5 ways NZ is corroding: Moa Point, Mt Maunganui landslide, NZTA corruption, Manurewa Local Board and the horror of Mt Albert Medical
We always tell our selves we aren’t corrupt, but 5 recent examples have proven how hollow that mindset is.
As Institutions are corroded and oversight wanes, cultures of corruption are spreading at speed through civil society.
It’s not the obvious corruption that we can see like Party donations and the vested interests of property pimps, big polluters and the mega wealthy using their policy, it’s more insidious than that.
Take 5 recent examples.
Moa Point & Mt Maunganui:
New Zealand likes to think of itself as a modern, accountable democracy. A country with checks, balances, and institutions capable of protecting the public interest.
The reality is far less flattering. What happened in Wellington (and Mt Maunganui) was not an accident, a maintenance lapse, or bad luck. It is the logical end point of decades of privatisation ideology, political timidity, and the outsourcing of public infrastructure to multinational corporations with no stake in the consequences.
The Myth of a Functional State
The problem of believing we are a country is that it treats a false sense of oversight and bureaucracy. Checks and balances built into place to ensure the egalitarian values of our country can be expressed.
The truth is we are not a country.
We are 3 sparsely populated giant Islands that sold its economic sovereignty away a long time ago.
Old Zealand is a broken privatisation experiment and we are utterly unaware of it!
Wellington was not drowning in sewage by accident and Mt Maunganui ignored the threats by design!
This is the predictable outcome of decades of privatisation ideology, lowest-bid contracting, political cowardice, and a coordinated propaganda campaign that successfully scared voters away from the only reform capable of stopping this collapse.
What happened Mt Maunganui and Moa Point was not a “failure of maintenance.” It is a failure of ideology — and the consequences now stink.
AI Bryce has done the best examination alongside Andrea Vance at how broken NZ is thanks to privatisation experiments that have utterly failed…
…the writing on the wall from this failed privatisation experiment has been obvious for years now…
Moa Point Was a Known Failure, so was Mt Maunganui
Years of warnings ignoredThe Moa Point plant has been non-compliant with its resource consent conditions for almost every month since January 2024. Wellington Water Committee papers from December show the facility passed compliance checks in only two months out of 24. Issues included unconsented discharges, odour problems, and multiple faecal coliform exceedances. Of the four Veolia-run plants in the region, Moa Point was the only one that never achieved a single “green” rating in that period.
‘Very few’ middle tier staff understood the gravity of reports into Mt Maunganui landslide risks
A Tauranga City Council manager says “very few” people understood the gravity of reports into the risk of landslides at Mt Maunganui.
Elected officials and staff met on Tuesday to discuss the council’s response to Paul Davison KC’s report that said information showing a risk to life from a landslide was received, filed, discussed, forwarded, and then left.
He found the risk was known decades before six people died in a landslide on January 22 2026.
RNZ
Veolia and the Cost of Outsourcing Responsibility
A 2021 review commissioned by Wellington Water itself painted a damning picture of the plants’ operations. It found “understaffed plants, inexperienced operators and a lack of executive oversight, leaving frontline teams to deal with complex process failures on their own.” The same review found that the contractor operating the plants, Veolia, “failed to carry out basic asset management, including regular maintenance.”Equipment was described as “obsolete and outdated and prone to failure.” Spare parts were hard to source, with long delivery times. There was “no clear responsibility for monitoring critical equipment or leading renewal programmes.”A follow-up 2023 report from engineering firm Stantec focused specifically on Moa Point and warned that the plant was “highly exposed” during upgrade work that reduced its capacity. The report predicted increased bypass events where partially treated or untreated wastewater would be discharged into the ocean.Vance noted the irony: “To layer irony onto irony, the plant meant to treat wastewater became a giant sewage geyser in the middle of an upgrade.”
Upgrading Infrastructure While the System Collapses
The catastrophe happened while they were supposedly fixing the problems.Wellington Water Committee chair Ros Connelly was blunt about what this represents: “the chickens coming home to roost after decades of underinvestment in water infrastructure.”
Privatisation Was the Ideology, Not the Accident
This is true, but underinvestment is only part of the story. The other part is who was responsible for operating these plants, and why they kept the contract despite years of documented failure.
….just like the IT contracts with lowest cost contractors. The French multinational Veolia is laughing all the way to the bank, while Wellington swims in the consequences, while we go for lowest-cost contracting ideology!
All that institutional engineering knowledge and management have been sacrificed to give far away corporations responsibility that they don’t care about.
How fitting for our Capital to sit in systemic contamination.
Moa Point & Mt Maunganui are two examples of the corrosion of NZ. Hollowed out management contracts and the steady erosion of institutional knowledge in favour of cost saving measures that rob local democracy of any oversight and influence.
