An adverse Audit New Zealand report on Waipā District Council’s Long Term Plan was withheld from the public watching online until the following day but mentioned several times during an extraordinary council meeting last week.
Bruce Robertson
The News requested a copy after reading the agenda and watching the two-hour long meeting and then hearing Audit and Risk chair Bruce Robertson say the Audit NZ opinion was the worst one he had ever received.
“I suspect it is the worst you’ve ever given,” he said to the office which acts on behalf of the Auditor General.
The council decided to ignore the opinion – which they pay thousands of dollars for – and go to the public with its nine year Long Term Plan.
The disagreement between council and the Audit Office comes down to Waipā’s decision to establish a joint Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) with other councils to manage water.
Waipā has gone out to the public with a balance sheet showing the retention of water services in house rather than its preferred option of transferring the services from July 1 next year.
Water accounts for about 40 per cent of Waipā’s balance sheet and under its Local Water Done Well consultation programme – held alongside the Long Term Plan discussions – has said it does not want to retain the services.
Audit NZ’s René van Zyl said she expected Waipā’s 2024-35 Long Term Plan consultation to be prepared using the best information available.
“We consider the assumption unreasonable because the council’s preferred option is to establish a separate (CCO),” she said.
Mayor Susan O’Regan at a recent meeting.
And in a covering letter to mayor Susan O’Regan, the office said the Long Term Plan consultation document did not provide an effective basis for public participation in the council’s decision-making process.
Both the letter and report were put online.
See: Final audit report Waipā 2024-34 CD_
See: Letter from Audit New Zealand to Her Worship the Mayor dated 6 May 2025
Van Zyl was at the meeting with other Audit NZ staffers.
“It’s not an ideal position we are in as auditors today,” she said. “It’s not lightly issued.”
The office had hoped to issue an opinion in March which would have given plenty of time for community consultation and had assumed the modelling would have been done with waters taken out of the long term budget.
She was also concerned growth applied in the financial model was “overly optimistic” especially in years four to nine.
“Our opinion has to be based on nine years, we need to incorporate all nine years. It makes it quite difficult for us,” she said.
At this point in the meeting, O’Regan said the report and letter were in the councillors’ digital system but she was unable to find them herself.
Robertson is an independent member of the Waipā council and of many other local authorities around the country including Wellington and Auckland.
“You have been consistent you have the community in mind with your call,” he said to the councillors.
“That does put us in a bind with the professional position which I agree with by the way with the auditors around best information.”
Keep the community in your mind and at the centre of your attention as you go about this, he said.
The consultation document and supporting information for the draft plan opened this week with O’Regan saying in a statement she could not wait to get out and hear from the people of Waipā.
The average rates increase over the nine years of the plan is 5.9 percent. The highest average increase is in the financial year starting July 1 with a 15.5 percent increase easing back to 2.3 percent in later years.
