‘Better Wellington’ Group Says It Has Only Answer to City's Woes

What started out as a small group of disgruntled locals is snowballing into a major force for change . . . starting with exposing the antics of the Wellington City Council and those of its elected representatives driving the "woke idiocy and rampant profligacy" evident in the way the Council is spending residents' skyrocketing rates.

And if the many incoming messages of support with which the group is being inundated is anything to go by, their message is reverberating from suburb to suburb around the city:

“Get Wellington back to the vibrant city it once was. Stop the cycle ways. Fix the infrastructure. Get rid of the ideologists in Council. The city looks like shit!”

“It’s about time there’s a group that’s dedicated to taking back the power from the Council and their ridiculous spending on things no-one wants or needs. The wasteful spending and overspends show how incompetent they are in handling finances, and the ratepayers are suffering because of it.”

“When does a minority rule in a democracy? No-one I know agrees with anything the Council is doing. I am watching my city die.”

“We have been watching in horror, the decimation of our city as the Labour and Green Parties vote according to the wants of their Parties – and not in the interests of Wellington. Ratepayers have been consistently hobbled by Council officers in conjunction with the Councilors in question, who are not interested in what their constituents are telling them. Wellington is now just a shabby mess.”

Indeed, read any of the published comments on the supporters’ feedback page of the Better Wellington website, and your clear conclusion can only be that Donald Trump was correct at every level when he made his now-immortalised quip, “Go Woke, Go Broke.”

And “wokeism” is on steroids in the Wellington City Council, thanks to so many of the bums on seats around the Councillors table pushing for their own personal ideologies to be rolled out to every corner of (what they seem to believe is) “their” city.

A Rapidly Growing Movement of Concerned Wellingtonians

According to its website, Better Wellington is a small core group of long-time locals, now flanked by a rapidly growing movement of Wellingtonians, who “want a better future for our city. The current direction being imposed on Wellington residents is ruining the capital. Commerce is drying up as people are being forced out of their cars for a cycle-way and climate change ideology.”

Too many of Wellington’s city councilors are more concerned with pushing identity politics, rather than improving core services. That’s the common core of agreement between the founding team and its snowballing base of supporters.

Better Wellington received an unintended but ironically welcome boost in awareness last month, when local posties (prompted by their Union) refused to deliver the flyers it had printed as part of a city-wide campaign. (Read or download the flyer here. It seems pretty fact-based to me.)

In short, Better Wellington’s core mission is to see Wellingtonians better informed of the policies and priorities of each Councilor, and then, on the back of greater transparency, to urge them to get out and vote for candidates driven by sanity, when the next Local Government elections roll around i.e. in October 2025.

This page on its website highlights the specific ideas and policies the group believes will achieve a “Better Wellington”. Their no-wasted-words, very easy-read Policy Statement is well worth a few minutes of your time. It doesn’t loan itself to further distillation for the purposes of my article, because its key points and writing style are already sufficiently punchy and highly concise.

My Interview with Co-Founder, Long-Time Publican of the Iconic Backbencher, Alistair Boyce

I interviewed one of its founding members, Alistair Boyce, best known locally as the long-time publican, proprietor and chef of Wellington CBD’s famous Backbencher Pub – situated right across the road from Parliament Buildings.

Boyce (along with his fellow Better Wellington core group members) “oppose the dangers of ideology capturing the necessary Council operations that underpin (what should be and was once) a vibrant, growing and economically viable city”.

The only hope of turning around Wellington’s woes is to get ethical, smart, and rightly-driven candidates onto the Council, Boyce tells me. And Better Wellington is making good traction in its mission to achieve this, he says.

“Our founding members first got together before the last local government elections two years ago. We were, at that stage, a small and informal group – but we got reactivated three or four months ago to give us a long runway into the next elections, to get better awareness of the issues and to expose the true values and motivations of councilors and candidates.

