Another Legal Challenge After Auditor-General Refuses To Examine Tauranga City Council

Wednesday, 3 September 2025, 7:23 am
Press Release: Lobby for Good

Tauranga, 2 September 2025 – Just days after the Auditor-General ruled out investigating Tauranga City Council, a fresh legal challenge has been launched against the Tauranga Marina Society, whose licence and land at Sulphur Point are tied directly to the Council.

Lobby for Good has spoken to people on both sides of the Tauranga Marina Society dispute. Doug Owens argues the Society is not operating lawfully, while a committee member told us the allegations are incorrect and welcomed the chance to share their perspective. What is clear is that both sides see the situation completely differently.

That raises a bigger question that when disputes like this arise, how do we move forward without endless legal bills, court cases, and people getting caught in the crossfire? The law is not always about finding the truth, often it’s about finding loopholes and arguments that can deliver an outcome for one side, making resolution even harder.

Lobby for Good will be meeting with representatives from the Society to hear their point of view directly. We want to understand both sides of situations like this because the public have a right to understand what they’re seeing on social media from an unbaised point of view.

A System That Avoids Mediation
Lobby for Good says the marina dispute shows how far the system has drifted from common sense.

“A simple facilitated mediation between the parties and their legal teams could have resolved many of these issues I believe,” said Erika Harvey, Director of Public Affairs at Lobby for Good. “Instead, the system seems designed to push people into arguments instead of civil discussions. We’ve consistently heard from people who entered mediation in good faith, only to find their words twisted and used against them in a court setting.”

Oversight Gaps Exposed
Harvey said the marina dispute highlights a bigger failure within the system, regardless of who is correct.

“Previously, you could rely on media to shine a light on both sides, but even that rarely happens now, and when it does, it’s often skewed,” she said. “Without watchdogs stepping in, and without balanced public reporting, ordinary people are left with no real chance of getting a solution outside of an expensive courtroom battle.”

“We keep seeing the same failures repeated, meetings behind closed doors, public assets sold off below value, complaints bounced between agencies, and the public told their only option is to take councils to court,” she said.

She also pointed to the double standard in how legal resources are applied: “Government lawyers have spent more than $1 million defending the ‘Mama Hooch rapists’, while ordinary New Zealanders who’ve done nothing wrong are left to fight their own battles. Councils even use ratepayers’ money to fight ratepayers. What confidence does that leave in the system?”

Harvey said the OAG decision shows the limits of relying on existing watchdogs. “Every year, reports come out stating the obvious, ‘councils must do better’, ‘publicly excluded meetings should be rare’. But when councils consistently don’t do better and the Auditor-General won’t intervene, what then? Where is the enforcement?”

The Bottom Line
Until the system changes, the public’s only leverage is exposure, pressure, and collective action.

“When even the Auditor-General admits transparency is lacking, the question isn’t whether the public has a right to know, it’s why that right keeps being denied,” Harvey said. “We need system change. Because right now, secrecy seems to win every time and common sense seems further and further away.”

Call for Reform
Lobby for Good is launching a national campaign to introduce new checks and balances in local government, including:

• An Independent Local Government Ombudsman – so people have a free, fair way to escalate complaints.
• Citizen oversight committees – to review major asset sales before they are signed.
• A Local Government Disputes Tribunal – so justice is accessible to those with a legitimate case, not just those who can afford it.

“This is about restoring public confidence in democracy,” Harvey said. “Until the system changes, secrecy will keep winning, and the public will keep losing.”

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