26 May 2004

Manukau City Rates Discriminate Against Business

Manukau City’s disproportionate rating burden on the business sector is archaic and getting harder by the year to justify.

Speaking at a Council hearing today in support of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce submission to the City’s draft annual plan, Michael Barnett, Chamber chief executive, noted the trend for many businesses to be operated from a residence.

“I cannot let pass the injustice differentials impose not just on the business community as opposed to residences receiving the same service, but also within the business community itself.”

Manukau is increasingly becoming a “mixed use” environment, with many businesses home-based. “Clearly they are not subject to the differential that is imposed against businesses operating from the business zone.

To be consistent, Manukau could seek from Inland Revenue or Telecom details of home-based businesses so it could collect the higher rates from these enterprises. “Of course that is impractical and likely to run against privacy considerations,” noted Mr Barnett, “but it highlights the injustice of the Council continuing with a differential policy.”

For many years, the Chamber has encouraged Council to review rating policy and set in place a programme to phase out differentials and to shift the incidence of rates towards user pays.

The Chamber urged Council to change its rating policy to include a process to phase out differentials entirely within a specified timeline.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>