Lee Vandervis – lee@vandervision.co.nz

I am disappointed that the DCC media release quoting Dr. Hazelton claims that  “As with any significant construction project, some minor repairs are needed in the first year following its completion and a few issues have been identified that need our attention”.

A brand new set of pavers in George street should last for many years if not decades and should not require ‘minor repairs’ in the first year in my view. I can’t imagine the Romans tolerating paver replacement after only one year!

The DCC statement also fails to make clear who is paying for paver replacement work in a variety of areas which I believe should be paid for under warranty by Isaacs who were the lead contractor.

campaign spending rules, STV confusion and postal voting lack of scrutiny, and lower voter engagement despite the STV and Postal voting that was supposed to increase voter engagement.

In the DCC election run-up Mr Ong made many extraordinary claims including listed credentials on his website  https://www.benong.nz>meet-ben   that “I held Vice President and Associate Director roles at leading global banks- Royal Bank of Canada, Rabobank International, UOB Bank and Bank Sarasin-Rabo…” 
That is all I have recorded as a screenshot because Mr Ong’s site has only shown “Maintenance mode is on” since he was elected as a Councillor.
Despite many searches my many people including journalists from the Otago Daily Times, there is no evidence that Mr Ong ever been a Vice President of any leading Global Bank as he has claimed.

Today I have had the following confirmation from David Johnston of Rabobank NZ that in addition to his information that “Our records show that Benedict Ong was employed by Rabobank Singapore in the Mergers and Acquisitions team from 2007 to 2010.” that Rabobank Singapore HR confirmed “a Benedict Alvin Ong was employed as an Associate Director in the Mergers and Acquisitions team from 2007 to 2010.” Mr Ong’s claim that he held Vice President and Associate Director roles at Rabobank International, a Dutch multinational banking and financial services company [Wikipedia] remains unverified, but it is now established that he did hold an Associate Director role in one of over a hundred Rabobanks worldwide, this one in Singapore.

If Mr Ong can produce independent evidence that he held a Vice President role at any leading global bank – Royal Bank of Canada, Rabobank International, UOB Bank, or Bank Sarasin Rabo…  as he has claimed on his now inaccessible website, I will sincerely apologise to him for questioning his Vice President of leading Global Bank credentials.
Having established that Mr Ong’s work experience did include at least some much lower level banking experience, I still welcome Cr Ong as a new DCC Councillor and as one of the few Mayoral candidates to raise the issue of DCC Billion dollar debt during the election, which he also claims to have a secret solution to.

Millions of people work in international banks.

Mr Ong’s claims of having been a Vice President and Associate Director as below are decidedly not confirmed, on Google or anywhere else.

Lee Vandervis

I initially supported STV as promoted by Otago University Political Studies Professor Janine Hayward, as being more representative than the traditional First Past the Post system still used by the majority of NZ Councils.

My first decade of actually seeing the effects of STV and my personal investigations into STV including many questioning emails to Warwick Lampe of Electionsnz have completely changed my view.

I learned that the STV system we use in NZ was borrowed from a winner-only system and modified by two computer programmers at the NZ Department of Internal affairs to rank losing candidates as well as picking a winner.

The concept of taking people’s second preference votes into account was achieved by first taking the lowest polling candidates second preferences and bouncing them up to the next lowest polling candidate etc in a series of computer iterations and through arbitrary thresholds that ended up making subsequent to first preference votes very important in the final outcome.

I have repeatedly challenged Electionsnz to prove that this system is truly representative, after I found that this modified STV system boosts minority candidates and punishes candidates with strong views and supporters who tend not to cast second preferences.

Electionsnz have only confirmed that the they test the program before every election and that it gives consistent results, not confirming that it supplies truly representative results.

Major practical drawbacks of this modified STV system include:

1 – most people find having to rank large numbers of candidates daunting, rather than simply ticking the candidates they want under the traditional FPP system.

