As we come to the end of the 2022-2025 term, this report looks back at the last three years and some of the highlights of what we’ve accomplished, people we’ve worked with, and wider regional actions that have impacted the Manukau Harbour.
Alan Cole and I were re-elected as Chair and Deputy Chair in May 2023. This was a few months after the floods that devastated a lot of the shoreline around the Harbour, saw streams overflowing, and left many of our residents deeply affected. We are starting to see properties that have been part of the buy-out process demolished, with questions still needing answering about future plans for them – some will be great for stormwater and open space requirements, others (particularly cliffside) may just have to be left empty.
Boardwalk that was badly damaged in Hillsborough
This term we said goodbye to Glenn Boyd, who had been our Governance Lead Support advisor. Glenn bought a huge amount of knowledge to the Forum with years of experience in Local Government. He had lots of wise counsel on ways forward, worked well within the organisation to get things happening and had lots of great advice. Thank you Glenn!
We also farewelled Dr Julie Chambers as our Coordinator, who had done lots of great work updating the Terms of Reference, completing an analysis of boat ramps around the Harbour, engaging with the community and much more. Thank you Dr Chambers.
We welcomed Sophia Olo-Whaanga as our new coordinator in 2023 and she got stuck in immediately. Sophia has done lots of great work in the community, including hosting stalls at festivals around the harbour but a real highlight for me of her work were the community waananga that she organised, made food for, facilitated, and wrote the report on. These were held across all of the areas the Forum represents and saw number of participants feeding back, with key focus areas being environmental restoration, community engagement and education, cultural leadership and governance, improved infrastructure and resilience and stronger advocacy and regulation, to achieve a healthier harbour, with cultural and ecological stewardship led by mana whenua, stronger community and political advocacy for the harbour, sustainable economic integration and a community that is actively involved in protecting and advocating the harbour.
Among heaps of other mahi, Sophia also looked after the procurement and disbursement of $11,000 worth of trees in the 2023 financial year which were sourced locally and planted out along awa and coastline by community groups after we had an underspend for the year.
This term we have produced a few exciting pieces of collateral – a Manukau Harbour brochure which was distributed to libraries, a new Instagram and Facebook page, and a brand new website – https://manukauharbour.nz/. The website has lots of great information on it, including events, council publications, videos and more.
Manukau Harbour Brochure
One of the focuses for me this term has been building relationships with the communities around the harbour. I have met with the Mana Whenua Kaitiaki Forum that Healthy Waters organises, and worked on relationships with individual iwi around the Harbour, while awaiting the formation of a leader’s group between Governing Body and Mana whenua – as promised back in 2020. It is vitally important for the Manukau Harbour that mana whenua are involved in decision making around the harbour. I also supported Te Motu a Hiaroa charitable trust in their bid to have a gate installed on Island Road, a piece of work Auckland Transport are unfortunately dragging their heels on.
The forum has also built a strong relationship with Seacleaners, part-funding clean-up events in 2023 and 2025. The first one included getting a ride out on a hovercraft to the mudflats in Waiau Pa, the second was along the Island Road causeway where we picked up 7000 litres of rubbish in just over an hour.
Tyres collected in a morning
We have continued our relationship with the Manukau Harbour Restoration Society, with representatives including Jeanette McDonald, Jim Jackson and Stephen Lasham all in regular contact with the Forum. Lastly, we have built a strong relationship with Coastguard – who lost their French Bay building in the 2023 storms. I have worked with them to ensure access to the new gate at Mangere Bridge, as well as facilitating conversations about building a new home on the Onehunga Wharf – we wait to see what the new structure of Auckland’s property ownership arrangements will mean for this.
Regionally, there have been some positive moves forward for the Manukau Harbour. Chief among those was having the “Strategic direction for the health of the Manukau Harbour” be adopted by the Planning, Environment and Parks Committee on 13 June 2024. The committee adopted a long-term vision for the Harbour: “That the Manukau Harbour is healthy and thriving. Its mauri is restored, and life is abundant. Its people are well.” The benefits of implementing this strategic direction include enabling Auckland Council departments and council-controlled organisations to prioritise, coordinate and align investment and activities and providing the Governing Body, committee members, the council group, mana whenua and the public with transparent evaluation of progress towards achieving agreed environmental outcomes for the Manukau Harbour.
Facts from the Environmental Assessment of the Harbour (May 2025)
This works stems from the “Achieving Better Outcomes for the Manukau Harbour” work that came out of the 2020 resolutions of what was then the Environment and Climate Change committee, which came about following the report into the Manukau Harbour Forum (that the forum self-funded) which was released in 2019. It is a piece of work with a long whakapapa within Council structures but one that sets a path towards a focus on improving the environment of the Harbour. Another workstream that has come out of this is a proposed formation of a “Manukau Harbour Leaders Group” which would see Governing Body, Mana whenua and Local Boards working together on progress around the Harbour. The biggest issue facing the Forum has been our lack of decision-making ability, coupled with very little funding, meaning we are limited in what we can achieve. This group should be able to do much more, and we wait to see how the formation of it will end up looking like.
