The council reaffirmed its defiance of the government’s fluoridation order on Monday, despite mounting costs, legal threats and a bitterly divided chamber.

Whangārei District Council (WDC) spent Monday afternoon in what may be one of the most chaotic and heated council meetings in recent memory. After months of defiance against Ministry of Health orders to fluoridate the district’s water supply, councillors gathered to consider their legal standing and whether to halt proceedings against the Crown.

The result? More division, a mayor fighting off accusations of predetermination, and councillors throwing around accusations of “governmental rape”.

Last year, councillors voted not to proceed with fluoridating the council’s water supply, in defiance of an order from outgoing director-general of health Ashley Bloomfield in 2022.

With a High Court hearing of the council’s request for an injunction (which would put any Ministry of Health action on hold) scheduled for today (Tuesday, March 18), the council ultimately reaffirmed its decision to push forward with legal action against the ministry, despite mounting costs and no budget allocated for Crown lawyer fees. Fluoride, purchased last week in anticipation of the meeting’s outcome, will sit in storage for now.

2pm: A meeting that almost wasn’t

Before councillors could get to the matter at hand, they had to untangle the mess left by their previous attempt to discuss fluoridation. A scheduled meeting last week was blocked when seven councillors refused to allow it to be held behind closed doors. That meant Monday’s meeting was the first opportunity for public scrutiny of the council’s ongoing defiance of the Ministry of Health.

The mood was tense, with mayor Vince Cocurullo reminding attendees to keep applause and outbursts to a minimum. Signs were permitted as a silent show of support or opposition, a small concession to the crowd of fluoride opponents who filled the room.

2.10pm: The fluoride wars continue

Councillor Gavin Benney – backed by New Zealand First, vocal opponents of the mandating of fluoridation – opened proceedings by introducing a motion that would allow the council to comply with the ministry’s directive while still continuing the legal challenge. It was a strategic move aimed at avoiding personal liability for councillors while preserving their right to fight fluoridation in court.

But the meeting quickly descended into a procedural minefield as councillor Paul Yovich attempted to add an amendment that would immediately halt all legal proceedings and their associated costs. This was ruled a “direct negative” – meaning it contradicted the main motion entirely – and therefore couldn’t be included. An attempt to reword the amendment to make it legally viable also failed.

By this point, tensions were high. Councillor Marie Olsen was visibly frustrated, urging the council to stop debating and get on with the vote. Others, however, wanted to push back. Councillor Simon Reid warned that compliance with the Ministry of Health directive would make councillors “complicit in governmental rape”.

2.45pm: The cost of defiance

Throughout the meeting, the financial and legal implications of the council’s ongoing resistance was a recurring theme. The council has already spent $93,466 (excluding GST) on legal fees, and there is no budget allocated for the costs of the Crown’s legal team if WDC loses in court.

On top of that, the council risks losing $4.5m in government funding for fluoridation infrastructure. Staff also revealed that an estimated 915 hours of work — equivalent to 122 working days – had already been spent on this issue.

Despite these concerns, the legal challenge remains in place. Deputy mayor Phil Halse suggested that legal costs could be covered from the council’s $76m water reserves fund, but no formal allocation has been made.

3pm: The mayor under fire

Amid the legal and financial debates, a side controversy emerged: accusations of predetermination against mayor Vince Cocurullo. In previous meetings, Cocurullo had stated, “I would go to jail to stop the fluoridation of water.” This led to questions about whether he should have been allowed to vote on Monday’s motion at all.

The council’s legal team, however, ruled that the mayor’s previous statements did not legally prevent him from participating in the decision-making process. “Matters such as this, where they are of an administrative nature, allow elected members to express strong views and vote accordingly,” the lawyer advised.

3.20pm: The final vote

After 1 hour and 22 minutes of debate, the council finally voted on the original motion to comply with the fluoridation directive only until the court ruled otherwise. The amendment to drop legal proceedings was defeated 7-6, with Cocurullo using his casting vote to break the tie. The final motion was then passed, meaning WDC will begin fluoridation preparations – but will stop if interim relief is granted in court.

The meeting concluded with Benney declaring that “the hard work has been done” and urging his colleagues to stay the course in fighting against the Ministry of Health.

