By Sam Olley for RNZ
A code of conduct complaint has been laid about Thames District Council mayor Sandra Goudie's Covid-19 vaccination views, but the council has not investigated, saying the matter was resolved informally.
Goudie does not want the Pfizer vaccine, but the Novavax vaccine instead, which is not yet approved for use in New Zealand.
She and all other Thames elected members unanimously passed a motion supporting the vaccine rollout in October.
Days after, councillor Gary Gotlieb laid a conduct complaint alleging the mayor spoke at an anti-vaccination meeting in Coromandel.
After the complaint, Goudie spoke to Australian anti-vaccination group Reignite Democracy Australia in a 12-minute video published online on November 11.
In the video, which has had more than 11,000 views, she speaks about vaccine mandates, protests and anti-vaccination groups.
"There are meetings all over the place with like-minded people. There are marches. There are thousands going out to these marches. They're hardly covered by the media. Everybody's wondering what's happened to our media. It's really sad.
"I never thought we'd get to that in our lifetime, and here we are, and we still remember strongly World War I and II," she said.
She went on to describe the traffic light system as "ridiculous".
"I think it's actually time to drop the borders, open it up, and just deal with it."
Gotlieb said the video was "disgraceful".
"It's just awful, what she says. It's just completely putting the council and councillors in a terrible situation where she's ignoring a resolution."
He was unaware of the video until it was forwarded by RNZ, and said he would like the council to reconsider his code of conduct complaint about the community meeting and examine the contents of the video.
Gotlieb disagreed with the statement provided to RNZ by the Thames District Council communications team which said an investigation was "deemed unnecessary" because the matter was "resolved between parties".
"They've just parked it and hoped it would go away, but to me it's not been resolved at all. And she continues on flouting, absolutely flouting, laughing at us."
The full council is meeting today.
So far, vaccine passes are not compulsory at the council's facilities and offices.
Sandra Goudie would not comment to RNZ for this story.
It's understood a NZDF aircraft and multiple helicopters are involved.