‘No Option Now but to Restore Economic Sensibility & Responsibility’

“We have no option now but to restore economic sensibility and rationality to the Council’s operations. We MUST get rates down and we MUST focus on the key issues that we need addressed in order to make our city both livable and affordable. That is, water, rates, rubbish, roads and the like.

“We MUST remove political ideologies and the nice-to-haves, and restore fiscal responsibility.

“In short, we need to expose the idiocy and profligacy (excessive spending) of what’s going on around the Council table . . . and that is therefore being rolled out by the layers of operational staff below, if we’re to stop this demolition process in its tracks.”

Postie ‘Cancel Culture’ Move Backfires on Those Behind It

With regard to the media storm surrounding the recent flyer the group produced, and the non-delivery stance pushed by the postal workers’ union, Boyce explains:

“One of the numerous educational bullet points in the flyer, referred to the Council as wanting the six mosques around Wellington to broadcast the Islamic call to prayer.

“They argued that they had not posited that.

“But the wording on their Council meeting motion referred to ‘investigating’ whether it could be allowable under existing city noise limits.

“Well, if you’re going to ‘investigate’ the allow-ability of something, you’re clearly working towards achieving that, aren’t you? So, the whole thing was a disingenuous debate in semantics, as far as we’re concerned.

“But we came out of it on the upside, because we got a whole lot of mainstream media publicity we couldn’t possibly have paid for!”

Boyce says that, while “the posties were rarked up by union influence”, they relented and most of the flyers were delivered, with New Zealand Post recognising both the overreach and the fact that there was nothing inherently incorrect in the flyer . . . that its content was all perfectly legal.

“Some suburbs still didn’t get delivered to, but at least 70 percent of the flyers reached the ratepayers.” (Although, he says, he never received one in his own letterbox.)

‘We Have No Position on Religion . . . and Council Has No Business Meddling In It, Either’

“To be very clear,” Boyce stresses, “we have no position on religion, but we were stating the fact that the council has no business having a position on it, either. We were making the ultimate point that we want the council to concentrate on council business, not peripheral issues that it has absolutely no business meddling in.

“We also want the completely unnecessary ongoing expansion of the Council’s operations to stop, and we want that area of excessive spending to also be redirected back into a focus on core maintenance.

“I mean, they’ll send out an investigative team to dive into the issue of how they can enable the broadcasting of Islamic calls to prayer, but we’ve got rubbish issues, potholes for Africa, and burst water pipes all over the place . . . and all the while, our rates are going up by – this year – between 18 and 22 percent for most of us!

‘Our City Has Been Hijacked by Ideologists & the Residents and Ratepayers Are Paying the Price’

“Our city has been hijacked by political ideologists and we, the residents are suffering extreme consequences.

"Financially speaking, the ratepayers are paying the cost of this idiocy that the majority of aware and awake Wellingtonians want no part of . . . including the many that idiocy has put out of business, not least of all in the hospitality sector that made our city what was once described as ‘the Coolest Little Capital in the World’.

“Well, it’s not any more, is it? It’s a shabby, horrendously over-priced, increasingly unlivable and unsafe mess – and we need to galvanise to bring awareness of exactly what’s been behind that change, if we’re to turn things around.”

Editor’s Note:

If you want to know just how crime-infested and rot-ridden Wellington has become, try this:

I live in Masterton but drive down to Wellington most weeks for an intensive acupuncture session for a back injury.

I have loved Wellington since my first of numerous periods living there, in my early 20s. So whenever I have cause to go down, I look for every excuse to elongate the day's stay. My favorite way to do this, is to eat at the outstanding but still very affordable Ruchi Indian restaurant in Petone.

While waiting for it to open a couple of weeks ago, I’d taken some photos further down Jackson Street (Petone’s busy “hospitality strip”). I’d wanted to depict the horribly dilapidated state of many of the buildings there, despite its still highly trafficked nature.

But I can’t show you these photos. Why? Because, immediately after taking them, I drove down to the Petone foreshore to toilet my dog, and my handbag (containing said camera) was stolen. Apparently, I had not sufficiently obscured it on the passenger side floor for the few short minutes I was out of the car, and someone smashed the driver’s window and helped themselves.

