Bob Edlin: Local government academic chides Hastings council (hurrah!).....

....for its censorial hushing of code-of-conduct investigations

West Australia-based Dr Andy Asquith – it seems – has become the go-to expert on local government, when journalists check out the dubious goings-on of local authorities.

He has been referenced in media reports this week dealing with a byelection in Porirua, the Tauranga City Council’s regulatory conflict of interest, and the Hastings District Council’s egregious urge to hush its code-of-conduct investigations.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I'm really tired of councils stuffing up and no-one getting in trouble for it

Tell you what, if you don't already have much confidence in councils, the report out on what went wrong with sewage spilling into the water at Moa Point in Wellington isn't going to help.

It turns out the Moa Point wastewater treatment plant is only half built. There's another half that was supposed to be built and never was. If it had been built, that spill probably wouldn't have happened because there would have been enough capacity at the treatment plant to cope with the extra rainwater that fell that evening.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Mount Maunganui landslide report couldn't be more damning

I'm astonished, can I say, that Marty Grenfell, the boss of Tauranga City Council, thinks no one has to quit over the landslide and the damning report. And frankly, that there are not outright calls for him to quit from the mayor and the local MP.

That report, I don't know if it could have been more damning, because it told us Tauranga City Council was warned multiple times that a landslide might happen in exactly the spot where a landslide happened, as early as 1999 and as most recently as only six or seven months before the landslide.

Bob Edlin: When safety notices are ignored, councils might turn to rahui.....

When safety notices are ignored, councils might turn to rahui – or maybe risk-takers should be told not to bother with an SOS

Tauranga city authorities might be musing on whether they should have tried a rahui to keep people off Mount Maunganui beach and Moturiki Island at the weekend

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Does the Government need to take over the Mt Maunganui landslide inquiry?

Right, it seems there’s a very good chance that Tauranga City Council is going to have the inquiry they’ve launched taken off them and run by the Government instead.

The Government hasn’t actually said those words out loud just yet. What they have said is that there is a strong case for a Government inquiry.

Bob Edlin: How local bodies invoke the Treaty to justify governance arrangements at odds with universal suffrage

Discriminatory

adjective

treating a person or group differently from and usually worse than other people, because of their race, gender, sexuality, etc.:

PoO checked out the dictionary meaning after reading of a councillor in Taumaranui who wanted to re-label her council’s Māori ward referendum as discriminatory, only to be advised the word was inappropriate because the poll must be conducted impartially.

What a bummer!

Anglo Saxon: New Zealand local body authorities are out of control

Tauranga City Council has given away $38 million dollars worth of rate payers assets into a co-governance arrangement with local rangitira maoris.

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Cam Slater: Looks Dodgy, Smells Dodgy, Is Dodgy

When bureaucrats start playing around with OIA requests you know there is something stinky going on. Yet that is exactly what is happening at the Tauranga City Council.