Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellington Council's got another thing to worry about funding

Tell you what, if you think Wellington doesn't have enough problems already, let me tell you about a new one: Wellington Zoo.

Wellington Zoo needs $14 million for its lion enclosure. It's urgent. It's not something that can be deferred. Wellington City Council needs to cough up the money.

Ryan Bridge: It's not the mistakes that kills trust, it's the accountability dodgers

There's an air of arrogance and butt-covering to the stench that is Moa point.

In a nutshell, the council, its water management company and the contractor were all a bit shit at their jobs.

And Wellington's South Coast has been shat on.

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.

Ryan Bridge: Tony Randle is the sort of brain needed around the council table

Tony Randle was the exactly the type of person, the sort of brain, you want sitting round a council table.

Especially given the types who now seem to occupy many of the seats.

It's very sad to hear of his passing. My condolences to his family and those who knew him well.

Peter Dunne: Wellington City Council - Public Relations Disasters

You can’t beat Wellington on a good day” the saying goes.

It also seems you cannot beat Wellington, or at least its City Council, when it comes to public relations disasters.

Earlier this year, following years of mismanagement of and underinvestment in the city’s water system, the Council in conjunction with other local Councils, established a new entity, Tiaki Wai, to better and more transparently manage the region’s water resources. Part of the plan was that there would be a separation between what ratepayers paid for water services and their rates to local authorities, so that they could see more clearly the true cost of water services.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Did Andrew Little save Wellington Council?

Tell me something: does what’s just happened with the Golden Mile upgrade in Wellington restore your faith in the possibility that councils can actually be run properly?

Because that thing - I don’t know if you’ve been following it over the years - but the Golden Mile upgrade has been an albatross around the necks of Wellington business owners and ratepayers since probably about 2016.

Bob Edlin: Bishop aims to trim outdated laws from the statute books....

Bishop aims to trim outdated laws from the statute books – but won’t this permit sales of watery stuff as “milk”?

This rates among the more bemusing headlines to attract the attention of the PoO team this week:

Bob Edlin: Yes, CAB will have to cut its services.....

Yes, CAB will have to cut its services, but does it begrudge the capital the benefits that flow from blessing ceremonies?

A picture of Wellington Mayor Andrew Little, splendidly decked out with his chain of office and brandishing his trusty rate-trimming scissors, features today on The Post’s page of letters to the editor.

The picture illustrates a grouch from a reader about the extravagance – extravagances, if you care to include all library costs and the functions to open the city’s new library – about a blessing ceremony.

Bob Edlin: Big bucks are paid for council’s Chief Maori Officer (and his staff).....

Big bucks are paid for council’s Chief Maori Officer (and his staff) – and more are paid for advice on library blessings

The Wellington City Council’s veneration of the Treaty of Waitangi comes at a cost for ratepayers.

It has resulted in the council:

Ryan Bridge: Wellington's endless spending on pen-pushers and reviews

You can't escape bureaucrats in Wellington; it's an occupational hazard.

Despite the bad press they get, they're not all useless.

But it depends on how you use them, and how often.

Take the Golden Mile disaster in Wellington, as just one example.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellington Council's been caught keeping secrets from ratepayers again

Now, you would have thought that after all the publicity Wellington City Council has been getting - and the paid staff have been getting - for being caught doing things behind the backs of elected councillors, they probably wouldn’t do it again.

And yet, here we are. They’ve been caught doing it again.

Dr Michael Johnston: A question of priorities

It is more than two weeks since the catastrophic failure of Wellington’s sewage treatment plant at Moa Point. Massive quantities of raw sewage continue to flow into Cook Strait. Many of Wellington’s beaches will likely be closed for months.

The immediate cause of the failure appears to have been a blocked pipe. The inside of the facility was flooded, badly damaging the plant.

Peter Bassett: Wellington’s Sewage Crisis Wasn’t an Accident. It Was a Vote — and Everyone’s Pretending Not to Remember

When Wellington Mayor Andrew Little announced he would raise the city’s “catastrophic” sewage failure with the Prime Minister and senior ministers, he struck the solemn tone of a man confronting an unforeseeable calamity.

That tone would be more convincing if the cause of the calamity were not already sitting, neatly itemised, in Wellington City Council’s own records.

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Wellingtonians should be angry about this

Here’s a question for you: Was your first reaction to the news of sewage pumping into Wellington’s water something along the lines of, “Oh well, these things happen”?

I ask because I’ve spent the past 24 hours fighting the urge to wave this away as one of those unfortunate, unforeseen things that just happen from time to time. You know — mistakes happen.

Peter Bassett: When cycleways and rainbow toilets take over, the pipes rot

There are moments in public life when irony does not merely tap you on the shoulder but smacks you in the face with a dripping length of sewer pipe. One such moment arrived this week when Julie Anne Genter, Wellington’s most indefatigable apostle of cycleways, emerged solemnly to inform us that the Moa Point sewage disaster was “a terrible reminder of the importance of investing in our infrastructure”.

Bob Edlin: Public bodies in NZ embrace karakia.....

Paganism has been enshrined in Latvian law – but public bodies in NZ embrace karakia without being mandated by Parliament

Our Cambridge Dictionary defines the word “pagan” as


… a person who belongs to a religion that worships many gods, especially one that existed before the main world religions:

We checked the meaning of “pagan” after reading an article in The Critic headed

The return of the strong gods?

Mike's Minute: Get some expertise around the council tables

Lindsay McKenzie is still busy at work.

You will have forgotten the name because like so much news these days, it's hot stuff until it isn't.

Lindsay is the bloke that was appointed to watch over Wellington Council because of their dysfunction.

Barry Soper: How did Tory Whanau get the Wellington mayoralty?

If you have wondered how someone like Tory Whanau could win the mayoralty of our country's capital city, then wonder no more.

It's the same reason why one of the country's most revered mayors in recent years, Dame Kerry Prendergast, lost her nine-year grip on the city's mayoralty to another unfathomable choice, Celia Wade-Brown.

It's not because both Whanau and Wade-Brown are Greens and it's not because both of them love cycleways, despite vocal ratepayer opposition to the amount of money being spent on Wellington cycleways.

Glenn Inwood: Democracy crashes into Wellington City Councillor

The following opinion article was offered first to The Post. They declined to publish, for reasons not given. It’s their call on what they put in their newspaper. We consider the points we raise in relation to Councillor Nikau Wi Neera’s stance on the Airport share sale requires discussion and is something that all Wellingtonians need to understand.

Party Ideology has no part in Local Government

It is any surprise that public confidence in the Wellington City Council is at an all-time low when considering the debacle around the sale of the ratepayer-owned shares in Wellington airport? The flip-flopping of councillors illustrates the point.

Barrie Davis: Wellington City Council Flying High

There have been various reports of problems with Councils and we have had our fair share in Wellington. A recent issue has been whether to sell our remaining one third share of the Wellington airport and the way things are going it seems that we will by one vote. Here, I will just summarize the reported facts for you; it doesn’t need embellishment from me. I am, however, astonished – gobsmacked at the humbug and machinations.

On 30 May this year a Wellington City Council committee voted by 10 votes to 8 to sell 34% of our shares worth about $278 million in the Wellington Airport to set up, they said, an insurance fund to help the city after a natural disaster (The Post, 31 May 2024, here).

The council has 16 voting members including the Mayor and 15 Councilors, plus two appointed Maori representatives (mana whenua) who can only vote on committees.