Category: Environment

National and local environmental issues

The New Zealand Enclosures (or stealing our publicly-owned land.)

 Between 1604 and 1914, huge areas of England known as ‘the Commons’ used by large numbers of rural people, were taken from them under ‘Enclosure Laws.’ In total, the area amounted to over 28,000 square kilometres – or about one tenth the area of New Zealand.

The Commons became the property of private landowners, greatly increased their wealth, drove many agricultural families into towns as the Industrial Revolution gathered steam and transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of country people who were forced to work in horrific conditions for subsistence pay in the new industrial slums.

It seems that New Zealand is now also seeing the invasion and subversion of its public lands. This is also for the sake of private profit, though largely not for New Zealand firms, but rather for international conglomerates.

Our National Parks and Conservation Estate have long been considered generally inviolate from any serious commercial activity. But permits are now being parcelled out to every come-lately mining, oil, or gold prospecting firm that flies in for a cosy chat with the government. And Minister Bridges seems very happy to sign permits even if he doesn’t know where the area is.

In 1887 Te Heu Heu Tukino IV, paramount chief of Tuwharetoa gifted the peaks of Tongariro, Ngaruahoe and Ruapehu to the people of this country, and thus began our first National Park. Many others have since been provided for all of the people, sometimes by gifting or by government purchases on behalf of the people, for the people, using their money.

These parks are there for our wonder,  enjoyment,  our heritage and to help protect our unique flora and fauna. Co-incidentally, these lands have become one of New Zealand’s major selling points for our international reputation as a very beautiful, scenic, green and clean country, indirectly bringing in billions of dollars through tourism, films and other related activities.

But that is not enough for this government. They want to have their cake while others eat it, through direct commercial activities within these precious lands, particularly noxious mining. This is destructive to all that these parks are intended to provide. It also precludes access by the public to more and more areas of their public land. It is a type of ‘enclosure’ – a sort of legalised theft.

Regrettably, incursions into public open space don’t stop there. The government is directly heavying local government representatives and their constituents to roll over and accept that various sectoral interests should be allowed to alienate public land for their special purposes.

The National Yachting Centre which Minister McCully wanted on reserve land in Takapuna is one such example.

But there’s more! The corporatisation emphasis in the government’s “super-city” legislation, amendments to the RMA, the secretive ‘special housing areas’ the Unitary Plan all shrivelling of real democratic input, compound to remove the traditional roles of public and council working together to protect open space and determine its best public use through the traditional management plans and other means.

Unfortunately the intensification imposed on Auckland is not confined to accommodation, (again with the government telling us that poor people should live in shoeboxes), but includes proposals for much more intensive use and commercial use of council parks and reserves by sectoral and business groups than has ever happened before. Most of this will be done behind closed doors in discussions between the interested parties and council officers. No public notification or input is required and our elected representatives are largely excluded from the loop.

In the proposed Unitary Plan public open space zones, there are at least twenty new activities which can be dealt with in this way – as either ‘Permitted Uses’ or ‘Restricted Discretionary.’ These include: new buildings, accessory buildings, satellite dishes, clubrooms, camping grounds, marae complexes, halls, visitor accommodation, places of assembly, stadiums, plus the following (if associated with one of the above activities): retail, restaurants, offices.

To help the corporate world further, there is to be a reduction in the amount of informal open space by converting much of it to sand-based playing fields, artificial turf and the like.

Infilling our open space with more equipment, concrete, buildings of all descriptions, commercial uses (including satellite towers) will undoubtedly please the contracting world. But unless we, the owners of these precious places really fight back, so much will be lost to us. To avoid that means that we have to be much more active and persistent in making our views strongly known to MPs, councillors, local board members and the directors of the Council Controlled Organisations. Now is the time.

We stay silent at our peril and those who come after us will live in a diminished world, as did the dispossessed agrarian workers of an earlier England if we fail.

(16.4.14)                                                                                                                                         (800 words)

Posted on by Tony Holman

Water and the “Stench of Exploitation.”

New Zealanders need to be vigilant about the potential for privatisation of our most important asset – water, especially in the context of the government’s frenzied sale of our remaining public assets. The lessons from privatised water in the UK provide more than enough warning. It’s a case of rob the public to enrich the company’s investors.

In an article in the ‘Guardian’ a month or so ago, columnist Nick Cohen, didn’t mince his words. “How long,” he asked, “will it be before the stench from the monopolistic exploitation of water – the very stuff of life – reaches the public’s nostrils?”

Thames Water, Britain’s largest water company, proposes to increase its water levies on the millions of households it supplies, to build a multi-billion pound “super sewer.” (Thames Water is basically controlled by a consortium led by the Australian bank, Macquarie.)

