MURIEL NEWMAN: Analysing a Crisis

Background:

The Post in Wellington, and Stuff nationally on-line, ran two articles implying Muriel Newman's Breaking Views, and by association Bassett,Brash&Hide, were spreading disinformation and misinformation. RNZ's Mediawatch also started firing off emails trying to identify the 'mysterious blogger'. The Post failed to mention, in both articles, that Breaking Views and Bassett,Brash&Hide had also carried a rebuttal from former Councillor Sean Rush. A letter was sent to The Post pointing this out but it went unpublished. Muriel, as you would expect, has now delivered a thorough response.

But first, one of the articles (the second got more sensational using decades-old ACT photos of Muriel Newman and Rodney Hide to claim 'links' to the 'mysterious blogger'):

Muriel's response, Analysing a Crisis:

At 11.10 am on Wednesday 4 February, Wellington Water - the council-controlled organisation responsible for managing drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater services for the Greater Wellington region - announced a “significant incident” had occurred at the Moa Point Wastewater Treatment Plant.

 The city's primary facility for handling sewage for around 180,000 people had suffered a catastrophic failure and shut down. As a result, untreated sewerage was being discharged along the coastline.

It turned out that during heavy rainfall overnight, a blockage occurred in the 1.8 km outfall pipe used to discharge treated wastewater into Cook Strait. This caused sewage to back up into the plant itself - up to 3 metres deep in some areas - destroying critical equipment and treatment infrastructure. This forced the discharge of untreated sewage through the short emergency outfall pipe just 5 meters from the shore.

While the long outflow pipe and some screening facilities are now operational and discharging around 70 million litres a day of partially screened wastewater into the Cook Straight, full repairs will take months and cost millions.

The Local Government Minister Simon Watts announced an independent review to investigate the exact cause of the blockage and plant failure. What is known, however, is that as a result of decades of under-investment, Wellington’s ageing wastewater network is prone to stormwater infiltration, especially during heavy rain events. An exacerbating factor was that the plant was undergoing remedial work at the time, which reduced its treatment capacity and heightened its vulnerability.

Problems at Moa Point have been long-standing. Built in 1998 and run by the French multinational Veolia under contract to Wellington Water, the facility had a history of equipment failure and non-compliance with resource consents.

Ironically, a new state-of-the-art sludge treatment plant is in the final stages of construction at Moa Point. The $500 million facility, which will produce reusable biosolids from sludge through thermal hydrolysis, anaerobic digestion, and drying, is expected to be operational later this year.

However, repairing the main wastewater treatment plant is crucial, since the new facility relies on the existing plant to prepare the sewerage for processing.

The Moa Point failure has raised questions about the decisions taken by the Wellington City Council in 2021, when prioritising projects during their long-term 10-year planning process.

At the time, Councillors were presented with seven key infrastructure options. The first addressed “Investment in three waters infrastructure” and explained: “The network is ageing and deteriorating leading to increases in pipe breakages and leakage”.

It was estimated that up to 30 percent of the city’s drinking water was being lost through old leaky pipes, with 20 percent of the wastewater pipes beyond their life expectancy: “The age of our networks and a series of high-profile failures have resulted in Wellington Water recommending a significant increase in funding is required for the Long-term Plan cycle and going forward.”

Three options were provided to Councillors. Water Option 1 maintained the “existing” funding at $552 million over 10 years. Water Option 2 “enhanced” the capital investment to $678 million. Water Option 3 “accelerated” it to $1.5 billion to get on top of the problems - with the advice on wastewater stating: “After investigations and a $391m renewals programme, we would be able to invest to reduce sewage pollution, starting with catchments around the central city, Karori and Owhiro Bay, then widening into other catchments. We think the waterways and coastal environment would be close to where we would like them to be by the end of the work programme. Pipe breaks would be rare and if there was a discharge it would be swiftly managed.”

Officials claimed they were ‘uncertain’ about their ability to deliver Water Option 3, and recommended Water Option 2, acknowledging it would not fix the problems but would “reverse some of the trends and set us on a more favourable path.”

Another infrastructure decision related to cycleways. Officials recommended Cycleway Option 3, with $120 million of capital expenditure over 10 years, while the accelerated Cycleway Option 4 required $226 million.

When it came time to vote, the Minutes show a majority of Councillors supported the officials’ recommended Water Option 2 in clause 9, with ten voting in favour, four opposed, and Councillor Sean Rush absent.

With regards to the cycleway vote, Councillor Tamatha Paul – now a Green Party MP – moved an amendment in clause 10, to adopt Cycleway Option 4 against the recommendation of officials and in spite of their warning that, “There is substantial uncertainty regarding the affordability of this option and the ability of the sector to deliver such a large work programme.”

In an article outlining these events, the former Wellington Councillor Sean Rush explained how Tamatha Paul proposed financing the funding shortfall: “Tamatha had a solution for funding. Council officers had identified approximately $100 million of insurance‑related savings across the ten‑year period. This was recommended to be applied as additional debt headroom to maintain balance-sheet resilience. However, Tamatha with support from Labour/Green councillors… drafted an amendment to instead apply it to fund Option 4.” 

Appropriating emergency funding for spending on discretionary cycleways sounds like a scandal in itself – but one that was clearly overlooked by the nine Councillors who supported her motion.

The Auditor General was highly critical of the council’s decisions, issuing a ‘qualified’ – and it turns out ‘prophetic’ - report on their long-term plan: “The Council does not use information about the condition of its three water assets to inform its investment in its three waters networks. Rather, the renewal of assets has been forecast based on the age of the assets, capped by what the Council considers is affordable. Given the challenges outlined we consider this approach to be unreasonable. This could result in more asset failures during the 10-year period of the long-term plan, reduced levels of service, and greater costs than forecast.”

