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“When Councils Abandon Their Partners: The Tauranga Water Betrayal and Its Neoliberal Undercurrents” - 9 August 2025

A Colonial Playbook Unfolds in Bay Waters

Ivor Jones The Māori Green Ltn

08 Aug 2025 — 16 min read

Kia ora koutou katoa,

What unfolded in Tauranga's council chambers this week was more than just a routine administrative decision about water services. It was a textbook example of the same colonial mentality that has plagued Māori communities for centuries - the arrogant dismissal of partnership, the privileging of self-interest over collective wellbeing, and the shameful abandonment of those who trusted in collaboration.

When Tauranga City Council voted 6-4 to go it alone on water services, they didn't just reject a partnership with Western Bay of Plenty District Council. They demonstrated exactly why the Government's Local Water Done Well programme is nothing more than a neoliberal Trojan horse, designed to fracture collective action and pave the way for privatisation through manufactured crisis.

Background - When Collaboration Becomes Betrayal

The story begins with what appeared to be genuine partnership. Just months ago, Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale and Western Bay Mayor James Denyer went rowing together on the Wairoa River, symbolically promoting discussion about Local Water Done Well and the benefits of working together. This river journey was more than a photo opportunity - it represented a commitment to collaboration that acknowledges the interconnected nature of our water systems.sunlive

The councils already share critical infrastructure. Ōmokoroa's wastewater is treated in Tauranga, while the Waiari Water Supply Scheme in Western Bay provides water to Pāpāmoa. These existing arrangements demonstrate the absurdity of administrative boundaries when it comes to water management - a resource that flows according to natural, not political, boundaries.sunlive

Under the Government's Local Water Done Well programme, councils have until September 3, 2025 to submit plans for managing drinking, storm and wastewater services. This deadline pressure creates the perfect conditions for the kind of fragmented decision-making we witnessed this week.

The Mechanics of Manufactured Crisis

What transpired reveals the cynical manipulation at the heart of neoliberal governance. Western Bay councillors voted 8-4 to work with Tauranga towards forming a multi-council controlled organisation, trusting in the partnership that had been carefully cultivated over months. Minutes later, Tauranga councillors delivered their betrayal, voting 6-4 to provide water services in-house until July 2028.sunlive

The key figure in this betrayal was Deputy Mayor Jen Scoular, who claimed she needed "robust financial analysis" to make a decision. This demand for perfect information, as Drysdale correctly identified, is the classic neoliberal delaying tactic - creating impossible standards of certainty to justify inaction or, worse, to create the conditions where private sector "solutions" become the only viable option.sunlive

Scoular's suggestion that the council "take our time, to prepare our financials and to better understand the risk" reveals the fundamental misunderstanding of water as a public good. Water infrastructure isn't a business venture to be optimised for profit - it's a basic human right and a taonga that requires collective stewardship, not individualistic calculation.

The Neoliberal Fragmentation Strategy

The abandonment of Western Bay reveals a deeper strategy at play. James Denyer's description of his district as now being left an "orphan" perfectly captures the intended outcome of the Local Water Done Well programme. By creating artificial time pressures and encouraging councils to make individual decisions rather than collective ones, the Government is manufacturing the exact fragmentation that will justify future privatisation.sunlive

This strategy mirrors the global pattern of water privatisation where neoliberal reforms deliberately weaken public capacity to create the conditions for private sector intervention. The infamous Cochabamba Water War in Bolivia demonstrated what happens when communities lose control of their water systems to corporate interests.journals.sagepub+1

Research from academic institutions shows that water privatisation consistently fails to deliver promised benefits. Instead, it typically results in higher costs, reduced access, and the commodification of a basic human right. The Local Water Done Well programme, with its emphasis on Council Controlled Organisations (CCOs) and "financial sustainability," is laying the groundwork for exactly this outcome.semanticscholar

The Māori Dimension - Ignoring Indigenous Rights

What makes this betrayal even more egregious is its complete disregard for Māori rights and perspectives. Councillor Hautapu Baker's reminder that "the wellbeing of the water and waterways needed to be central to their decision-making" and his emphasis on taking care with "our wai moving forward" represents the only voice in these proceedings that acknowledged water as more than a commodity.sunlive

The Bay of Plenty region has a rich history of Māori water rights assertions. Te Whakatōhea was granted customary marine title in a landmark 2021 High Court ruling, setting precedents for indigenous rights to water resources. Similarly, Eastern Bay of Plenty iwi have long sought control over water use, presenting the Mataatua Declaration to recognise aboriginal title to water.rnz+1

