Blaming the New Faces Won’t Fix Old Failures

Op-Ed by John Davey (a new novice author to NZFFA)

The Newsroom article “Murder, the Government Wrote” has struck a nerve — and rightly so. But one reaction to it, offered by freshwater advocate and immediate past-president of NZFFA Peter Trolove, cuts to the heart of the problem:

“The bullshit is blaming newly elected councillors for the deeds of councillors past. Sadly it is the established faces who will remain on the governance of Bishop’s replacement councils.”

That comment deserves more attention than it has received, because it exposes a truth many freshwater users have lived with for years: accountability is being displaced, not delivered.

---

A convenient narrative — and a flawed one

It has become politically fashionable to argue that regional councils have “failed”, and that sweeping reform — or outright replacement — is therefore justified. The implication is clear: local governance is the problem.

But this narrative collapses under even light scrutiny.

Most of the freshwater degradation New Zealand is grappling with today did not occur in the last council term, or even the last two. It is the product of decades of cumulative decisions, made under successive governments, within legislative frameworks designed and amended by Parliament, and implemented through regulatory systems that rewarded intensification while externalising environmental cost.

To blame newly elected councillors — many of whom were voted in precisely because communities wanted change — is not just unfair. It is a misdirection.

---

Continuity, not disruption, is the real problem

The uncomfortable reality is that while councils may be restructured, renamed, or replaced, the same institutional actors often remain:

• the same senior officials,
• the same advisory panels,
• the same consultants,
• the same governance culture,
• and often the same assumptions about what is “reasonable”, “pragmatic”, or “too hard”.

Rearranging governance furniture while keeping the same people in the room does not produce reform. It produces continuity with new branding.

Freshwater users have seen this before. The language changes. The acronyms change. The PowerPoint slides change. But the outcomes — declining rivers, shrinking fisheries, and deferred responsibility — do not.

---

Freshwater didn’t fail — governance did

From an NZFFA perspective, this debate is not abstract.

We are dealing with rivers where:

• anglers walk kilometres without seeing fish,
• algal blooms are normalised,
• oxygen crashes are seasonal expectations,
• and public fisheries quietly disappear without ever triggering a crisis response.

These outcomes were not caused by a single council, a single councillor, or a single election cycle. They were enabled by systems that allowed cumulative effects to accumulate unchecked, and by governance arrangements that consistently prioritised short-term economic expansion over long-term ecological function.

When those systems fail, it is easier to blame “local democracy” than to admit that national policy settings and institutional inertia share responsibility.

---

Why scapegoating matters

Blaming newly elected councillors for inherited problems has consequences.

It:

• discourages capable people from standing for office,
• undermines local democratic legitimacy,
• and creates a chilling effect where councillors are told, implicitly, that outcomes are irrelevant — they will be blamed regardless.

At the same time, removing or diluting local governance does not remove accountability — it merely moves it further away from the communities most affected.

For freshwater users, that is not reform. It is retreat.

---

The myth of centralised competence

There is an unspoken assumption behind much of the current reform rhetoric: that centralisation automatically produces better outcomes.

Freshwater users should be sceptical.

Central government has:

• repeatedly delayed decisive nutrient limits,
• rewritten or weakened national policy statements,
• deferred action in the face of mounting evidence,
• and presided over the very intensification trajectories now cited as justification for reform.

If regional councils “failed”, they did so within national frameworks designed and amended by Parliament.

You cannot credibly criticise local implementation while ignoring national design.

---

What anglers understand — and policymakers often don’t

Anglers understand cumulative impact intuitively.

They see:

• what happens when flows are shaved year after year,
• when nutrients increase incrementally,
• when habitat is simplified,
• when thresholds are respected on paper but breached in practice.

They also understand lag effects. By the time a river “fails” by official metrics, the fishery has usually been declining for a decade.

That lived knowledge has too often been dismissed as anecdotal — until it becomes impossible to ignore.

---

Reform without honesty is just displacement

If reform is to mean anything, it must start with honesty:

• honesty about how long freshwater degradation has been occurring,
• honesty about who designed and endorsed the policy settings that allowed it,
• honesty about which actors will actually change — and which will remain.

Replacing councils while retaining the same governance culture is not accountability. It is institutional absolution.

---

A better starting point

From NZFFA’s perspective, meaningful reform would focus less on who governs and more on how governance works:

• clear ecological bottom lines that reflect ecosystem function, not political compromise;
• transparent monitoring that cannot be massaged or ignored;
• precautionary management in sensitive catchments;
• and genuine weight given to long-term public interest over short-term gain.

Whether those outcomes are delivered by existing councils, reformed councils, or new entities matters less than whether responsibility is owned and outcomes improve.

---

Blame is easy. Repair is hard.

The current temptation is to declare regional councils dead, write their obituary, and move on.

But freshwater systems do not care who governs them. They respond only to pressure, limits, and time.

If reform becomes an exercise in blaming the newest faces for the oldest problems — while the same structures and assumptions persist — then nothing fundamental will change.

Anglers, rivers, and future generations will pay the price.

---

NZFFA position

Freshwater decline is a systemic failure, not a personal one.
Accountability must be honest, continuous, and shared — not shifted to the most convenient target.

Blaming the new faces won’t fix old failures.
Only confronting them will.