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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

InternetApril 17, 2023

The local government TikTok accounts of Aotearoa, reviewed 

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

Some are silly, some are sincere, some are silent. Alex Casey and Tara Ward brave the strange new world of council TikTok accounts. 

Social media can be a hotbed of opinion, misinformation and chaos, but it’s also a place to remind people to get their cat spayed or up their recycling game. It’s an approach more New Zealand councils are embracing – 19 out of 78 of them, at least – utilising “newfangled” ways of “communication” to access a younger, harder-to-engage with audience. These councils are using TikTok’s short, snappy videos to amuse, to entertain and to inform in new and often unusual ways, even if not everyone’s a fan

To find out for ourselves, we delved into local government TikTok accounts around the country to sort out who’s down with the kids and who still has the ick for the Tik.

Whangarei District Council

Followers: 268
Likes: 1,553
Vibe: A truly charming account that could do with many more followers, with content spanning everything from the benefits of bar shampoo to a rave room in the mobile library. We’re particularly fond of the one where the staff unbox a flash new DSLR and, well, the results speak for themselves. Also, anyone who decides to launch an account with an environmentally-charged parody of Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo Number Five’ deserves a purple heart for bravery. 

Invercargill City Council 

Followers: 155
Likes: 200
Vibe: An eclectic mix of peacocks, pigs and pipes, while also celebrating the restorative power of corn. This is an account that knows its own strengths. Like the city of Invercargill itself, an understated delight. 

Auckland Council

Followers: 268
Likes: 99
Vibe: A very strange and sparse account from the biggest council in the country, containing just two videos that could not be more different. There’s one of our old mate Maxwell the cat bopping around to remind people to have their say on the annual budget (984 views), and another wanderlust-y drone-y travel video about Martins Bay Holiday Park (1235 views). Eerie. 

Tauranga City Council

Followers: 114
Likes: 0
Vibe: An empty husk with nary a video to its name. In the words of philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, “in nothingness, there is everything”. Makes you think. 

Southland District Council

Followers: 6
Likes: 2
Vibe: Has not published a single video and the bio simply reads “yams”. Five stars, flawless. 

Hamilton City Council

Followers: 36
Likes: 156
Vibe: This account aims to celebrate Kirikiriroa “one TikTok at a time”, and so far, it is up to seven TikToks. In the words of Kath and Kim’s Kim, who pops up to reflect on the historical transformation of Garden Place during the last one hundred years: it’s nice, it’s different, it’s unusual. 

Whakatane District Council 

Followers: 87
Likes: 0
Vibe: No likes, no videos, no bio, not a care in the world. We could all learn a thing or two about #lookingup from the Wahakatane District Council TikTok. 

Palmerston North City Council

Followers: 15.6k
Likes: 806.8k
Vibe: Masterful. The biggest account in the country has already gone viral heaps, most notably last year for this chilling horror film aiming to terrify Palmy residents into voting in the local body elections. Other greatest hits include this talented promotional video of the stunning Maxwell-infused cityscape, this PSA about brushing your teeth with the tap off, and this eye-opening journey of a returned library book. Suitably silly, surreal and sometimes even sweet. Bin love!

Waipā District Council 

Followers: 64
Likes: 1
Vibe: Perplexing. A lone TikTok of an even lonelier Zoom council meeting, featuring a cameo from American TikTok star Cody Taurus and his noisy dog. Democracy at its finest.

Bay of Plenty Regional Council

Followers: 954
Likes: 4736
Vibe: An informative, upbeat account with an environmental focus, covering everything from the work of the biosecurity dive team to newly restored wetlands. One of its most popular videos features Compliance Officer Wayne explaining the ins and outs of a sediment retention pond. “GO WAYNE” someone commented. Go Wayne, indeed.  

Wellington City Council


Followers: 10.8K
Likes: 309.1K
Vibe: One critic called this account “so cringe it could reset broken toes”, but maybe that’s why the Wellington City Council doesn’t want us using our feet to press crossing signal buttons. In other news, it appears Pedro Pascal is now a ratepayer of Wellington (you can find him using the cycle lanes and eating his lunch to save the planet) and there’s a curious tribute to the weird names Wellingtonians give their dogs. Yes, we’re talking about you, Sir Tobias Wigglebottom. 

Hawke’s Bay Regional Council

Followers: 130
Likes: 150
Vibe: Only four videos, but one of those featured Kermit the Frog. A bold choice. 

