{"id":538365,"date":"2026-07-22T09:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538365\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T09:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T09:44:14","slug":"northland-iwi-leaders-push-transpower-class-action-over-pylon-collapse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/538365\/","title":{"rendered":"Northland iwi leaders push Transpower class action over pylon collapse"},"content":{"rendered":"

They said the case will be a critical test of whether regional communities can hold national infrastructure operators to account when failures happen.<\/p>\n

Transpower and Omexom each said they were unable to comment while the matter was before the courts. <\/p>\n

The Transpower pylon at Glorit near Wellsford collapsed in June after an unsupervised Omexom contractor <\/a>removed all the nuts from three of its four legs during routine maintenance. <\/p>\n

The incident left 180,000 residents and more than 20,000 businesses without power for multiple days.<\/p>\n

Business losses have been estimated by various commentators at up to $80 million. <\/p>\n

Transpower accepted subsequent investigation findings that the collapse was \u201centirely avoidable\u201d but did not admit legal fault or a breach of the Electricity Industry Participation Code. <\/p>\n

While the Electricity Authority initially moved to prosecute Transpower, the authority dropped its complaint in May this year <\/a>after an international expert concluded the company\u2019s systems met good industry practice. <\/p>\n

Transpower maintained it had no mechanism to reimburse commercial losses. Instead, it and Omexom jointly contributed $1m to a regional resilience fund administered by Northland Inc, and intended to support long-term community projects. <\/p>\n

The iwi leaders pointed to the value of Northland\u2019s M\u0101ori economy, which a 2023 Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment report put at more than $10 billion, spanning primary industries, manufacturing, construction, retail, services and hospitality. <\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s court hearing will determine whether the case should proceed as opt-out or opt-in.<\/p>\n

Burkhardt and Glavish say an opt-out model is essential to ensure all M\u0101ori businesses across Northland \u2013 many remote, under-resourced and digitally isolated \u2013 are not shut out of the legal process. <\/p>\n

Under an opt-out model, affected businesses are automatically included in the class action unless they choose to remove themselves. The defendants, Transpower and Omexom, are seeking an opt-in model, which would require each business to proactively sign up to the claim. <\/p>\n

Glavish and Burkhardt\u2019s affidavit argues an opt-in approach would unfairly disadvantage M\u0101ori businesses in isolated communities, many of whom may not be aware of the case or able to navigate the sign-up process. <\/p>\n

Glavish said, \u201cWhen infrastructure of this scale fails because of negligence, there must be consequences. We need to lift the standard of accountability nationally, so this never happens again\u201d. <\/p>\n

Burkhardt said, \u201cWe talk about deliberate investment in Northland \u2013 in our people and our infrastructure. What happened here was the opposite. It reflected complacency and lack of care. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is about justice, but it\u2019s also about future-proofing. <\/p>\n

\u201cNorthland cannot afford another outage like this \u2013 and neither can this country.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sarah Curtis<\/a> is a news reporter for the Northern Advocate, focusing on a wide range of issues. She has nearly 20 years\u2019 experience in journalism, most of which she spent reporting on the courts in Gisborne and the East Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They said the case will be a critical test of whether regional communities can hold national infrastructure operators…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[264989,432,9092,28064,23748,138,8604,12781,17400,42503,37766,19100,50521,26477,15032,111,139,1067,24926,69,103414,25347,1523,10112,6791,15400,103413,5914,14039],"class_list":["post-538365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-2024s","tag-action","tag-against","tag-avoidable","tag-backing","tag-business","tag-caused","tag-class","tag-collapse","tag-collapsed","tag-contractor","tag-entirely","tag-iwi","tag-leaders","tag-maintenance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-northland","tag-northlands","tag-nz","tag-omexom","tag-outage","tag-over","tag-power","tag-prominent","tag-push","tag-pylon","tag-regional","tag-transpower"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}