Media release

Monday, 12 August 2013

Auckland Councillor for Orakei, Cameron Brewer

Pollsters get $5.1m from council, and that's just the start!

“The revelation that over $5.1m has been spent on polls and surveys by Auckland Council will upset a lot of ratepayers struggling to pay their bills this winter,” says Auckland Councillor for Orakei, Cameron Brewer, who sought the polling costs under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act.

“The Mayor is campaigning on being financially prudent, but this spending on pollsters has increased significantly year on year and is frankly out of control. It's time to stop the spinning and get back to delivering core council services for ratepayers.

“This $5.1m conveniently doesn’t even include any market research or surveys commissioned by the council’s massive seven CCOs. So if you were to add the likes of Auckland Transport, Waterfront Auckland, and ATEED, the cost would be much, much higher.

“This cost comes on top of the already 143 staff employed in-house by the council for communications, marketing, and PR – and the dozens and dozens of external advertising agencies, marketing and design companies already engaged by the wider council. This $5.1m is a whole new revelation.

“The polling out of the Mayor’s Office is outrageous because it’s purely for political purposes and has been sadly funded by the poor old ratepayer. We know the polling to test ‘current trends’ is political because the Mayor has deliberately engaged UMR which famously has conducted the Labour Party’s polling. What’s more any results will not be publicly-released despite being publicly-funded.

“It’s staggering that in areas like mine 47% of ratepayers are being asked to pay a full 10% more in rates at the end of this month. However at the same time this council has blown over $5.1m on private polling companies. What’s more it refuses to release how much it’s paying each pollster. The right to know who is getting this hard-earned public money surely outweighs the council's desire to protect the privacy of the private pollsters?

“The Ombudsman continues to investigate my complaint over the council’s refusal to tell ratepayers what it’s paying each of the legal firms it’s using. I now ask for ratepayers to also be told which pollsters are getting what share of this public money.

“This council is very good at spending the cash, but very bad at telling ratepayers who’s getting how much. The Mayor needs to come clean. After all he campaigned last time on greater transparency and accountability. Why should the many and costly invoices from external lawyers and private pollsters be kept from the public?

“What’s more, spending huge money on commissioning hard hitters Colmar Brunton to survey us little old elected representatives about how we feel about our jobs shows just how silly life has become. Whatever happened to a chat over a cup of tea with management? What a complete waste.

"This council has got to get its priorities right and focus on delivering some economic benefits of amalgamating eight councils into one. This is another example of hard-earned public money being squandered and the public being no better off whatsoever, while their rates just keep heading north and the council debt mountain grows.

“Think of the improvements a local park or playground could’ve enjoyed with this money. Instead it’s all gone into lining the pockets of private pollsters," says Cameron Brewer.

Ends

LGOIMA__pollsers_Response__7_Aug_13.pdf

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