Rotorua Lakes Council

Followers: 16
Likes: 0
Vibe: Another blank page, another social media account yet to feature any social media. 

Western Bay of Plenty Council

Followers: 164
Likes: 1066
Vibe: A good mix of earnest and weird content, including an address from the mayor post-floods and an inspirational video about local kids getting the macron added to signs for Ōmokoroa. A few funny (and extremely janky) ones thrown into good measure, drawing on popular sounds from Mean Girls, The Kardashians and Love Island. As the bio reads, category is: making changes in your community. 

Taranaki Regional Council 

Followers: 6
Likes: 0
Vibe: Dive into the solitary video from November 2022 asking for the best swimming spots in Taranaki, which has been watched 198 times. Taranaki hard core? Almost. 

Central Otago District Council

Followers: 84
Likes: 0
Vibe: As bleak as an August hoar frost. No bio, no videos, no surprises. 

Porirua City Council

Followers: 1307
Likes: 31.8k
Vibe: Surprisingly the first account I have come across that appears to force councillors to dance at gunpoint in the name of content, “Purple dress carried this. QUEEN. 👑💜” one user wrote. “She’s our mayor 😍” PCC replied. The most watched video is this emotional Titanic homage to shopping trolleys dumped in the harbour. I hope James Cameron is taking notes. 

Tasman District Council

Followers: 29
Likes: 0
Vibe: Zero. Silence is golden, or in this case, Golden Bay.  

Dunedin City Council

Followers: 72
Likes: 20
Vibes: Call the cyber-police, it appears a civilian simply named “Jack” has commandeered the @dunedincitycouncil handle, with the bio simply reading “I am not the Dunedin city council”. Given the profile photo is Taylor Swift in front of an exploding car, it is safe to assume that the Jack in question is Jack Antonoff. Groundbreaking, subversive, guerilla. Classic TikTok.

Keep going!
a woman with a phone in her hand and lots of dollar signs and !@$#?! to indicate swearing, looking frustrated with a red background
When your bus doesn’t show up, Uber is only a tap away (image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)

SocietyApril 14, 2023

When public transport fails, Uber wins – and the rest of us lose

a woman with a phone in her hand and lots of dollar signs and !@$#?! to indicate swearing, looking frustrated with a red background
When your bus doesn’t show up, Uber is only a tap away (image: Getty, additional design: Tina Tiller)

Rideshare services benefit when public transport is unreliable. But they can’t serve everyone – and they often exacerbate the problems of a public service in crisis. 

“I get more rides when buses are cancelled,” says Nimo*, an Uber and Ola driver who works in Auckland. He’s used to driving to train stations and bus stops to pick up passengers who simply can’t wait any longer. 

As a ride-hailing service driver who also works in a supermarket, Nimo drives when there are no other options for passengers. During the Auckland floods, in January, he had requests for rides from people stranded, unable to get home while buses filled with water. “I was trying to drop people home, but I couldn’t go fast, because there was flooding everywhere,” he says. After he drove through a section of flooding he thought he could navigate, his water-damaged car ended up needing expensive repairs.

A recent RNZ investigation has revealed how common bus cancellations are in Aotearoa, with thousands of services cancelled across Auckland and Wellington each day. Cancellations make buses unreliable. The ones that do arrive, especially at peak times, are often too full. This makes using public transport, something that can be critical in reducing traffic and air pollution, incredibly inconvenient for travellers who just want to get where they’re going on time. 

Furthermore, the cause of cancellations is often a lack of drivers. Despite a funding boost for bus drivers to improve pay and work conditions across the country, New Zealand doesn’t have enough drivers to work on all the buses. 

People wanting to use public transport aren’t being well served. Neither are public transport drivers – or Uber drivers like Nimo whose rates and earnings are wildly variable depending on the Uber app. So who is benefitting from the current state of public transport? 

The private companies, often owned by private equity firms, that operate much of Aotearoa’s public transport is one answer. So are companies like Uber and Ola. When drivers get rides by filling in some of the gaping holes in the public transport system, “rideshare companies really benefit from public transport being inefficient and unreliable,” says Paris Marx, author of The Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

 

a grumpy looking brown skinned man with a very impressive moustache and the sky tower and buses in the background
Photo: Getty Images; design by Tina Tiller

Marx’s work focuses on how technology companies profit from changing transport norms. They note that ridesharing companies have explicitly tried to compete with public transport overseas. While this hasn’t happened as blatantly in Aotearoa, it’s important to acknowledge that for some people, rideshare services work well. “[Uber] started because its founder, Travis Kalanick, wanted easier access to black car services, like a step up from taxis,” Marx says. “These services work well for people like that – who aren’t hard up for cash, are tech savvy and live in urban areas.” 

