Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has urged the public to place their trust in emergency and engineering experts as the recovery operation for six people missing after the landslide at Mount Maunganui remains on hold due to safety concerns.
The search was paused before midday yesterday and later postponed after a crack was identified in the mountain above the slip area, raising fears of further instability and the risk of additional landslides. An assessment is under way to determine whether conditions will allow recovery efforts to safely resume.
Luxon travelled from Auckland to Mount Maunganui on Sunday evening to attend a community-organised sunset vigil at Blake Park, where more than 200 people gathered despite worsening weather. Attendees sat and stood facing the mountain as rainclouds loomed and strong winds swept the area.
The Prime Minister, joined by Emergency Management Minister Mark Mitchell, Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale, local MPs Sam Uffindell and Tom Rutherford, and Bay of Plenty District Commander Superintendent Tim Anderson, spent about an hour mingling quietly with members of the community.
Speaking after the vigil, Luxon said the gathering reflected a community still in shock. He acknowledged the frustration caused by the pause in search efforts but reiterated his confidence in those leading the operation. He also praised the broader emergency response to the severe weather that affected multiple regions last week, highlighting strong coordination between central government agencies and local authorities.
Mitchell described the vigil as “cathartic,” saying it brought people together regardless of their roles. He confirmed he will present a Cabinet paper on Tuesday outlining how the Government can support recovery efforts across the impacted regions, with a focus on better identifying and managing national risk.
Meanwhile, Tauranga Mayor Mahé Drysdale said specialist rescue equipment was flown from Wellington overnight, with engineers on site from first light to assess whether the search could safely reopen.
Drysdale also confirmed that a planned independent inquiry into the landslide would not progress until the bodies of those still missing are recovered and returned to their families. He said the review would focus on events leading up to the slip, including factors such as tree removal, and would examine what information was known and what decisions were made before the landslide occurred. Further investigations after the event, including a coroner’s inquiry, would proceed separately.
I am sharing this, it is the work of Shaughn Prestidge on Facebook.
40,000+ people have read the article I shared courtesy of Rod Kane, including someone saying no trees had been removed from around the #MtMaunganui slip site. FB link in comment. pic.twitter.com/o6fZyZ7OFX— Penny Marie NZ (@pennymarienz) January 25, 2026
That’s right…TRUST THE F***ING EXPERTS…just like many sheeple did during Covid.
Watch the experts continue their narcissistic and psychopathing lying..!
And now, Lex Luxon will be off to India for the signing of the FTA which will see unmitigated immigration displace both Pakeha and Maori.
After that, he’ll probably sign-up for Trump’s corporate 20-Point Peace Plan in Gaza, and beg the Zionist Banking Cabal to hurry-up and crash the New Zealand economy so that Judith and Nicola’s plans to impose the Digital ID, CBDC’s, 24/7 monitoring of Kiwis, and :15 Minute ‘Communities’ can be quickly accellerated!
Chippy will be right there supporting the shit show with his full Globalist endorsements, as after all, he saw Jabby get rich to the tune of NZ$45 million with all of the Global perks thrown in, ie speaking tours, ghostwritten books, a documentary movie on how wonderful her Communist leadership was for New Zealand, and promoting the Predictive Programming on Jabby becoming the next U.N. Secretary general based on her wonderful (NOT) leadership of oppression that she demonstrated in New Zealand, and whch the Global Zionist Cabal wishes to impose on the rest of the world via the U.N. Treaties, Agreements, Laws & Mandates!
Can’t help but agree. Well said.
I learnt not to trust the government during Covid. And as most of national sat by and said nothing I don’t trust them either.
Won’t ever be regained. Look after yourselves people.
Well said. Maybe we should add “look after each other people” to your suggestion.
Greasy slimy luxon and the word “trust” written down in a single paragraph ? ?
How many times have we heard that?
The tree removal is DIRECT cause for this disaster.
Tauranga City Council removed eight large exotic trees from Mauao using helicopters as part of the Mauao Historic Reserve Management Plan, which mandates the gradual removal of non-native species to restore the hill’s native ecology in line with priorities set by the Tupuna Maunga Authority.
The TCCouncil and the Tupuna Maunga Authority have to be held accountable for this truly outrageous stupidity, wrapped in racist PC bullsh*t. Even little school kids learn about de-forestation.
Or at least they used to learn that in times gone past.
Old but accurate:
Ex-spurt = a drip under pressure.
I wonder how our ‘Elected’ leaders will weasel their way out of this obvious “cause and effect” loss of life tragedy?
I bet ‘they’ hide behind their go to Bureaucracy get out of jail free card (again) in which most if not all of the important decisions are taken by state officials rather than by elected representatives.
As Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, discerned: “Bureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism.”
That’s how parasites make their sheckels:
19.28% wage increase in ONE year at TCC to $ 165.000 !
https://www.taxpayers.org.nz/pay_rise_dashboard?utm_campaign=260120_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=taxpayers
I would imagine the scene now to be very somber and sad and I think we all feel it. With Luxon, he should choose his words carefully though. I trust the experts, just not government ones anymore because they cannot be truthful. This whole tragedy was avoidable. Hopefully more will wake up to see how corruption, tribalism, political correctness, woo woo, Gaia ideology amount to plain stupidity and very poor decision making in the real world.
How long will it take the mainstream media to acquire a brain? I can get them a few possums for their desperately needed brain transplants.
There was much more rain on Mauao in the past without massive slips. It was instead the human decision to remove 8 exotic trees which caused the problem.