And to show you just how much the cops (don't) care about burglaries, thefts and other crimes that they once used to be relied upon to do something about, read my account of it here. It says a lot about why crime is spreading faster than a case of the clap in a New York City nightclub. No-one who should care, does care.

And the update you have when you’re not having any update at all, is that I’ve written (fruitlessly) TWICE to the Minister of Police, as I was urged to do by an MP from his own Party, but whose staff have summarily ignored me.

Of course.

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MASSEY VETS FALSIFY RECORDS: POLICE REPORT FILED

by Jordan Kelly • 27 February 2026

Readers following the coverage of my attempts to get to the bottom of what happened to my beloved little papillon, Harry, with whom I was extraordinarily closely bonded, will know that: (A) The rot in Massey University’s Companion Animal “Hospital” (CAH) runs deep. (B) Honesty and transparency is not their policy. Denial, dismissal, stonewalling, legal threats and intimidation are. (C) Animals aren’t safe there, with cruelty embedded in “care”, and your property (as your pet legally is) not considered your property at all, as far as Massey, its CAH staff and management are concerned. Your pet is theirs ; to do with as they please, according to their mindset and their modus operandi. And if that involves catastrophic levels of unauthorised, contraindicated, convenience sedation to facilitate their use of your pet in monetised student video collections (including on private cell phones, and to which you will be given no access), this too, according to Massey, is its own God-given right and “best practice” Standard Operating Procedure. (D) “Informed Consent” has a very different meaning in the Massey playbook to that which is generally deemed its accepted definition. (E) “Accountability” is a foreign concept and not one with which they have any intention of becoming acquainted. (F) Laws – including those governing animal welfare, property conversion and more – are not only optional, in Massey’s case, they simply don’t apply. In fact, they appear blissfully ignorant of them according to my (and Harry's) experience. You know all that. You’ve read about it here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here and in most of my other now 30+ articles covering the numerous different sub-atrocities within the overall atrocity that was the demise and disposal of my precious little Harry. Actually, "atrocious" doesn't come anywhere near to being an adequate adjective. Despite having been a professional writer since I was 16 and having upwards of 25 published books under my belt, I don't actually have an adjective that's adequate for the pure evil that was perpetrated upon Harry . . . and, by extension, me . There is not one word or one phrase that can sufficiently convey the depth and breadth of the sheer, unadulterated wickedness that festers without restraint within the walls of Massey University's Companion Animal "Hospital". What you, my readers (or those of you not on Massey's massive legal team payroll) didn’t yet know – because I didn’t yet know – is that record and evidence tampering (which, for any other New Zealand citizen would attract jail time of up to 10 years under the Crimes Act 1961 Section 258 (Altering document with intent to deceive) or Section 260 (Falsifying registers) , and/or a $10,000 fine under the Privacy Act Section 212(2)(b) - appears also to be included in the “we’re exempt” culture of Massey and its veterinary “hospital” staff. Note to Readers: The above laws aren't some hypothetical, bottom-drawer, dusty old legal tracts in archaic library textbooks. They're real, "living" laws that apply to every individual in our country. And today, they are being made to apply to Dr Stephanie Rigg and her "colleagues" who falsified Harry's records to create a cover-up of what they did to him . . . and to me. I will, duly, see Dr Rigg and her associates in Court. Dissecting the Cover-Up: Massey’s Metadata of Deception But back to what readers do know for a moment: You’ll know that I’ve been in the battle of battles for the past two months to extract Harry’s full records (or anything approaching them) from Massey’s Legal and Governance department. HOWEVER . . . there was one thing I hadn’t known how to decipher that they actually had finally drip-fed to me. It was File Name: Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) . I’ve been learning a lot about veterinary science, record-keeping, and law in general lately. Not because I wanted to. But because if you want to figure out how deep the rot really runs at Massey, you kind of have to. So I’ve learned a bit about how to decipher clinical