Social Credit leader backs mayor on fluoridation

13 April 2021

by Chris Leitch, Leader

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Social Credit Party Leader, Chris Leitch, is backing Whangarei’s Mayor, Sheryl Mai, in her stand over fluoridation of water supplies.

The fluoridation issue is another example of decision making being taken out of the hands of local communities and centralised in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.

The government is doing it with health – cutting District Health Boards from twenty to eight with board members all being appointed and no elections.

They’re also doing it with water and waste water provision. The plan to remove all those assets  - pipes, dams, treatment plants - from councils and put them into the hands of four massive regional unelected bodies is also well advanced. 

Local communities are being disenfranchised and will have no opportunity to play any part in decisions that directly affect them, nor will they have any chance of influencing the decisions those new bodies make.

These corporate style bodies will have highly paid directors and corporate executive structures.

A quick look at Auckland’s Watercare is an instructive exercise. Its chief executive is paid a $775,000 annual salary and around eight of its executive team are paid about $350,000 each annually.

Despite all that horsepower, or corporate-style money power, Auckland still has issues with insufficient water supply, aging pipes, and waste overflows.

Sheryl Mai is right. Fluoridation is mass medication and the largest portion of the population, those over twenty years old, will derive no benefit from it, and quite possibly suffer potential harm.

For the Associate Health Minister to suggest that funding would be available to ‘support’ councils with fluoride related infrastructure work means that most of the cost will be borne by ratepayers, who are in the age group that will get no benefit.

The government would be better to make fluoride tablets and toothpaste free, spend money on educating parents on the dangers to the teeth of their children from consuming large quantities of fizzy drinks, and subsidise the price of pure bottled water and milk to make them substantially cheaper than those teeth rotting drinks.

A ban on advertising those drinks should also be put in place.