2 – Modified STV promotes minority candidates – this effect being approved by people like ex-Mayor Hawkins who has falsely claimed ‘that majority rule can never serve minorities’.

3 – Modified STV punishes candidates with strong views or policies, in favour of waffling or fence-sitting candidates.

4 – The computer programmers who modified the STV system setting thresholds and other parameters have moved on decades ago and nobody now can interrogate these parameters.

5 – When faced with a modified STV computer program that has significant complications and has many people arguing for and against, faith in our electoral system declines along with voter participation.

6 – There are few opportunities for scrutiny of this STV voting system, with voters expected to simply accept an end result from screeds of iterative number charts with subsequent preference votes bouncing all over them.

If we are to restore faith in our Electoral system, I suggest that Dunedin goes back to First Past the Post voting, that the $55,000 election advertising limit be extended to six months prior to the election to make it meaningful, and that Mayoral candidates not be allowed to aggregate many times the $55,000 advertising limit spending across many ‘team’ Council candidate supporters.

If not, we face a future where only multi-millionaires, or candidates funded by multimillionaires with ‘teams’ will have the best chance of becoming Mayor in Dunedin.

The reality is that money buys votes which is why we have the $55,000 limit.

The Electoral Commission should also remove DCC Council staff from all election-related roles, as DCC bureaucrats, especially CEOs have conflicts of interest because resulting Mayor and Councillors will be their direct employers.

This was strikingly seen in the run up to the 2019 Mayoral Election where DCC staff ran a smear campaign against me as the leading Mayoral contender where I still got the majority of First Preference votes, but lost to second preferences.

DCC staff publicly ruling on electoral signage and other electoral advertising issues again should only be done by independent Commission staff or contractors.

The Electoral Commission should run our elections with completely independent staff operating all the electoral roles currently run by DCC staff.

And lastly, the Electoral Commission should stop sending thousands of voting papers to students in Dunedin North for many years after they have moved on, as many of these papers are easily misused.

I have complained to the Commission for years about these voting papers floating around Dunedin North, having seen them piled up in University halls of residence common-room corners and other places.

To summarise, I suggest that we return to the traditional electoral system where people vote ticking just who they want in booths across Dunedin with scrutineers available in a simple First Past the Post system.

Also lacking credibility are most of the claims made by Benedict Ong in his Mayoral campaign speeches where his credential claims were so outlandish and vacuous that I had written him off as completely un-electable despite his extensive advertising, especially in the ODT.
When it appeared that Mr. Ong had provisionally won a Council seat I did some source checking on google, then Perplexity AI, then his website and finally his claim of now being a Dunedin resident.
None of his claims were able to be verified by independent sources, world-wide as follows:

Google:

“Meet Ben – BENEDICT ONG

benedict ong

https://www.benong.nz › meet-ben

I held Vice President and Associate Director roles at leading global banks – Royal Bank of Canada, Rabobank International, UOB Bank and Bank Sarasin–Rabo …

Missing: records ‎independent ‎online ‎sources ‎state

Home – BENEDICT ONG

benedict ong

In my former international banking career in Singapore, I was Vice President and Associate Director for leading global banks from Canada, Switzerland, the …

Missing: there ‎There ‎records ‎independent ‎online ‎sources ‎state“




AI Perplexity searches have found no independent records anywhere of Mr Ong’s claims to have been Vice-President or having senior roles in any of Rabobank International, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB, and Bank Sarasin-Rabo Asia as he has repeatedly claimed during Mayoral candidate meetings.

I have done several AI searches of all world information available from AI search engine Perplexity [but no doubt Grok and Chat GPT will be similar] and this is one of the specific  questions I asked and the result:

Are there any independent source records showing that Benedict Ong was Vice president of Rabobank International, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB, and Bank Sarasin-Rabo Asia?

