The new Procurement Strategy from the Strategy and Operations meeting at the NPDC has certainly hit the headlines around the country.

The new Procurement Strategy discussed at the Strategy and Operations meeting on 8^th July has certainly hit the headlines around the country.

People have been very unhappy with the message doing the rounds that a small group of businesses in New Plymouth will be seen to be given an advantage over others. Having a close look at the actual strategy this is only one thing to be concerned about, there is a whole lot more.

There’s an expression isn’t there – go woke go broke ?

The buzz words in this document used every woke word a Local Government employee could possibly have in their wokest vocabulary.

More about that further down the page – but we would like to sit this story alongside the recent Deloitte’s audit - that had already given the NPDC the worst rating they can give a Council for lack of business practices. Purchase orders are being raised after jobs have been done, the integrity of Contractor information is lacking – those types of serious shortfalls in current business processes.

Gareth Green had responded to that story that it would take about 18 months for them to get up to the standards Deloitte’s would like to see. We couldn’t understand why.

A robust manual purchase order matching system should be able to be in place in a few months. A priority should be set that accurate contractor records and capabilities are set up quickly.

We now understand why it will take 18months to address the questions being asked by Deloitte’s.

It looks like the NPDC plans to have the wokest Procurement Strategy anywhere in the country.

We’ve attached 2 pages full of all the buzz words (we’ve summarised those below) – and a link to the agenda with the full copy of the Strategy - for those people who like to read lots of detail. It starts on page 322.

https://www.npdc.govt.nz/media/izjgcleb/ecm-9528959-strategy-and-operations-committee-agenda-8-july-2025.pdf

Here’s a sample of the woke words in just 2 pages of a very long document – titled Strategic Themes:

• Managing Spend Effectively
• Apply the principles of kaitiakitanga to ensure public funds are utilised responsibly, minimising environmental impact and maximising community benefits.
• Create opportunities for local businesses, including small and minority-owned enterprises, to participate.
• Reducing whole-of-life energy, water and material requirements,
• Favouring reuseable, recyclable, or low-emission products
• Adopt circular economy principles
• Demonstrate a commitment to emission reduction.
• Consider the Social Impact, Cultural Identity and Inclusivity
• We aim to embed social impact into procurement decisions.
• Encourage engagements with minority-owned enterprises to promote diversity and inclusion.
• Social procurement will also be leveraged to strengthen iwi, hapū, and whānau capacity,
• Enhance cultural resilience.
• While striving to be fair to all suppliers, we will work to foster relationships with iwi and hapū enterprises to address systemic inequities, and promote intergenerational well-being
• Transparency fosters trust and ensures all stakeholders comprehend and endorse procurement decisions.
• Critical Council runs effective tender processes that are transparent and compliant
• Regular audits of procurement practices conducted to identify and address any compliance gaps.
• Procurement practices will generally align with the current New Zealand Government Procurement Rules.
• The Council prioritises the well-being, health, and safety of our community and workforce.
• Maintaining accountability and transparency throughout

To be honest we’d be really happy if they just said they’d set up a proper contractor database (on a spreadsheet would do) and a purchase order/payment matching system (in a couple of big folders would do).

We’d also really prefer to have just a simple procurement statement like:

"We will employ the best contractor, with the right skills, at the most value for money rate".

That would be a big step forward from where the NPDC is right now.

Some of the wording in this document sounds professional and has a focus which is needed – but at the Alliance we believe the focus with financial and procurement businesses practices at the NPDC should be fully focussed on systems, processes and staff capability – and we would like all the buzz words and social and cultural overtones left out.

It’s good to know we are going to have a change of Mayor – and we cross our fingers that the next Mayor will be highly focussed on getting the financial standards at the NPDC up to scratch.