Actual factual rainfall in May 2005 was much much higher in Tauranga and on Mauao
https://centrist.nz/ian-wishart-are-climate-activists-ignoring-the-evidence-at-mt-maunganui/
You’re correct but many people ignore the obvious because they do not believe it is possible or our “dear leaders” & minions would not stoop to such methods. Anyone notice the bizarre cloud formations we see these days – never saw such things when I growing up in the 60s & 70s. Anthropomorphic climate change is complete BS, it is impossible and ignores chemistry & physics. If you’d like to know more about what is happening with our weather and how it is done then check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auLw2s8lXKA
Spot on.
The satellite images over time do show the slip area losing its’ trees. And, if the root system is left in place to rot in the ground, that can only cause issues, and looks like the cause of the tragedy.
On AGW and climate change side, I don’t think strip mining the earth of rare minerals to make EV cars and solar panels is beneficial at all. If just a fraction of the vast amount of money spent on development of those had gone into development of hemp production and, use as a fuel, the environmental benefits would be far greater. But then, the oil and mining companies couldn’t have that.
zaggie, you redeem yourself 😉
The removal of 18 exotic trees by Kowhai Treecare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heshrKUHXgk
That didn’t age well did it?
In total nearly 40 trees were removed in 2022,2023, and 2024 at an unknown cost to the rate payers. No full accounting of the project has ever been given.
Copy paste …. By Rod Kane on Mike Hosking Fan Page. … Tauranga’s avoidable disaster.
Before the trolls start I’m going to put my credentials up here. Apart from a lifetime interest in geology and landforms, and having an NZCE in civil engineering, neither of which counts for much, what does count in my opinion is the fact that I owned and operated a geotech contracting company specializing in slip remedial work for nearly 20 years. I have worked on and under more dangerous slips than I care to remember. More than once I had to make a run for it.
We have a human tragedy, that is horrific and the terrible drama will play out in the fullness of time. We all feel for the people involved. But something needs to be said right now to avoid all this in the future.
Our politicians are obsessed with the politics of climate change and the control over the population that they want.
The planet is billions of years old and ever since the first drop of rain fell on it, it has been eroding and shaped by it. That is why we have mountains and valleys, rivers and lakes. Erosion is why we have silted up harbours, and why the topographical features of the planet are continually evolving and indeed abrading into the oceans. It’s what it does. Nothing new there.
Mountains, rivers and lakes are not people in spite of what you are led to believe, as majestic as they are, they don’t have personalities, human rights or traits. They are landforms, roadside berms and railway embankments are made of the same stuff. So is the stuff your house is sitting on. Rain, rivers and slips go downhill, they don’t come back up to argue. That’s gravity.
There are a lot of reasons for slips, but whenever you have permeable silts on a fragile slope and you feed water into it from the surface or the substrata, whether it sits on an inclined slip plane or not, it can turn to thick soup and you can get a slip.
Deep rooted vegetation is a very good way to mitigate the risk and our mounts that remain standing, owe a lot to vegetation, perhaps everything.
It is now fairly evident that the Tauranga council, at the insistence of Iwi, using rate-payers money, removed big trees in the area of this slip simply because they were colonial.
This is where superstition, stupidity and cultural arrogance hits the brick wall. There is a massive lesson to be learned here.
As it happens the very people that insisted on the removal of the trees, are the same ones that are now talking about the ‘maunga recovering’, ‘time off for healing’, no doubt some sort of ‘spiritual controlling rahui’ and other spiritual claptrap when in fact it is nothing more than soil engineering and landslip mitigation, all of which they know nothing about and should be left to the geotech engineers.
Having said that, where were the council engineers when they were removing the trees..? Asleep?
There are some excellent overhead views of this slip and there is no doubt in my mind at least, as to what happened. There is going to be an enquiry for sure, but the question is, are they going to investigate the massive elephant in the room here…or are we going to be listening to the lunatic green fringe and be paying a lot more in taxes to mitigate ‘climate change’..?
People of Tauranga and indeed people of New Zealand, you have to take a kick up the backside too for voting these fringe lunatics into your councils and government. You whinge about taxes and rates and then allow these woke fools to put in place policies that waste it…and now worse…!!
Yes this disaster is raw in everyone’s mind right now, but now is a great time to wake up and take an interest in what is happening to your country at a national and local government level.
You are losing control to the fake tribalists who insist on 12th century spiritual nonsense for the eventual benefit and current control, power and riches of the gravy train, aided by ridiculously stupid governments and councils….and the media.
What we have just witnessed is a civil engineering failure thanks to Iwi and council incompetence, not climate change, not spirits.
let’s do something about it before it happens again, and it will.
Wow – let’s see the MSM pick that up ……not
Great info mate, thank you.
Is it true that services like arborist companies do not tender for a civic job anymore if they are ‘Friends Of The Council’ or something?
Trust the experts that’s what they said after the Pike river disaster, don’t ever trust governments they will always let you down.
Must protect our coloured cousins not matter what the outcome.
Note to Luxon. Saying “trust the experts” is a tired, worn-out and thoroughly discredited trope which has been used and abused by political whores protecting their own and/or their sponsors.
Despite the fact that in this case it is the right thing to do to listen to the engineering and rescue experts managing the clean up of this avoidable disaster.
True, mate, true.
U watched utube … Tauranga mayor Dingding Drystable interview going: “LOOOOK, look, loook, look, ..look, um,
L
look.
Luxie should sue him for copyright infringment.
Look
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”