service use, um, let's have a look at the substantial use the council has spent in the last few years. Town Hall, library, water services, sewage plant, leaky homes, they're not business expenses. Most of the council expenses are actually residential expenses, but I'm not arguing That businesses should pay less. Businesses should pay equally. Now, you're quoting that Wellington pays 3.7% as opposed to other cities 2.6%. It's nonsense. Wellington pays— the commercial rating in Wellington is more than double Auckland. If you compare similar property, we are way more. Your published information, or their published information, is incorrect. Now go back to the Airbnb. So if you have a short-term— when you say short-term accommodation, sometimes people rent in Airbnb for 90 days. So that apartment is rented for 90 days, well, she shouldn't pay commercial rates, she should pay residential rates. Ah, okay, and what about that person that publishes apartment for daily stay and it's empty? Ah, well, it's empty, it hasn't been rented, but in your calculation it needs to be paying 4 times the rates and that the one that is actually occupied. Sorry, my phone just— So yeah, and so I think the whole thing is flawed. It's not going to work. You're not going to enforce it. You need to start looking at reducing the rating differential and other costs that incurred by businesses or this town. As you know, we've lost thousands of employees. We lost thousands of businesses, not thousands, but many businesses. Businesses are struggling. Unless you start making it more cost-effective for businesses, this city will turn into Picton. Now one more thing. One of the reasons we struggle in Wellington is a lot of people working from home. Well, have you thought of applying differential, commercial differential on working from home? It's a commercial activity. What are you doing about it?