Wellington City Council spent $11,482 plus GST producing a te reo translation of the summary of its new spatial plan, reveals the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union.

Just 50 te reo copies were printed – resulting in a translation cost of $220 per printed copy.

“Māori translations of planning documents are exactly the kind of low-priority council spending that should be on the chopping block during a pandemic,” says Taxpayers’ Union spokesman and Wellington ratepayer Louis Houlbrooke.

“This is a council that cries poverty at every opportunity and just hiked rates by 13.5%. The council needs to demonstrate that it’s making sacrifices commensurate with what it’s demanding from Wellington ratepayers. It’s a terrible look that they still can’t resist tokenistic gestures like translating reports in te reo versions that no-one will ever read.”

The information was provided after the Union filed an official information response written in te reo. The response was also provided in te reo, however in this case the Council used an internet translation service.

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Gordon Campbell: On The Skewed Media Coverage Of Gaza

Now that he’s back as Foreign Minister, maybe Winston Peters should start reading the MFAT website which is currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of how Kiwis alerted the rest of the world to the genocide in Rwanda. How times have changed ...

In 2023, the government is clutching its pearls because senior Labour MP Damien O’Connor has dared suggest that Gaza’s civilian population - already living under apartheid and subjected to sixteen years of an illegal embargo, and now being herded together and slaughtered indiscriminately amid the destruction of their homes, schools, mosques, and hospitals - are also victims of what amounts to genocide. More