There is a simple test of temperament for anyone who holds public office: can they withstand criticism without reaching for the machinery of the state to make it stop? On the evidence now before the public, Mayor Peri Zee has failed that test.

The facts are not in dispute, because they come from the reporting and from the police themselves. Two ratepayer advocates who, on the public record, had done nothing more than email persistently and attend council meetings found a uniformed officer at their door, unannounced. Police assessed the mayor’s complaint and found no offence of harassment had been committed. No warning was issued. The file was closed. An officer of The Post reviewed the communications in question and found them persistent and at times critical, but containing no threats and no abusive language. The mayor, invited to identify what she considered harassing, offered no examples.

Sit with that for a moment. The threshold for harassment was never met — yet the visit still happened. When a complaint from an elected official can bring police to a critic’s home, and the finding is that no offence occurred, the “finding” barely matters. The knock on the door is the message. And the message received by every other ratepayer watching is unmistakable: question this mayor too persistently, and you too may find an officer on your step.

This is not a private grievance. It is a free-speech question, and New Zealand law strongly protect it and treats it as one. it is the cornerstone of strong democracy.

Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act affirms the right of everyone to seek, receive and impart information and opinions of any kind. Political speech — the criticism of those who hold power — sits at the very heart of what that right protects. And the Bill of Rights does not bind Parliament alone; it binds anyone exercising a public function, an elected mayor squarely among them. When the authority of that office is turned against lawful criticism, it is not robust politics. It is a public power being used for a private purpose it was never given for.

Here is where the mayor’s own conduct becomes a sword that cuts back on the hand that wields it. Ms Zee has said publicly that public scrutiny is part of the job. She is right. But an official who genuinely believed that would not need the police to help her endure a run of critical emails. The gap between what she says about accountability and what she did when accountability arrived at her own inbox is the whole story. It tells us more than any opponent ever could.

The sequence compounds it. In January she sent these residents AI-generated “fair engagement” guidelines. By June she was accusing them of disinformation and warning of legal protections. And, as reported, the police visit landed on the very day a District Court judge ruled the couple’s own action against her could proceed to a full hearing. Whatever the intention, that timing is a poor look for anyone who claims to welcome scrutiny — the machinery of complaint arriving at the door of people who had done nothing more than push back, and who were pursuing their own remedy in law.

Scrutiny of those in power is confronting. It is meant to be. It is the price of the office, not an assault on the person who holds it. A mayor who cannot absorb persistent criticism without escalating it into a police matter has mistaken her own discomfort for a threat to public safety — and has the power to act on that confusion in a way no ord. inary resident ever could. That asymmetry is precisely why it is so dangerous, and precisely why it disqualifies.

I make no claim about Ms Zee as a person. I make a claim about her fitness to exercise public power, and I rest it entirely on her own documented actions. She is welcome to respond. But the facts she would have to answer are of her own making, and no letter can unmake them.

Ratepayers of Upper Hutt are entitled to a mayor who treats their criticism as the ordinary business of democracy — not as a matter for the police. On the current record, we do not have that mayor.

A “thank you” to Stephen Dol for sending this letter to The Upper Hutt Connection.

31/07/26