Yet the Local Water Done Well programme shows limited engagement with iwi and Māori, according to officials. This systematic exclusion of indigenous voices from water governance decisions perpetuates the colonial approach that treats water as a resource to be exploited rather than a taonga to be protected.nzherald

The Debt Trap and Privatisation Pipeline

The financial pressures driving these decisions reveal the engineered nature of the crisis. Tauranga has already faced significant financial challenges, with discussions of $230 million in government loans for infrastructure development. The city is proposing a 12 percent rates increase with Deputy Mayor Scoular noting the cost of running the city is $599 million annually.rnz+1

These financial pressures aren't accidental. They're the result of decades of deliberate underinvestment in public infrastructure, combined with the artificial constraints placed on local government borrowing. The research on water infrastructure debt and privatisation risk shows how financial stress is used to justify private sector involvement.semanticscholar

The establishment of CCOs, as proposed under Local Water Done Well, creates the perfect vehicle for this transition. Research shows that CCOs can become a form of "privatisation by stealth", as they operate at arm's length from democratic control while taking on increasing levels of debt.nzherald

The Māori Green Lantern fighting misinformation and disinformation from the far right

The Hidden Connections and Power Networks

The appointment of Andreas Heuser from Castalia Strategic Advisors to head the Government's technical advisory group reveals the neoliberal networks at play. Castalia, which provided analysis supporting the Communities 4 Local Democracy group's opposition to Three Waters reforms, now finds itself in the position of designing the replacement system. This revolving door between consultancy firms and government policy-making ensures that neoliberal solutions remain the only options on the table.rnz

The timing of decisions also reveals coordination between different levels of government. Local Government Minister Simon Watts has been telling councils to "ask for help" if they need it, while simultaneously creating the conditions that ensure they will need that help. This manufactured dependency is classic neoliberal strategy - create the crisis, then present privatisation as the inevitable solution.rnz

The Implications for Māori and Communities

The fracturing of regional cooperation has devastating implications for Māori communities and working-class families across the Bay of Plenty. When councils operate in isolation, they lose the collective bargaining power needed to resist corporate capture. Small "orphan" councils like Western Bay become particularly vulnerable to private sector predation.

The pattern we're seeing echoes the broader assault on collective action that has characterised neoliberal policy since the 1980s. The fourth Labour Government's embrace of "Rogernomics" showed how quickly supposed left-wing parties can become vehicles for corporate interests. Today's Labour Party may have opposed Local Water Done Well, but their Three Waters reforms were themselves structured to facilitate eventual privatisation through complex governance arrangements that removed democratic control.teara

For Māori, this fragmentation represents another layer of colonisation. The artificial separation of water management from iwi authority structures perpetuates the colonial fiction that water can be "owned" and managed by administrative entities rather than being held in trust for future generations according to tikanga Māori.

The Path Forward - Resisting Neoliberal Capture

What happened in Tauranga this week is not inevitable. Communities around the world are successfully resisting water privatisation and reclaiming public control. The global trend toward remunicipalisation shows that alternatives exist. Cities from Berlin to Barcelona have taken water systems back into public hands and demonstrated that public ownership can deliver better outcomes for communities.academic.oup

The key is recognising that this isn't just about technical arrangements for water delivery. It's about power, about who gets to make decisions about our most precious resources, and about whether we will allow corporate interests to capture the commons that belong to all of us.

Māori communities must lead this resistance, as they have led resistance to colonisation for over 180 years. The assertion of tino rangatiratanga over water resources isn't just about indigenous rights - it's about protecting the interests of all communities against corporate capture.

Local councils must also recognise their role as guardians of the public interest. The overwhelming 90 percent of Gisborne submitters who favoured keeping water services in council hands shows that communities understand what's at stake when they're given real information and genuine choice.nzherald

The Tauranga betrayal is a warning shot. It shows how easily partnerships can be sacrificed to short-term political calculations and how quickly collective action can be undermined by neoliberal divide-and-conquer tactics. But it also shows the importance of solidarity and the need for communities to organise beyond the artificial boundaries of local government.

The fight for water justice is the fight for our collective future. We cannot allow the manufactured crisis of Local Water Done Well to become the justification for handing our water systems over to corporate control. The time for partnership and collective action is now, before the neoliberal tide sweeps away what remains of our commons.

Readers who find value in this analysis and wish to support continued investigation into these critical issues may consider making a koha to: HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. The MGL understands these are tough economic times for whānau, so please only contribute if you have capacity and wish to do so.

Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui.

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