There are records from independent online sources that state Benedict Ong held Vice President and Associate Director roles at Rabobank International, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB Bank, and Bank Sarasin-Rabo Asia, with all roles based in Singapore. These records appear on his official campaign and biographical pages, which outline his former banking career and experience. However, none of these records are primary third-party sources such as official company press releases, news articles from major outlets, or authoritative regulatory disclosures. The information available is based on personal claims and biographical summaries shown on independent platforms and his campaign websites, and does not include corroboration from the banks themselves or major independent industry publications.

Further Perplexity search on Ong’s residence claimed to be in Dunedin “Property Ownership and Addresses

• No publicly available or disclosed information on ownership of property in New Zealand.
• No publicly disclosed current residential address beyond the declaration that his principal residence is outside the Dunedin City Council area.
  
  Benedict Ong’s Google page is unavailable with the message that it is temporarily closed for maintenance.
  

This Benedict Ong site has been in maintenance mode all this week so far.

Independent Information

• Benedict Ong’s education credentials (Bachelor of Commerce in Finance, University of New South Wales) are independently listed in Dunedin City Council and official candidate profiles, consistent across multiple sources.​
• His candidacy statements and biographical sites repeatedly mention senior roles held at global banks, listing Rabobank International, Royal Bank of Canada, UOB, and Bank Sarasin-Rabo Asia as workplaces in Singapore; these are consistent with job titles (Vice President, Associate Director) detailed on official venues beyond his self-published claims.​
• No independent employment verification or third-party reporting (such as press releases, regulatory filings, or corporate HR records) are publicly available beyond these campaign and certification sources.​

What Remains Self-Attested

• All specific role details (responsibilities, projects, deal sizes, duration in roles) are based only on his own statements and campaign material.​
• There is no direct evidence (like third-party employment history, media interviews specific to his transaction leadership, or international news coverage of banking activities directly attributed to him) to independently verify the scope of jobs or experiences beyond general campaign or web biographies.​

Conclusion

His qualifications (education and former employment at major banks in influential roles) and candidacy for Dunedin Council and Mayor are independently stated and publicly acknowledged in official profiles, but the specifics of his international banking experience are only self-attested, with no third-party independently verifiable documentation evident in public records.​

Other concerns relating to Mr Ong’s behaviour have been appearing on social media e.g. on Cr Mayhem’s FaceBook page, and reported to me by other fellow Councillors.

I feel for Dunedin, especially for people on lower and fixed incomes who will now continue to suffer both of our bloated bureaucracies, interest on DCC Billion-dollar debt, compromised Council companies with another Billion-dollar debt, and a Council with re-elected activists and political party puppets pushing Palestine and planet-saving instead of good local government for Dunedin. 
Good new Councillor blood will make a positive difference, but spendthrift Mayoral direction and control by bureaucracy make real change unlikely.

The vital importance of the Mayoralty and the myth of Mayoral teams and teamwork has again been laid bare, this time with the team’s purpose of massively getting around the $50,000 Mayoral campaign spending limit to get its leader elected being especially obvious. 
The legal lack of any early campaign spending limits needs urgent Electoral Commission action, as does the complication and confusions without scrutiny of the modified STV voting system used by Dunedin and a minority of NZ Councils, which has contributed to lower voter participation. 

I also feel disappointed personally for losing the chance of leading the reversal of Dunedin’s long decline from being New Zealand’s greatest city to being its poorest, but I am happy to again have strong voter support as a Councillor to continue pushing for the hopes and dreams of many Dunedin citizens who still believe in Dunedin’s extraordinary potential. 

My heart-felt thanks to all of my campaign supporters and volunteers who worked so hard to distribute the campaign message to most Dunedin addresses and on social media, and who made our Win or Lose Party last night such a positively memorable one.
Our volunteers’ map of extensive Dunedin street campaign coverage along the smaller newsprint ads that they paid for personally, shows the commitment so many volunteers had to the range of major structural and policy changes that I have long been promoting for Dunedin.

