Mt Maunganui landslide: Why only a Government inquiry can get the truth
Tuesday, 27 January 2026
Andrea Vance is National Affairs Editor for The Post and Sunday Star-Times
OPINION: What was once unprecedented is now the future.
Climate change is making disasters more frequent, more intense, more costly and more deadly. And the deadly slips in the Bay of Plenty last week have exposed, again, just how unready we are.
Over the past few days, a piecemeal picture has emerged of what happened on Mauao on Thursday morning.
Just before 6am on Thursday, local resident Alister McHardy saw two slips above the Beachside Holiday Park. Tents were pitched and caravans parked in the seaside holiday park below.
Read More:
Mt Maunganui landslide the kind of disaster you hope never comes, Tauranga mayor says
Mt Maunganui landslide: Council report warned slopes primed to fail
He called 111. Fire and Emergency New Zealand says it notified Tauranga City Council (who own the campground and neighbouring hot pools) within minutes. No crews were dispatched. There are reports that a council worker was seen on site that morning, alongside the campground manager, but what they did is not clear.
Less than four hours later, a massive landslide tore through the site, burying six people. It had been left to locals and holidaymakers to raise the alarm, including Lisa Maclennan, who lost her life.
Since then, confusion has compounded tragedy. The council first said it had no record of the warning. It has now confirmed its main Contact Centre did receive the call – but its Emergency Operations Centre did not.
That distinction may become critical. It already exposes gaps in how life-or-death information is recorded, escalated and acted on.
This is not a freak event in an unknowable place. Mauao has a documented landslide history stretching back more than a century.
A massive slip occurred behind the same campground in 1977. Dozens more have followed. A council-commissioned study last July used Mount Maunganui as a case study for slope instability, yet the hazard map stopped short of the very area that failed. The council is yet to explain why.
Emergency services have been widely praised, and rightly so.
Crews worked in appalling, dangerous conditions. But even here, hard questions remain. Did the risk of further collapse delay entry? Were systems in place to balance responder safety with the imperative to reach people faster? These are not accusations but lessons waiting to be learned.
Mayor Mahé Drysdale and Tauranga City Council were right to move quickly and agree to commission an independent review.
But a council-initiated process, no matter how well intentioned, cannot carry the full weight of what now needs to be examined.
The park, the land, the hazard studies and the systems that failed all sit within local government. When the land, assets, data and decision-making all sit within the same organisation, true independence is structurally impossible.
Nor should local government become the scapegoat. Councils are already underfunded and overburdened, carrying climate risk on balance sheets never designed for it.
Central government decisions also matter here too. The previous government announced a $6 billion resilience package. How much of that reached hazard mapping, early-warning systems, or real-time information platforms?
New Zealand has still not built a common operating picture for disasters, despite warnings going back two decades, and most recently after Cyclone Gabrielle and the Auckland Anniversary floods. Those gaps don’t belong to any one council.
The Mt Maunganui tragedy was part of a string of serious slips and flood events, from Welcome Bay and the East Cape to parts of the Coromandel cut off by rain and landslides. Each underscores the limits of our preparedness.
And Emergency Management currently sits with Mark Mitchell, the same minister who oversees police. That dual responsibility may streamline coordination in a crisis, but it also raises questions about whether systemic risks receive the scrutiny they deserve.
Every mass-fatality disaster in this country’s modern history has been followed by an official inquiry. Even the Havelock North water outbreak received one.
A government-level inquiry would have the power, resources and political distance to follow every thread, including the science, the maps, the warnings, the comms systems, the funding choices, and the response.
If there is nothing to hide, there should be nothing to fear.
We cannot dismiss this as a terrible act of nature and move on.
Either we interrogate this disaster fully. Or we accept that this will not be the last time we stand in the rain, counting the dead, and wondering why we were not ready.
Comments are moderated during working hours and may not appear immediately.