My impression (mostly from British news sites) is that self-serving failure has long been the norm for Kiwi political leaders.
Wellington in particular has had a string of divisive mayors. Simply google the previous Mayor "Tory Whanau" for a never-ending list of controversy, incompetence and failure.
Previous socialist central government attempted to strip assets off the regional bodies and centralize them under a common scheme. Would have been successful, however a lot of race-based ideology was peripherally injected into the process which gave asset management an unaccountable and ultimately undemocratic race-based overlay which basically killed the idea (central govt were voted out).
Central Government also has a fairly miserable history of asset management before privatisation. It's a multi-decade process of slow erosion and precendent.
The intrusion of government and intrusion of identity politics seems to be the core issue. Failure to provide core services, failure to be competent but the conversation is almost always re-directed towards "racism" and identity as the root attributes. We had no trouble producing high quality functional and well managed assets before the arrival of modern identity politics. Bait and switch IMO.