NZTA corruption:
Take the culture of corruption that has taken hold at NZTA…
Bribery, corruption and fraud allegations across driver licensing system investigated
The NZ Transport Agency (NZTA) is investigating allegations of bribery, corruption and fraud across the driver licensing system, RNZ can reveal.
It comes as the agency is looking at body cameras for driver testing officers (DTOs).
RNZ earlier revealed 16 DTOs had been suspended with a further seven stood down following an investigation by the NZTA.
The investigation relates to abnormal test results for both passenger and heavy vehicles across the country, with about 650 drivers required to re-sit tests.
RNZ requested under the Official Information Act correspondence in relation to the investigation into the abnormal tests.
In response, NZTA director of land transport Mike Hargreaves confirmed this week that the assessment of abnormal tests sits alongside investigations into potential fraud, bribery and corruption within the driver licensing system.
Hargreaves said that last year NZTA identified that the test results of some driver testing officers were “outside expected norms”. NZTA then began an investigation in October.
In July, 23 testing officers were suspended or stood down from practical driver licence testing. A further seven, who were not actively testing, were also suspended as a precautionary measure.
NZTA withheld a series of weekly progress reports in relation to allegations of driver licensing fraud, bribery and corruption.
“The reports were developed to provide governance and operational oversight of ongoing investigations into alleged bribery, corruption and fraud across multiple aspects of the driver licensing system.
RNZ
…look at the power of the Trucking Mafia who instead of sacking drivers for participating in bribery to gain their trucking licence to a slap on the wrist because the Trucking Mafia are so dependent oil exploiting migrant Truck drivers…
NZTA offers re-testing for ‘low-risk’ commercial drivers amid licence fraud investigation
The NZ Transport Agency is shifting its approach to the 440 commercial driver licences it previously signalled would be cancelled or revoked, opting instead to suspend the drivers while giving “low-risk” licence holders the opportunity to prove they can operate safely through a supervised re-testing process.
The change follows an investigation into fraudulent overseas documentation submitted during applications to convert foreign licences into New Zealand commercial classes.
The update was provided to industry stakeholders by NZTA’s commercial transport regulation team, led by acting head Tara Macmillan.
…the need got exploit migrant drivers is more important than punishing everyone for corruption.
Manurewa Local Board:
It is incredible that people could plan premeditated corruption in a election campaign and the NZ Police are now here to be found in terms of prosecuting those involved…
Manurewa election: Voting papers reportedly destroyed after rigging complaints referred to police
Formal complaints about alleged vote rigging in the Manurewa election were forwarded to authorities nearly a year ago, including concerns that a new candidate had stormed home with more than 8000 ballots, beating every sitting incumbent.
But a police investigation was later shelved due to lack of evidence, before being revived last month when a whistleblower emerged with photos of allegedly stolen voting papers.
The original complainants are now questioning why their concerns were not acted on last year and whether critical evidence may have been lost.
“This level of systematic voter interference has no place in New Zealand elections,” former candidate Toa Greening told the Herald.
“If oversight bodies fail to thoroughly investigate and prosecute those responsible, it sets a dangerous precedent for future local democracy.”
NZ Herald
…it is extraordinary to me that people can plan to steal ballot papers en masse to rig an election and the [Polixce just shrug as if that doesn’t matter!
The horror of Mt Albert Medical:
What does one even say about this abomination?
They wouldn’t lift a finger to help a dying man outside their own clinic because ‘he wasn’t one of their patients’.
That is a corrosion of NZ values that is difficult to comprehend or accept.
We can’t pretend that we are immune to cultures of corruption any longer and there must be a new oversight infrastructure to ensure that corruption can’t continue to spread.
From hollowed out management of infrastructure no one wants to pay for, to the democratic process itself, to Local Councils stripped of institutional knowledge to bribery in our driver licence system to the very values of public health, Corruption isn’t just the obvious cases of the wealthy buying policy or Drug Cartels bribing Police, Corrections Staff or Border Patrol, it is in the day to day institutions that are being infected by cultures of corruption.
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This is a real tragedy from the NZ I grew up in. Of course neo liberalism was still fresh and shiny in the 90s.
NZ has a low accountability culture – so it’s always ‘systemic failings’ rather than the fault of individuals’ making wrong or corrupt decisions.
We have the low accountability culture because it keeps social harmony in the small workplaces and communities we still live in. No one likes the person who keeps asking ‘who was responsible or whose job was it?’
The PMC loves the low accountability culture because it protects them from losing their jobs and social status.
Being the least corrupt country out of many that were part of the international corruption index was always another New Zealand myth.
Arthur Allan Thomas and Erebus showed we are no different to other western nations and there have been numerous other examples since the 1970s.
The real slide began with that shyster Key and then has deteriorated much faster under the coalition government.
Since Key’s infamous examples and being re elected again showed me that New Zealanders values and expectations and just simply turning a blind eye to corrupt practices and cover ups by their government meant very little as long as they continued to prosper or just simply accepted the bullshit and misrepresentation as fact.