Another regional piece of work that has recently been published is the community insights for the harbour document that looks across the consultations council has undertaken, including the community wananga Sophia ran, and extrapolates goals for the Harbour, which fed into the better outcomes work.
Earlier this year Watercare finally released the hydrodynamic model – a piece of work that the Forum had been waiting on since the 2016 term! The key relevant findings are not exactly big news to many: the Māngere WWTP is the largest nutrient source to the harbour, providing ~17% of water volume, ~47% of nitrogen and ~82% of phosphorus, and its influence is clearly visible in the northeast harbour, especially around Māngere Inlet and Puketutu Island. Adjusting the levels of nutrients coming into the Harbour from the Treatment Plant could provide discernible changes in water quality. The report on the model is available to read at https://promising-sparkle-d7f0c0cfc9.media.strapiapp.com/doc_influence_of_nutrients_water_quality_manukau_harbour_0af03b866a.pdf
The Forum fed into a number of regional consultations, including the Future Development Strategy and individual contributions to Watercare’s Metropolitan water strategy, as well as encouraging Forum members to include the Manukau Harbour in local board feedback on regional consultations.
Central Government has also impacted the Harbour in the last three years. One interesting piece of work was the decision by the last Government to fund a feasibility study for a port in the Manukau Harbour. This was released quietly in February 2025, with little fanfare. There are also big changes in the works to the RMA, freshwater, land-use and other environmental regulations which may impact Council’s ability to improve the Harbour through regulations.
One of the key roles I am able to play as chair is engaging councillors with issues around the Manukau. From the Coastguard building, to the Wastewater Plant, to ensuring LTP discussions include questions about water quality spending around the Manukau. It has been great to work closely with the chair and deputy of the Policy and Planning committee, as well as the 11 councillors who represent wards around the Harbour.
One long-running saga has been the long battle to see justice for substantial illegal earthworks along the Waikaraka foreshore, that saw land that had been used as a rubbish dump piled up alongside the cycleway, with rubbish entering the water and substantial mangrove clearance. The contractor was fined $87,500 and the developer will be defending charges in the Environment Court later this year. I was alerted to this in late 2022 and it shows how slow it can be to address substantial environmental damage, while the land has increased in value despite multiple breaches of stop-work orders.
Piled up earth that contained landfill from reclamation
Two real highlights of the Forum’s work programme are the REAL (Rangatahi Environmental Action Leaders) programme and the Harbour Symposium. The REAL programme gathers students from around the harbour and beyond and takes them on a multiple-year journey of learning about environmental action and much more. It starts with a 3-day waananga in the school holidays, and then multiple days of learning and action beyond that. Students commit to working to improve their school, doing things like stream cleanups, school gardens, introducing food waste collection and much more. This year we were lucky enough to hear from some of them at the Harbour Symposium.
The Harbour Symposium was the highlight of term. A one-day event held in the Green Bay High School auditorium, this year’s event saw over 100 people who are engaged in the Manukau Harbour come together to hear from a huge range of speakers, and each other. We were welcomed into the space by Te Kawerau-a-maki, before listening to speakers who covered a huge range- from the work Council is doing around the Harbour, to the realities of climate change for coastal communities, how volunteer groups have succesfully worked around the harbour, mana whenua values for the harbour, and much more.
Highly Acclaimed: Kathy Neilson
My thanks to the staff who spent so many hours working hard to make the event a great success – Zoe Hawkins, Vicky Otene, Donna Carter and Sophia Olo-Whaanga.
I also give lots of thanks to all of my fellow elected members who have been with us over the last three years – everyone brings different knowledge and experiences and represents their area strongly, while thinking of the good health of the wider Manukau Harbour. Thanks also to Caroline Teh who replaced Glenn Boyd and has been a calm and wise presence around the table.
Last of all huge thanks goes to Selina Powell who makes everything work for the Forum and is very gentle with reminders to write my reports.
- Strategic Direction for the Health of the Manukau Harbour (Council adoption):
https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2024/06/achieving-better-environmental-outcomes-for-the-manukau-harbour/ - Manukau Harbour Forum Website:
https://manukauharbour.nz/ - Hydrodynamic Model Report (Watercare):
https://promising-sparkle-d7f0c0cfc9.media.strapiapp.com/doc_influence_of_nutrients_water_quality_manukau_harbour_0af03b866a.pdf - Community Insights for the Harbour:
https://www.knowledgeauckland.org.nz/publications/manukau-harbour-community-insights/ - Manukau Harbour Port Feasibility Study (Ministry of Transport):
https://www.transport.govt.nz/area-of-interest/infrastructure-and-investment/manukau-harbour-feasibility-study - Waikaraka Foreshore Court Case (Illegal Earthworks):
https://ourauckland.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/news/2024/05/mhf-court-case/
jon-turner.com 
Leave a comment