Wellington drowns in privatisation failure as Veolia’s sewage disaster exposes the lie of Three Waters hysteria
Wellington is not drowning in sewage by accident.
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 is happening at Moa Point is not a “failure of maintenance.” It is a failure of ideology — and the consequences now stink.
Take a long hard look – this is Old Zealand, a broken privatisation experiment drowning our own Capital in shit.
The French must be laughing.
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…
Years of Warnings Ignored at Moa Point
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.
Documented Failure, No Accountability
Veolia’s Record of Operational Failure
Upgrading the Plant While Breaking the City
Privatisation, Not Just Underinvestment
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 cheap arse it again…
…all that institutional engineering knowledge and management have been sacrificed to give far away corporations responsibility that they don’t give a shit about.
How fitting for our Capital to drown in shit.
Look at how bad broken NZ is operating…
…here’s the icing on this shit cake – we did it to ourselves.
How Three Waters Was Killed by Lies and Dark Money
Labour’s Three Waters was created to deal with this enormous infrastructure problem, while acknowledging Māori interests in water.
We allowed Dark Money to seep into the Taxpayers’ Union, weaponising ignorance and racism to protect corporate profits and convince you all that ‘da Maaaaares is stealing da water’ and National, ACT and NZF played along.
Three Waters which would have lowered the costs you are all now facing in your rates was destroyed by redneck crackers and now redneck crackers are drowning in shit.
Oh the irony you stupid silly sleepy Hobbits.
Your petty bigotry has been manipulated for the interests of the corporations and polluters and they are laughing all the way to the bank.
Privatisation promised efficiency. What it delivered was a city drowning in its own shit.
This is common overseas investors/companies make money, strip assets if they buy and leave their mess for us taxpayers to sort, seems we haven’t learnt. And to make matters worse if the COC get back in more assets will be sold, land mined, public sector eroded, more privatisation of valued assets and public amenities like schools, Kiwibank, NZ Post, ferries, etc etc.
The Harbour’s full of shit, and someone should be in jail for it.
There are no excuses.
Vote for shit and thats what you end up in .This is the result of voting for the cheapest candidate in the election .Now we are faced with the ACT party and its team of cap rates dickheads taking over .How can we expect to cap rates when there is clearly billons needed all over NZ just to do repairs .Wake up and think beyond your pocket next election .
Wellimgton Water should have good technical factors behind it. Why would it go wrong? I had learned of another city water supply gone wrong which I thought was a one-off, so wasn’t knocked over by further events. One gets brutalised by the dodgy systems now being brought to the public table. It was Flint in USA….In April 2014, during a financial crisis, state-appointed emergency manager Darnell Earley changed Flint’s water source from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (sourced from Lake Huron and the Detroit River) to the Flint River….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis |…
We are all consumers apparently, with government acting for us as agent. In NZAO we have bought expertise and superior ability. But no, it appears we have had shoddy input and so outcomes, as goes with every imported thing with us, from shoes to whiteware, and so with government also; it has bought a litter of pups. CAN WE SUE? HOW DO WE SUE? Are we able to usefully use the cross-nation business laws that apply to us as part of our international trading agreements with long acronyms. Our trade partners can sue us – can we sue them for bad faith also workmanship and little-dependent -country contra proferentem??
It’s hard to feel sympathy for Wellington. That city has been over mollycoddled and financially pampered for what it puts out…other than fucked up political and ideological decision making. Its world-class at that, lead by fruitcake Cycleway Genter. Yay, Te Papa whoopdeedoo.
Yes, Kraut and those making the decision don’t reside in Wellington they are mostly from Auckland, so what do you expect. Parliament might be located here but don’t blame our city for all the shit our countries in.
Also, all NZ councils need to change their bylaws around being able to take water as private companies many foreign can pay five to eight hundred dollars to bottle our water sell it back to us and others and make money when we are going to pay high water rates and have meters to try and reduce our use something is wrong here.
Best not forget it was a council lead by Justin Lester who handed the contract to Veolia, just as Phil Goff fisted over Aucklands infrastrcture contracts in 2017.
Gives you pause for thought, Labour govt and two Labour mayors oversee handing massive contracts to overseas corporates. Labour havent changed since the Lange govt.
Stupid.ZB types. Look at this arsehole government now. Pushing problems towards local government and saying they want cap rates! ‘Water done well’ my arse. This government is a f’ing disgrace.
It was a Labour mayor during a Labour govt that sold us out to the French might wanna go ask Justin Lester some hard questions
Your National government has turned this country to shit, just as it was previously under a National government, it is not Labour in charge. National haven’t changed going back to Muldoon. Capitalism and neoliberalism are failures.
Funny, it was a National potential coalition that cried foul on three waters, yet we’ll never know whether it would have been a success or failure. The rhetoric from the right was that it would have ended worlds. The reality now is that Nationals “Water done well” is an
absolute joke and abject failure and no Cricklewood, you can’t blame Labour for that. This is all on your government.
So you’re supportive of selling out the management of our key infrastructure in multinationals… so long as its Labour doing it. Bet ya supported rogernomics as well.
It’s hard to add a ‘comment’ to this article as ,once again, Martyn Bradbury has succinctly hit the nail on the head…
We used to have the ‘Ministry of Works’…and the MED….full of qualified people who had decades of experience and broad intimate knowledge of what they were charged with doing, who interacted with each other in a professional manner, (almost unseen today in this dog eat dog world), and who knew how to get in amongst the weeds to root out problems before they became disasters.
Privatisation, because of the dog eat dog world that it is, is doomed to fail every…fucking…time…
I know of ‘corporates’ whose main priority is …who they can pass the buck to, not if, but when, things go pear-shaped. They operate on securing contracts by under quoting for jobs that they haven’t got a snow balls chance in hell of successfully completing, but have it all worked out to avoid culpability for when the shit inevitably hits the fan….
This is the world that ACT and National love to inhabit….Cent wise (but not even that)…dollar foolish….definitely!
So why isn’t NZ media calling out scurrilous organisations such as the Taxpayers’ Union? Are there NO HONEST, CONCERNED media, with the b&lls to take on their Editor or Owner? I won’t watch any news on TV now because it’s total BS and so much is focused on the hideous Trump as a distraction. We are so ‘not prepared’ for a catastrophe it’s almost a joke except I’m not laughing. This CoC just keeps giving to the top feeders and pretends away the ever increasing desperate. The $3.2b they misappropiated from the much needed National Resilience Plan, that Labour brought in especially for ‘unforeseen’ events, needs to go towards fixing the appallling, dangerous sewage problem in Wellington.
Bring back equality and fairness to our people and start treating them with respect!
We, just ordinary people have been warning about privatisation for years. What’s happened is mirrored by the privatisation disaster of Thames water in the UK where the River has been polluted with sewage.
Privatisation their loyalty is to their profits and shareholders not to people and the wellbeing of the natural world.
Wellington and Christchurch are a great example of how a rates cap is a bloody joke .Those two plants will eat up a billion dollars in the next few years but will not pivot from just dumping shit into the sea then catching the fish that have been infected by those toxins ,then charging high prices for those fish at the supermarket .Then there is the endless climate damage that is now sucking up more council funds every year .Like every household in NZ councils are finding it more expensive to deal with these two issues .For decades we elected councils based on the bull shit promise of not increasing rates with the results we are seeing daily with under ground services .Now we have a band of idiots wanting to shrink council income further by capping increases below the level of inflation .The end result will be loss of services .How long before the water system fails and we have to revert to our own devices for drinking water and sewage disposal because councils have gone bank rupt due to ACT and its rate cap aided by the weak leadership of Luxon .