But it’s not for everyone. “These private alternatives don’t work well for kids, people without smartphones or seniors who don’t feel confident with smartphones or people with some disabilities,” says Marx. They’re also almost always more expensive than public transport. Public transport, which is heavily subsidised by public money (especially at the moment with half-price fares), is responsible for being available to everyone, even if it often falls short of that ideal

That said, public transport will never work for everyone either. “Even if public transport was much, much better than it currently is, we need to remember that there will be some people, especially disabled people, who it just won’t work for,” says Kate Day, a campaigner with Free Fares, a coalition of groups campaigning for under-25s, students, community service card holders and total mobility card holders and their caregivers to be able to use transport for free

hand holding a phone with uber open and the background of a road
When your bus is cancelled, ride hailing is a convenient alternative – for some (Photo: Nathan Stirk/Getty Images)

Day, who doesn’t have a car, relies on public transport for getting herself, her two toddlers and her partner around. “It can be pretty frustrating to see that the bus has been cancelled when you’re waiting at the stop with two kids in the rain,” she says. Living in a central Wellington suburb near high-frequency routes means that there are often alternatives – but she notes that people in smaller towns and cities often get left out of discussions about public transport. If you live in a city with thousands of services a day, cancellations are inconvenient, but they’re even more so for people who live in towns with only one or two bus services, not to mention the many places that simply have no public transport at all. Furthermore, most of these places don’t have ride-hailing apps either, making moving around even harder for people without their own vehicles. 

That said, when public transport is good it can be really good. “We love taking the bus – we have a pram, so we sit in the accessibility seats. With the half-price fares, we can go and visit family in Petone and have a return trip for only $8, which is really affordable.”

While ride-hailing services are great if your bus has been cancelled and you need to get to work in a hurry, they also mean there are more cars on the road. “As more vehicles are on the road, it creates more traffic, and buses you might rely on are stuck behind a bunch of cars,” says Marx. Lots of rideshare vehicles circle high-traffic areas – which are often also the places where people want to go – making traffic worse for everyone else.

image of oa book cover with lots of cars in coloured squares that reads "the road to nowhere - what silicon valley gets wrong about the future of transportation" in a neutral sans serif font
Paris Marx’s book tackles some of ways technological transport solutions fail (Image: Supplied)

Marx says that Uber largely doesn’t monitor or regulate the number of drivers and cars available on its service, as taxi companies tend to, which means there are often way too many, or, at times of high demand, not enough. “It’s sold as this promise of efficiency, but it’s not really that efficient… the street is flooded with for-hire vehicles”. As someone who once waited 40 minutes outside an airport for consecutively cancelled buses, only for a bus to finally sail past while I waited for a rideshare vehicle that was stuck in traffic, I can only wholeheartedly agree. 

“There are huge benefits from each car taken off the road,” Day points out. Public transport puts more people in fewer vehicles, while rideshare vehicles do the opposite, putting more vehicles that may be empty on the road. This also reduces air pollution, which kills thousands of New Zealanders prematurely each year. 

Rideshare services are notorious for making their drivers independent contractors, rather than employees; in a landmark case last year, New Zealand’s employment court said that four Uber drivers who lodged a case could be eligible for years of backpay, although this is still under way. “[Rideshare driving] creates a model that is more precarious, with less protection and fewer rights,” Marx says. This can undermine the work of transport industries that pay and treat drivers better, including public transport and trucks. That said, Nimo, the Uber driver, says that while the pay isn’t great – rates vary depending on demand and algorithm – he’d still rather work for Uber than a bus company. He likes that he can switch the app off and take a break whenever he wants. 

What’s more, substituting rideshare vehicles for public transport has a social cost. “Uber helps you not have to think about people who are not like you,” says Marx. Public transport can be more egalitarian.

“I just love the experience of being surrounded by people from my community who I wouldn’t otherwise interact with,” says Day. Even in the rain, waiting for buses that are delayed, she appreciates how public transport creates community and solidarity – and she wants that option to be more widely available, instead of consigning people to private or hired cars. “It’s a really precious thing to travel in a way that brings all walks of life together.”

*Not his real name

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