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Kerre Woodham: Have you crunched the numbers with your new rates bill?

Author: Kerre Woodham ,
Publish Date: Wed, 27 May 2026, 1:09pm

Have you done the sums yet to work out how much more you're going to have to pay, how much more you're going to have to find to pay the rates bill? We were talking before the show, for some of my colleagues it's an extra $45 per fortnight, they're in an apartment out of the main city. I can't even imagine how much the increase will be for people living in the leafy suburbs.

Auckland Council has locked in a 7.9% rates rise, according to Wayne Brown it's to fund the City Rail Link. They've managed to keep everything else, they've managed to cut costs and reduce spending and keep everything level, this is purely to fund the City Rail Link. He's unapologetic. He said we've got this railway, if we don't pay for it this year, then we're just going to have to pay for it next year. And that's quite true, you can't just keep deferring essential spending. And that's what a lot of councils are finding around the country, that they might have deferred spending, put off investing in the vital infrastructure that needs to be spent, Moa Point anybody, and now they're going to have to, now they're going to have to do it. It's this lot of ratepayers that is going to have to pay because previous years' ratepayers didn't want to. Councillors didn't want to because they might get voted out, ratepayers didn't want to because they said we've got nothing extra in our pockets. Well now we're just going to have to find it.

In effect, the rates increase is only an average, many Aucklanders will face an effective rate rise of between 12% and 15%. But pity the people of Waitaki, councillors there were looking at rates increases of up to 45%. Eventually they opted for a 22% rates rise because they've got to fund their three water scheme. Now that's been put off, put off, put off, they can't put it off any longer and now the people of Oamaru and the surrounding districts are going to have to find the money and pay for it.

Many, many people are doing what the councils around the country are doing and what the Government is doing. They're looking at the bills, they're slashing what is not essential, trying not to slash everything that's not essential because you need something that's a bit of a morale booster. But when you've got a finite amount of money coming in, it has to cover so many, many increases. Fuel, insurance, rates. When there's two of you working, it's tough enough, if you're on a fixed income with very little in the way of other money coming in, you've already pared down the spending to the bone, it's even harder.

Is this the time you look at selling the house if you have one? You're told when you go into retirement that you have to have a house, that this is one way that you'll be able to ensure a comfortable retirement, you have your own home, you have a roof over your head. But how do you make economies to cover the rates bill to pay for the house when you're already stretched so very thin? If your rates bill has come in, have you crunched the numbers, where are you at? I mean Auckland like Rotorua, and number of other councils around the country, even the Far North, they're trying to keep it into single digits, just skimming the 10%, but other councils, they're having to pay for that work that they deferred for so long and those rates increases are going to hurt.