Greater Wellington Regional Council has ignored the campaign for fairer fares for tertiary students as it drafted a new fare structure for all bus, rail and ferry trips.
We got a rare insight into Greater Wellington Regional Council-Wellington City Council dynamics when regional councillor Judith Aitken posted this odd statement on Celia Wade-Brown’s Facebook about her (last time I checked, fellow Labour Party) colleague Daran Ponter:
This prompted the following stinging rebuke from Daran Ponter and Wellington City councillor Paul Eagle:
Good on Ponter for calling her out. Oh, Baby Boomer with a 100% subsided Gold Card, please tell me more about how we can’t increase public transport subsidies.
This is staggering. If you’re a Regional Councillor, you would need to have been hiding under a rock for the past few years not to be aware of the issues around public transport. And you’d expect someone who has been on the GWRC since 2001 to already be discussing issues with their WCC colleagues and community stakeholders.
Aitken doesn’t even live in the constituency area she is elected to represent (Wellington City), enjoys fully subsidised public transport with her tax-payer funded Gold Card, and is one of those local government shapeshifters, like Helene Ritchie, who get elected to both a council and a health board purely on name recognition, then aren’t in a hurry to leave anytime soon.
She should retire and let a new, fresh, and forward thinking person take her seat and actually represent Wellington City. They deserve better.
Very interesting revelation in today’s Dom Post that the GWRC is missing out on about $9,000 in train fares every weekday because the trains are too crowded for ticket collectors to get to the patrons…
It was revealed today that Greater Wellington regional council has lost about $260,000 as overcrowding on trains prevents staff from collecting fares.
‘Mrs Martin was one of the oldest residents in Wellington, and was highly esteemed for her plain unostentatious kindness of disposition’. Marion Baird was born in Fountainhall, a hamlet southeast...
Jacob was the sixth child of James ‘Worser’ Heberley and his wife Te Wai (also known as Māta Te Naihi), of the Puketapu people of Te Āti Awa. James and...
Thomas was born in Oxford, England and trained as an engineer, working on the Great Northern Railway and at University College, London. He came to New Zealand in 1873 and...
This beautiful object was found by one of our volunteers at our October 2025 Working Bee in Gum Gully. Our volunteer very carefully cleaned the floral tribute as well.
