This power is used as a last resort when all other attempts to get the rates paid have been exhausted.”

I know of someone personally who had his home put into an auction process by a court order to recover rates owed because he had not paid his rates for many years.

DCC staff assured me that this was very rare and that forcing rates payments was only ever a last resort.
It turns out that Rating Act provisions also allow Councils to forcibly extract rates payments by simply getting your bank to pay them and add the cost to your mortgage, and that currently there are over 200 Dunedin homeowners having their rates forcibly paid in this way.
“In Dunedin, 218 demands were recently sent to banks and lenders for unpaid rates of $763,595 in the 23-24 year.”

The full story is on Stuff
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360641227/councils-take-millions-dollars-mortgages-unpaid-rates