An increasing number of people are asking me daily now. Emails, texts, whenever shopping – they have all wanted my opinion so here it is.

Having spent 18 years as a Councillor I know all of these people personally and have respect for their various skills and experience, despite many having opposing opinions.

In my opinion Useful Councillors for our next 2025-2028 Dunedin City Council include: Vandervis, Lucas, Radich, Weatherall, Barker, Acklin, Whiley, Lund, Hamlin, Galer, Simms, Chambers, Todd, and Macfarlane.

Under the Dunedin STV computer voting system, please only mark candidates you really want and leave the rest blank.

No useful Councillors for Otago Regional Council – hopefully ORC will soon be disestablished or “dismembered’ as MP Shane Jones has called for.

Lee

And in no time Andrew Barnes Rutherford used some AI trickery to produce this version using my lyrics.

This is the full ODT article [on my FB page but some time ago] in which MP Jones calls the Otago Regional Council’s existence into question, describing the ORC as the Kremlin Council that needs to go.

https://www.odt.co.nz/regions/kremlin-councils-need-go

Shane Jones calls for the dismemberment of Regional Councils, having last month called out the ORC for stopping Macraes Gold expansion.

Getting Dunedin free of the Otago Regional Council can’t come soon enough, but needs a strong Mayoral push to make it happen.

My specific proposals are in contrast to Cr. Barker’s aspirations.

e.g.

“Cr Vandervis: Dunedin needs to “be free of” the Otago Regional Council. “We need to reclaim our port and our harbourside.” A unitary council should be established in Dunedin. “Once we get this new model where we have a single council, we will then be able to lead the development of Dunedin in a way that hasn’t been possible in the past.”

Cr Barker: We need to “re-envision” the city. “I’ve been working on a bit of a vision, which is around the best place to live in New Zealand, where people live fulfilled lives in a connected city that’s safe and accessible for all, where our standard of living is enhanced by our treasured environment, a prosperous city with meaningful jobs and strong communities resilient to climate change, a smart city respecting heritage while innovating for our future.” Bold ambition is required, and a plan has to have smart, measurable goals.

Governance, leadership and accountable decision-making

Cr Vandervis: “As mayor, I intend to make sure that only relevant decisions get put in front of the council and that much of the submissions industry, much of the international politics and much of the virtue signalling that goes on at council simply doesn’t get on to the agenda in the first place.” He would push for slimmed-down meeting agendas. Better agendas should lead to better results.”

“The mayor’s suggestion “core” council debt would drop after five years was presented in council material as DCC debt excluding water, and this metric shows projected decreases from 2030.

Cr Vandervis described this as a “future fantasy”.

Mr Radich described Cr Vandervis as “sceptical” after many years at the council.

“I believe we are on track for debt repayment,” the mayor said.

“Anyone can see that core council debt excluding water starts dropping after five years and total council debt flattens, hence my contention that debt growth is under control when the LTP is looked at as a whole.”

Mr Radich had quite a different reading of the situation in February, when he urged councillors to avoid adding to the rising council debt that had already been included in draft budgets.

“We have been on a skyrocket trajectory of ever-increasing debt levels,” he said at the time.

“That is not sustainable and we don’t have to stay there.”

In March, S&P Global Ratings downgraded the council’s credit rating.

The rating of the council and its financing arm, Dunedin City Treasury Ltd, dropped from AA to AA- and the outlook for both organisations remained negative.”

My Debt Solutions include: back to basics spending, getting our Port Chalmers and Harbourside land back from the ORC (worth near $30 million per year), no more ORC rates, run better buses, get commercial returns from our Council- owned companies, sell-off unused or low-returning DCC land, improve staff productivity with University collaboration and AI, reverse recent $100+ million zerocarbon/cycleway splurge, pause $92.4 million Brighton Landfill, and use local contractors to keep Dunedin dollars and jobs in Dunedin.

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