Households do not need to be told times are tight, they are already living it.
Families are feeling rising fuel costs, higher grocery bills, mortgage pressure, rent pressure, insurance pressure, and the cumulative effect of everyday costs going up faster than comfort allows.
The Mayor’s post about rising fuel prices speaks to a real pressure, but it also raises a harder question:
What is Council doing to reduce its own discretionary spending before asking households to carry more?
Because these pressures did not begin with this war. They did not begin with the latest fuel spike. And they did not suddenly appear this week.
Council was already under financial pressure. Council was already dealing with rising costs, oil vulnerability, transport costs, resilience issues, and deeper questions about what it spends, what is discretionary, and whether enough scrutiny has been applied to ongoing operating costs.
So when households are already under pressure, and councillors are also discussing rate rise scenarios beyond CPI, the contradiction is obvious.
Where is Council’s own belt-tightening first?
The current pressure on Council’s budget is not just a war story.
Fuel vulnerability, transport costs, long-term resilience, oil dependence and budget strain were already there. The war may have intensified those issues. It did not create them.
The same is true financially.
The tension in the Long Term Financial Plan did not suddenly appear overnight. Questions were already there about whether the rates path aligns with Council’s commitments, whether service levels match what the budget can sustain, and whether enough has been done to examine discretionary spending.
That is why this moment calls for more than sympathetic messaging. It calls for proof that Council has done the harder internal work first.
This is where the issue becomes more serious.
Council has already resolved to receive detail on discretionary services, programs and spending for oversight. Staff did not deliver that decision as made. Instead, the exercise was reframed as too subjective and too resource-intensive.
That matters because it goes directly to budget scrutiny.
Council can build a budget.
Council can cost services.
Council can carry spending forward year after year.
Council can model long-term assumptions.
But when councillors ask for a clear breakdown of discretionary spending for proper oversight, suddenly the same exercise becomes too hard.
That is not convincing.If Council cannot clearly identify discretionary spending for scrutiny, how can it justify continuing to fund it?
This is the part the public should not miss.
While the Mayor is publicly talking about pressure on households, councillors were also discussing rate rise scenarios beyond CPI at Tuesday’s LTFP budget preparation session.
On the read coming out of that session, the newly adopted open space commitment appears to place further pressure on the rates path. The discussion was that this may mean CPI plus growth plus another 0.5 per cent, or the cost gets pushed into debt. Other scenarios reportedly canvassed were around 6 per cent, 4.5 per cent and 4 per cent rate increases.
So while households are already carrying cost pressure directly, the internal discussion at Council is also about whether they may be asked to carry more locally.
That is the contradiction.
When households are under pressure, they do not need a speech to know it. They are already making hard decisions.
They review what is essential.
They delay what can wait.
They cut what they can no longer justify.
Council should be no different.
Before higher rates.
Before more charges.
Before lower service standards.
Before more debt.
Council should show the community exactly what it has reviewed, reduced, reprioritised or stopped in its own discretionary spending.
Because if households are already tightening their belts, Council should be able to show it has gone first.
That is what leading by example looks like.