The Moa Point crisis and the decision-making of the former council were matters of high public interest and an article first posted by Breaking Views – the blog established in 2010 by the New Zealand Centre for Political Research as a platform for debating politics and current events - attracted widespread coverage. 

It was written by Peter Bassett, a new contributor with a background that more than adequately equips him to comment on the media and public institutions, who joined a long line of pseudonymous authors published by Breaking Views in January. From the world-renowned British prison psychologist Theodore Dalrymple to Thomas Cranmer (now known as Phil Crump), many authors choose a pen name to protect their identity and enable them to speak freely without fear of professional or personal repercussions.

Following an anonymous tip-off that he should examine the Minutes of the Council’s long-term plan decision-making, Peter Bassett wrote:

“On 27 May 2021, Wellington City Council’s Long-Term Plan Committee faced a clear fork in the road. Officers presented councillors with water investment options, including one — Water Option 3 — that contained a $391 million wastewater renewals programme. It was not vague. It was explicit. It was designed to reduce sewage pollution...

“At the same meeting, officers recommended Cycleways Option 3, a staged programme set out in the consultation document presented to councillors.

“Councillors were not choosing between water and nothing. They were choosing priority.

“What happened next is the hinge moment of Wellington’s current disgrace.

“An amendment was moved by then-councillor Tamatha Paul, seconded by Jill Day (now Labour Party President), to adopt Cycleways Option 4, expanding the programme to $226 million over ten years, compared with $120 million under Option 3, as set out in that consultation document.

"That amendment passed. Accelerated wastewater renewal did not.

“At the time, Wellington City Council comprised 15 members (the Mayor and 14 councillors). Paul’s amendment was passed by a vote of 9–5, with one member absent.”

Peter was not only critical of the council for failing to prioritise a much-needed upgrade of essential infrastructure, but also of the media for its reluctance to hold those in power to account.

And in the interest of balance, Breaking Views also published the commentary by the former Councillor Sean Rush - who took a different view of the events.  

One of the Councillors who voted to prioritise a water infrastructure upgrade at the time, was Simon Woolf, who, on Facebook last month, explained:

“In 2021, as a Wellington. City councillor, I deliberated on the long-term plan for Wellington. I voted against expanding cycleways and argued instead for prioritising sewerage and water infrastructure. I did so because pipes, pumps, and treatment plants aren’t optional. They are the backbone of a healthy city and a clean harbour.

“Fast-forward to today, and Wellington is dealing with an environmental mess that was entirely foreseeable. Overflows, leaks, and system failures don’t happen overnight. They are the result of years of underinvestment and misplaced priorities.

“Had my colleagues, Diane Calvert, Nicola Young, Malcolm Sparrow and I prevailed in 2021, we would have been further along in fixing the fundamentals. Fewer discharges, less damage to our harbour, and a more resilient city.

“This isn’t about being anti-cycleway. It’s about being pro-environment, pro-public health, and pro-infrastructure that actually keeps our city functioning.”

In fact, this case highlights the danger of electing politically affiliated candidates onto councils, who, all too often, appear unable to put the public interest ahead of their ideological bias. 

Questions over the wisdom of prioritising cycleways when the city’s water infrastructure was failing, spilt over into Parliament last month when, during an exchange with Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter, the Minister of Finance stated, “sometimes those in glass houses should not be throwing stones or sitting next to Tamatha Paul, who built cycle ways instead of fixing the pipes.”

In a classic display of deflection journalism, some in the mainstream media then pivoted the focus away from the council’s misguided prioritisation of “nice‑to‑haves” over essential infrastructure, and instead sought to demonise the author who had the temerity to point it out.

Through two articles in The Post and a feature on Radio NZ’s Mediawatch, an attempt was made to hunt down Peter Bassett, and when that failed, they attacked Breaking Views for spreading “misinformation” and the NZCPR itself.

Freelance journalist and former editor of The Dominion newspaper, Karl du Fresne, who has long warned about the decline of the mainstream media, could have been writing about this situation when he penned his insightful article “Death Wish 2025” - now featured as this week’s NZCPR Guest Commentary - back in December:“ The model that prevailed for decades – that of balance and neutrality – has been trashed in favour of one that’s blatantly politicised and sees journalism as a moral crusade driven by left-wing fixations such as identity politics, hate speech (so called) and climate change.“Under this new model, objectivity is disdainfully dismissed… Journalists are instead encouraged to choose, on the basis of their own often narrow and rigid world views, which issues should be covered and which should be ignored. Similarly, they are entitled under the new paradigm to decide which groups and individuals should be allowed to contribute to public debate. The rest can be marginalised, demonised or excluded.”

As Karl explains, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public wants balance – both sides of issues so they can make up their own mind. They do not want the current Orwellian world where truth is labelled as misinformation and those seeking decision-maker accountability are hunted down and cancelled.

The fact that the legacy media still appears to be in a state of denial over this - clinging to a fictitious world view where they are the righteous gatekeepers of the truth - explains, at least in part, why they remain a dying industry.

The NZCPR will continue to publish commentary that raises important questions about public policy, governance, and accountability. We will continue to protect contributors who choose to write under pseudonyms. And we will continue to focus our efforts on the issues that matter.

Dr Muriel Newman established NZCPR as a public policy think tank in 2005 after nine years as a Member of Parliament. A former Chamber of Commerce President, her background is in business and education.