Its official. Wellington's population shrunk between 2018 and 2023. Most right-wing bloggers and think-tanks in NZ are based in Wellington, like Farrar's Kiwi Blog, the Tax Payers Union, NZ Initiative, and more. Though they're loudly opposed to the government spending big money to fix our country's problems, when it comes to sorting out Wellington City's problems, they're pretty quiet. What are those problems? Where to start? Untold billions are "needed" to fix its water-supply, build new tunnels under the City, which consultants have just been hired to look into, and bore through Mt. Victoria, as well as build billion dollar cycle-ways into the City from the Hutt, and a ton more, all to save Wellington from oblivion, even though large swathes of its army of bureaucrats refuse to go into their offices to work there anymore. My prediction is Wellington will go the way of Detroit in the US, which is also shrinking. The seeds of Wellington City's decline are to be found in the reasons it was established in the first place. Wellington City Council says it all:
"The colony's [NZ's] capital was originally established by Governor William Hobson in the Bay of Islands. After 1841 it was sited in Auckland. A panel of Australian-based commissioners later designated Wellington the seat of government due to its favorable geography, sheltered harbour and central location".
How revealing. Wellington was made the capital purely due for geographical reasons - none of which now apply. Its harbor is barely used any longer for commercial shipping, its geography is unfavorable as we've learnt more about the fault-lines that it lies upon, and its central location as a mid-point between North and South Islands is redundant in our age of modern communications & transportation. The reasons Wellington is not being gradually shut-down are political - both National & Labour are terrified about losing several hundred thousand votes should they bring up the topic - like John Key once tried to do before the Party told him off. On a cost-benefit basis, public money should not be sunk into Wellington - other than what Wellingtonians themselves are prepared to stump up with courtesy of their own rates and taxes. As there is zero chance of Wellingtonians doing so, they should not bring the whole of NZ down with them, and lay waste to our towns and cities that are on the way up due to under-investment, and which are the new future of our country.
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