With the High Court hearing today, the council’s legal battle is far from over. The fate of fluoridation in Whangārei now rests in the hands of the judiciary – but whatever the outcome, this saga is unlikely to end quietly.

Comparing our current prime minister’s net favourability to the first terms of Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern shows the extent to which new depths are being plumbed.

Everyone knows Christopher Luxon is unpopular. National’s polling is poor, and his preferred prime minister rating is now below that of his opposite number, Chris Hipkins, despite the latter’s deliberate strategy of being largely invisible for the last 18 months. There is even talk – although no more than that – of a challenge to Luxon’s leadership.

The extent of the PM’s unpopularity, however, has never been more clearly revealed than in the graph below, supplied to The Spinoff by polling firm Talbot Mills Research. It charts the net favourability – the percentage of voters who have a favourable impression of the prime minister, minus the percentage who have an unfavourable one – of our last four leaders during their initial term in government, from Talbot Mills/UMR polling over the years. While Helen Clark, John Key and Jacinda Ardern were mountaineers scaling the peaks, Luxon is plumbing new depths.

Every leader has their challenges, of course. Clark’s popularity dropped away in her first year, owing perhaps to the business revolt sometimes dubbed the “winter of discontent”, before recovering strongly. Ardern’s rating fell spectacularly amidst the failure to deliver the much-touted “year of delivery”, her status rescued only by a successful response to the pandemic’s initial onslaught. Even Key, largely serene, had a mid-term dip. Still, the paths of those three leaders could not be further from the one Luxon is treading: he started out unpopular, and has only become more so over time.

Everyone has their own theory as to why this is, but one common thread in the criticism is Luxon’s inability to articulate clearly what he stands for or what, at its best, this country could be. This leaves voters unmoved, their emotions detached from the prime minister and his prospects. As Duncan Garner recently pointed out, in a column predicting Luxon would be rolled before the next election, previous leaders have always had at least one group of hardcore fans. “Luxon can point to no such base of support,” Garner wrote, “even among the business community who must surely be wondering when [he] is actually going to do something.”

The point is borne out by new data from the Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer, which shows high-income Kiwis dramatically losing faith in the coalition. (Their low-income counterparts remain stubbornly distrustful of all governments.) This decline in trust appears to be evenly split between left-wing and right-wing elites, suggesting the latter are indeed disappointed with Luxon’s performance. While one can only speculate as to their reasons, they may include a distaste for the culture wars that the prime minister is allowing his coalition partners to pursue, a sense that his government has few real solutions to New Zealand’s long-term productivity problems, and the above-mentioned absence of vision.

All leaders, of course, eventually lose their shine. Some commentators perpetuated the myth of Key’s “incredible” popularity, but by the time of his resignation he had ended where Luxon began, at net zero, his detractors just as numerous as his supporters. The flag referendum debacle, the bizarre ponytail-pulling incident, the fact that leadership strengths inevitably turn to weaknesses: all these factors, and more, eroded his public favourability. Only the perceived unpalatability of his opponents, Phil Goff and David Shearer among them, propped up his preferred prime minister rankings. 

Clark, supposedly less charismatic than Key, in fact stayed popular for longer than her successor did. But even she was near net zero by the end of her prime ministership.

Luxon’s defence, if there is one, is that the process of popularity decline is being hastened worldwide by an increasingly disgruntled, restive and febrile electorate. Britain’s Keir Starmer has barely got his feet under the table but already suffers catastrophically bad ratings. Across the ditch, Anthony Albanese could be about to lead the first one-term Australian government in a century.

Closer to home, and further back in time, Ardern’s popularity in her second term was – as has been extensively canvassed – in freefall. Like Clark and Key, she reached net zero, but within two terms rather than three. In democracies, public unhappiness now operates at something close to warp speed.

Arriving onto this increasingly chaotic stage, Luxon has, in one sense, been dealt a tough hand. Nonetheless he has not played it well, at least in the public’s opinion. Can he recover? In politics nothing should ever be ruled out: a recovery in the economy and improvements in public services – assuming either materialises – would certainly help, as would a bit more of what the first George Bush called “the vision thing”.

Trust, though, is famously hard to establish and easy to lose. What prospects, then, for a man who never had it in the first place?