metadata. Just e nough to realise that this Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit) is exactly where the digital fingerprints of a cover-up are hiding. Despite the fact that this document has as much redacted as it shows (probably more), with ALL staff names and positions blacked out, for example -I still found four distinct “smoking gun” entries in these otherwise heavily-redacted metadata logs. BIG. FAT. SMOKING. GUNS. that amounted to one undeniable overall conclusion: This document isn’t a clinical record so much as it’s a literal crime scene . There were already so many dodgy inconsistencies in the few items I'd managed to pull out of Massey to that point (as I've documented in various of my preceding articles). But this document is where, undeniably, the bodies are buried. You just need to know which clod of dirt to look under. Hidden in Plain Sight . . . In A Little Thing Called the Metadata (That the Average Pet Owner Wouldn't Even Know Existed ) There are four hidden but key findings demonstrating that the entire timeline of Harry’s “experience” in that hellhole were was orchestrated, and the sudden "neurological event/decline" exit strategy planned for him were a total fabrication. And that fabrication had a start time. (For this start time we will initially revert our focus back to Massey's previously-supplied "Clinical Summary" (in all its dodginess) . . . We will then lead from the immediately below into the afore-mentioned "Patient Change Log (Field-Level Audit)". Bear with me. I promise not to let this get boring). Well, one of two start times. Either: (1) The 8.38am disconnection of his (with, by-then, the TWO 750% overdoses of the renally contraindicated convenience sedative with which the "crying dog"-sensitive ICU staff had plied him overnight) now life-essential IV fluids (8.5 hours into the prescribed 24-hour protocol that they charged me for). And/or: (2) When the day shift ICU "vet" arrived at 9am and decided a THIRD 750% overdose would be a strategic way do deal with a clearly already massively overdosed little 3.8kg, 15-year-old, dehydrated dog. Now WHY would any vet take such a decision? 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R emember, though, I held the ultimate evidence in my arms at 6pm on December 1 . . . and, some 45 minutes later, I let them take it (safely, for them) away from me, just like Harry's (the literal body of evidence) life had just been taken from him. Little Numerals that Tell A BIG Story The plan for Harry's manufactured exit is not so much written into the records, as it is revealed by the tampering with the logs. They lay bare the lead vet’s apparent plan that his life would come to an abrupt end by the pre-scheduled time of (well, they couldn't quite get consistency in the logs regarding the exact minute, but by the absolute latest time of) 17:00 hours i.e. 5pm . . . assumedly, the end of the day shift on December 1. Just in time to mark him "Deceased" and seal off the records of this catastrophically overdosed patient, before the next shift came on, saw his records, and someone started asking the immediately necessary, and certainly appropriate, questions. And those questions would (0R SHOULD ) have included , but would certainly not have been limited to: How long has this dog been in this state? Why hasn't any rescue and remediation protocol been undertaken? Why was he given yet ANOTHER administration of 50mg of Gabapentin at 09:00 hours after the preceding two during night shift? Why is he disconnected from his IV fluids? Who approved that and why? (And if they knew he'd starred in a multi-video student film festival that morning): Was he taken out of his cage and handled in this state? When did he last drink? Was he given any food before he entered this near-comatose state? Does the owner know of the overdoses and the state he's in? Have you filled in an incident report? Have any emergency specialists been called in for advice? and, no doubt, many more questions. OR . . . maybe not. It depends if the rot in that ICU is fully immersive, or if it's concentrated on Dr Stephanie Rigg's day shift and the ICU shift staff of the preceding (November 30) night. But none of those questions could be asked and none of that could happen. The day shift - led by "Dr" Rigg ("Steffi") - wasn't about to let it happen. Thus, the pre-timestamped, just before end-of-shift, Time of Death entered into the "Euthanasia Authorisation" form that they had all queued up for me long before I ever arrived at that Godforsaken facility that fated December 1 afternoon.

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An Expert Contributed Commentary (FOR LATEST INVESTIGATION FINDINGS, GO HERE .)

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