Hamilton’s non-decision on Fluoride

Surprise, surprise the Hamilton councillors haven’t made a decision on adding fluoride back into the water supply despite now having two referenda and multiple polls asking them to.

I think the Mayor sums it up nicely:

“We spent the last couple of weeks getting legal advice and talking about court cases in Taranaki and I came here to make a decision,”

“To be frank I think people are over it, we’ve had a year of it and people want a final decision made.”

The Mayor Julie Hardaker was one of five councillors that voted to make a decision while the other seven councillors voted to defer a decision until the outcome of the Taranaki case was determined.  All Hamilton councillors received advice that there was no legal reason to defer the decision making.

The court case in Taranaki was put forward by anti-fluoride groups arguing that the council there had no legal right to add fluoride and that fluoridation breaches section 11 of the Bill of Rights Act which allows people the right to refuse to undergo medical treatment.

The part that is a tad irksome is that the Mayor and others are now calling on central Government to legislate over top of all local government.

“…until central government takes a stand on this issue local authorities are going to continue and continue to have to go through these processes.”

I suppose they’d also like to nationalise the water supply?  While there may be some merits in that – privatising may make even more sense – the lack of joint infrastructure and various levels of disrepair could,, among other things, make it a very costly exercise.