Protest at Hastings District Council against forced fluoridation.

A protest is planned for tomorrow, Friday 5 April outside the Hastings District Council in Lyndon Road East. The protest is in response to the Council’s decision to start fluoridation without any public consultation and without completing a New Zealand Bill of Rights analysis as required by a High Court ruling in November last year.

Fluoridation was suspended in Hastings, Havelock North, Flaxmere, Bridge Pa and Pakipaki in 2016 after the Havelock North contamination issue which required the fluoridation equipment be used for chlorination instead. The council has now spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying new equipment so that both chemicals, chlorine and hydrofluorosilicic acid, can be added.

Residents are up in arms over the undemocratic, unscientific, and downright harmful decision to add toxic fluoridation chemicals to the drinking water. It is now well established that fluoride is a developmental neurotoxin.  A meta-analysis carried out by the US Government’s National Toxicology Program, of all fluoride IQ studies, found there was “no obvious threshold” where fluoride did not cause neurological harm. 

The council was directed to start fluoridation by the Director-General of Health (DGoH) in 2022, by 30 June 2023 (date not met for some reason). However, a High Court ruling in November 2023 found the directives sent to Hastings, and 13 other councils, were unlawful as the DGoH did not consider the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA). The ruling said that every decision maker is required to do this consideration.

This followed a 2018 New Zealand Supreme Court ruling that fluoridation was a breach of section 11 of NZBORA, the right to informed consent to medical treatment as the judges agreed that fluoridation was “compulsory medical treatment”. Whether it was a justified limit on that right, under section 5 NZBORA, was not determined.

The legality of the DGoH’s orders is being challenged in the High Court on a number of grounds, not just NZBORA. Because the legal position is now unclear, the DGoH has given Nelson Council a delayed implementation time, to December this year.

Hastings Council could have sought the same if it was concerned about the health of its community. But it has decided to proceed regardless. The Hastings District Council, therefore, is now in the position where it will be in breach of the law if it implements fluoridation without the NZBORA analysis. The Council needs to be able to explain why it is justified to override this fundamental right.

Therefore, the Council has no excuses as to why they want to foist this neurotoxin on the community without proper consideration. It appears they don’t care about the health of the community; they don’t care what the people think, and they don’t care about the law.

ENDS