Rotorua Lakes Council forced to start fluoridation – calls for Commission of Inquiry
On Wednesday 26 March 2025 the Rotorua Lakes District Council voted to start fluoridation despite, it seems, most councillors being opposed to it.
They did this as they do not have any legal choice but to do so. The Director-General of Health has ordered the council to start fluoridation or face severe penalties – $200,000 plus $10,000 per day for every day thereafter. The councillors could even be personally held liable.
Winston Peters has described this as a “despotic soviet-era disgrace”.
Cr Robert Lee, however, did put forward a motion that was passed unanimously, to write to the Prime Minister calling for a Commission of Inquiry into Fluoridation. This is an important step in pushing back against this unreasonable, unscientific, immoral and out-dated practice.
Most of the world does not fluoridate and even the USA, the home of fluoridation, is looking at stopping it, yet here we are at the bottom of the world with a Ministry of Health dictating that everyone has to have it. Listen to Cr Lee’s two minute speech talking to his motion youtube.com/live/L_4ETRLh4
Cr Lee also submitted a motion to the council that the reasons the council are calling for this be noted in the substantive motion that was passed today. These facts are irrefutable but most councillors did not want them noted in the motion. Deputy Mayor Kai Fong said she hadn’t been given time to read up on the points since they weren’t in a Council report. This is despite the issue being in front of this council for over a year and the fact they have received a large number of emails, members of public have spoken at the council and the world’s leading expert on fluoridation has spent 1.5 hours speaking directly to the councillors.
Listen Cr Lee’s irrefutable statements youtube.com/live/L_4ETRLh4
Fluoridation started on Friday 28 March 2025.
Rotorua Lakes Council correspondence regarding Mandatory Fluoridation
MoH to Rotorua Lakes Council 18 July 2023 – response to councillors concerns around safety.
MoH Directive to Rotorua Lakes Council 27 July 2022 – ordering council to start fluoridation of Rotorua by 30 July 2024
In the Media:
22 November 2023 Rotorua Lakes Council pauses fluoridation work after High Court judgement on mandate
10 August 2023 Rotorua councillors question safety and legality of fluoridation directive
14 April 2016 Bill reopens fluoride debate
Past campaigns
Attempt to Fluoridate Rotorua in 2014 Failed
Well done Councillors Charles Sturt, Glenys Searancke, Rob Kent, Peter Bentley, Mark Gould, Trevor Maxwell and Merepeka Raukawa-Tait.You have allowed people the freedom to choose. If people want fluoride they can buy fluoride toothpaste or even fluoride tablets. However, they cannot choose to force it on their neighbour.
26 April 2015 Push for fluoridation still on in Rotorua Kids under 7 having teeth pulled
2 August 2014 Win for common sense in Rotorua
1 August 2014 No Community referendum on fluoridation for Rotorua
17 July 2014 Council votes for referendum on fluoridation
26 July 2014 Fluoride Free NZ holds an urgent public presentation in Rotorua
24 June 2014 Council votes for Referendum on Fluoridation in Rotorua
21 May 2012 New push for fluoride chemicals to be added to Rotorua’s water.
Left to Right: Dr Mike Godfrey, Dr Lawrie Brett, Brian Maskell, Dr John Jukes, Dr Jane Beck, Dr Stan Litrus, Alan Solomon.
Rotorua District Council Rejects Fluoridation in 2004.
26 June 2004 – Martin Sharp reports: I did not record the wording exactly but the final motion that “RDC water supply not be Fluoridated” was amended to the effect that the Council also write to MoH requesting that they investigate other means of tackling the problem of increasingly poor dental hygiene.
The motion was carried unanimously. The only two vocally against did not bother voting against as they could see the numbers were against them. Interestingly the Councillor that is also on Lakes DHB that previously had been very Pro supported the motion and in fact proposed the amendment.
What was very evident was that ALL the Councilors saw through all the Red Herrings and made their decision based on some very simple truths.
- Fluoride is not effective in today’s environment of sugar rich, nutrition deficient diet.
- Fluoride is mass medication. Citizens have a right to say “NO”.
They also felt that the MoH needed to expand its thinking past the cheap , nasty and ineffective Fluoride solution to solve our poor dental hygiene problem.
The Deputy Mayor Trevor Maxwell left the meeting to thank me for all the efforts of FAN(NZ) and Rotorua Fluoride Free Water. He made that statement that the presentation Dr Mike Godfrey made to Council during the hearings was crucial to our campaign. – Our grateful thanks to Dr. Godfrey, who also addressed the public meeting in Gore. The Gore District Council also rejected fluoridation, leaving the local zealot, Tim MacKay (Principal Dental Officer for the Southland DHB) sulking!
A summary from Rotorua (1 May 2004).
The proposal by Lakes DHB to put Fluoride in our water supply through the Rotorua District Councils works committee last year was a flop as it was just directed to the full Council. The full Council said that the matter should go through as a submission to the LTCCP as it was an issue that should be debated. We are presuming that the DHB are doing just that. We think the Councillors were just hoping that the whole thing would die a natural death as it has little public support.
The so called public DHB funded campaign earlier this year was kicked off with “invited guests only” and was not advertised to the public. Naturally we heard about it as the many of those invited were not Pro and passed on the message but too late to discuss any “direct action”. We previously called this campaign “covert” but this was perhaps stretching the event a little. In fact as we all know these campaigns are being held all round the country as a result of the directive from Annette King and the MoH. The DHB’s are just doing what they are told.(Note: they have been told they work for the Ministry of Health; not the public who elected them -Ed)
One of the RDC Councillors that is also on the DHB is lobbying the Councillors to support the proposal.
The DHB has put pressure on a number of Health providers, Kindys, School BOT’s and GP’s etc to publicly support the DHB with letters of approval. I hear they have fifty letters so far. (Note this is the strategy decided upon in 1951 USA and 1958 NZ – to get “popular support” behind the scenes and misrepresent it as majority public opinion -Ed) We have distributed information to all the same target audience as the DHB (several hundred organisations) and also given Information Packs to the RDC Councillors and the Mayor. Our packs were at least as professional as theirs which is surprising considering their budget and ours.
We are part way through putting the FAN(NZ) leaflet to every mail box in Rotorua and we have had good feedback so far.
We did a straw poll in the City Focus a few weeks ago. We had up to six of us with clipboards and a preprinted sheet with six questions leading up to “Do you want our water supply to be Fluoridated?” Polled 147 people….enough to get a reasonable statistical result. It was a fine Saturday morning run from 10:00am to maybe 1:00pm. It was easy to organise and a lot of fun although there were some angry people that seemed to think that we shouldn’t be allowed to exercise our right to do it! To be fair we counted them in the poll as pro fluoride and we still got good numbers. ie 61% against, 21% for and 18% didn’t know. Good numbers.
The local paper (Daily Post) did a good article on the Straw Poll and has been very impartial giving both sides a good hearing and the quality of journalism is very good.