A state-assisted corruption scheme
Politicians defend their practice of taking huge bribes from the rich in the form of election “donations” by saying that its all out in the open: we can see who is buying them, we can see what they do in exchange and make sure that there is no “undue” influence (as opposed to the “due” influence they have paid for?), and so there is no problem. This is obviously false, and the current regime’s actions and the flood of money they have received from fast track applicants, polluters, honors recipients, and other parties with a direct financial interest in their decisions shows that. But even if it were true, there’s still a problem: because New Zealand law still allows parties to receive vast amounts of money in total secrecy, so we do not in fact get to see who is buying them after all.
New Zealand politics has a growing integrity problem. Bryce Edwards, Director of The Integrity Institute, says New Zealanders should start demanding a clean-up of an increasingly dirty political system.
ALARM BELLS sounded last Tuesday about the integrity of New Zealand politics. Global integrity watchdog Transparency International released its annual Corruption Perception Index, showing that New Zealand had dropped its ranking and score again. Since then, there’s been much talk about the urgent need to fix problems in regulating corporate lobbying that Transparency International says tarnishes New Zealand’s democracy.
Chris Hipkins has chosen Andrew Kirton to run the Beehive. According to fellow corporate lobbyist Neale Jones, ‘Andrew Kirton is great pick for Chief of Staff. Sharp political mind and a genuinely lovely guy’. But, as Bryce Edwards observes, ‘the conflicts of interest involved in having corporate lobbyists come in and run governments are immense. In other countries, it would be illegal.’
NEW ZEALAND is the second least corrupt country on earth according to the latest Corruption Perception Index published yesterday by Transparency International. But how much does this reflect reality?
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/08/a-state-assisted-corruption-scheme.html
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2023/02/andrew-kirton-problem-with-corporate.html
https://nzagainstthecurrent.blogspot.com/2025/02/kiwis-are-waking-up-with-alarm-to-new.html
Thank you MB. The Mt Albert Medical Centre is the part of this story that sickens and disgusts me most.
If the reported account is correct, this is an extraordinary example of what happens when professional responsibility, basic humanity and common decency are apparently subordinated to bureaucracy and indifference.
A man had collapsed and was dying on the footpath right outside this medical centre. Members of the public went inside desperately seeking medical assistance. Yet the reported response was essentially, “No, he isn’t our patient so we won’t assist.” Apparently even access to a defibrillator was refused.
If that account is correct, what an utterly shameful indictment of a medical practice. In essence, it is saying – “let him die, we don’t care because he is not one of our patients.”
One might have thought that when a person is dying, literally on your doorstep, the distinction between “our patient” and “not our patient” would become rather less important than simply saving a human life.
The Hippocratic Oath may be ancient, but surely the basic concept behind it has not yet been declared obsolete: a medical professional confronted with a person in serious medical distress should, at the very least, try to help.
Instead, we appear to have witnessed the spectacle of people including medical professionals in a medical centre apparently finding reasons not to help a dying man immediately outside their own premises. They should be ashamed of themselves.
And if their response is to retreat behind technicalities, policies, explanations and self-justification rather than confronting the profound moral failure they exhibited, represented by what has been reported, then that is as disturbing as the refusal to assist the dying man.
A medical qualification does not automatically confer compassion, courage or humanity. These qualities should be inherent in good decent people, especially medical professionals and their assistants, including reception staff in a medical centre.
Sometimes the most damning judgment of an institution is not what it did — but what it could have done and chose not to do. The Mt Albert Medical Centre is a classic example of this.
Yes totally agree.
The whole medical centre staff should be sacked and lose their medical licenses if they hold any.
To them it seems the Hippocratic oath means nothing.
As I’ve written here, many, many times before. AO/NZ’s more bent than something that’s extremely bent.
The bending started in 1936 when two bent political parties bent the national party into a bent existence. And from there, the bending proper began. The National Party formed in 1936 through the amalgamation of conservative and liberal parties, Reform and United respectively thus the fuse was lit and the bending began. I’m not going to waste my time going into the cracks and folds of the cats arse hole on this one because I’m getting bored with it except to write ; follow the money. Who earns our money? Who spends our money. What journey’s does our money go on. How come multi-billionaires, multi-millionaires, a crippled agrarian primary industry economy and homelessness and poverty and Auckland and Gulf Streams flying in and out of ZQT and the Ferrari’s and the Bentleys and the multi-million dollar pied-à-terre’s ? Tourism? Auckland’s Queen Street? Farmers? Think about it. Take your time.
The idealogy in ‘old zealand’ was the local populace elect a council or a power board. People on the board were practical people and the local body hired engineers, linesman and gardeners directly. It was a low cost model and it built a nation.
Now its all consultants, main chance former bureacrats and contractors inserting themselves into the rates and tax flow.