Clearly a new sewer is needed, but what is being criticised is that this company has paid out 1.2 billion pounds in dividends to its investors. It has not provided funding from its ongoing levies over the years, but has instead paid out maximum dividends, while ignoring infrastructural needs. It has been high prices, high dividends and low infrastructural investment.

The Lib-Dem deputy leader has described this as “totally unacceptable.” But more significant is the comment of Jonson Cox (a former CEO of other water companies), who is now head of Ofwat, the water regulatory body. His view is that former colleagues were using “morally questionable” practices.

Further weight was added by a former Ofwat boss (Sir Ian Byatt) who suggested that some 19th century style dividend controls be brought back to life to clamp down on water company practices.

A ‘Guardian’ editorial suggested that regulators “…are worried that the whole dubious edifice of public utilities being owned by private monopolies is in danger of being discredited by obscure company structures, opaque tax regimes and a widespread perception that the customer is being ripped off.”

More than one observer has railed against the water companies, noting among their practices: widespread tax avoidance, high levels of ‘commercial confidentiality,’ loaded their books with debt and provided massive returns to their shareholders.

What seems surprising is that anyone (especially an intellectual newspaper) should expect any different sort of outcome. To give over the precious public natural resource of water to a monopoly, is to give that monopoly a licence to rip off the public. What is even worse is that most of the shares in UK’s water companies are not held by the public, but by private equity. To add a final insult to injuries, many of these shares are foreign-owned, so the profits go off shore.

The public are captives to their suppliers, and either have to pay increasingly exorbitant prices, or reduce their consumption of this vital necessity of life, so that hygiene and other health factors are affected for an increasing number.

Whether by choice or poverty, one of the results of increasing water rates is that there are rising levels of bad debts for Thames Water, because some residents can’t pay, and others won’t pay. Sir Tony Redmond of the Consumer Council for Water said: “Our research shows that one in seven customers say they can’t afford their water bills.”

And “regulators” such as Ofwat are usually ineffective at keeping up with the games the big boys play. They suffer from legal constraints and difficulties with the accounting practices of the monopolies. Even when they unravel a situation and have some sort of solution there is inevitably a time lag which ensures continuing unreasonable profits for the company and suffering for the consumer.

But that’s the nub of the matter. Why should water, a necessity of life, be owned by a few profit-takers instead of the tried and true publicly owned, publicly controlled, non-profit making bodies which we have traditionally had in New Zealand.

There’s a story that one of the northern water companies rationed water to its own customers because it wanted to sell water to a neighbouring company at a higher price!

Don’t think it wont happen here. It is already happening with long-term contracts with firms such as United Water Limited, and the water companies controlling water supply to dairy farmers in Canterbury.

The price of water depends ultimately on the ownership of that water and its distribution. And the price of that that to a minimum is constant public vigilance to ensure that this vital asset remains publicly owned, with direct accountability through a publicly elected Board and with the traditional requirement that it be a non-profit organisation.

This is something that needs to be constantly hammered home to governments and councils by all of us.

 

(26.10.13)

Posted on by Tony Holman

Our water. “Blue gold” – for immense profits?

The Editor,NZ Herald

Dear Sir,                        Letter to the Editor.    (Not sent or published)

What a shocking indictment of the commercial, consumerist thinking revealed in Diana Clement’s “Money” article (‘Investors urged to take a dip in blue gold’) in your Business section, 19.10.07

Treat water like any commodity, she urges. “At least for investors, there’s money to be made from sectors that will benefit from shifts in the climate, namely water-related companies…” she gurgles!

That’s right Diana, keep plugging the idea that rich people and powerful international companies should make money from the weaker by privatising control and delivery of water, and therefore should be able to hold individuals, farmers, manufacturers and indeed the country to ransom so that a few can make immense profits from a key necessity of life and never mind the implications or the consequences!

 

20.10.07

Posted on by Tony Holman

The disgrace of the former Auckland City Council

21.1.17

The Editor, NZ Herald.

Letter to the Editor: The disgrace of the former Auckland City Council

The two-page article on Saturday by Simon Collins, and the comments by Councillor Mike Lee highlighted the public health menace inherited by Aucklanders from the former Auckland City Council.

That Council, the richest and largest of the former local councils, failed to take responsibility for their ancient, crude, combined sewer/stormwater system or to replace it on a well-planned, ongoing basis over many decades.

Across the harbour, the North Shore City Council and its residents ensured that their systems were separated and paid for both that and a major improvement and expansion of the Rosedale Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Many on the Shore were very unhappy that such good work was largely negated by Auckland City’s pollution of the harbour swirling around our inner harbour beaches, eastern beaches and fishing spots.

Unfortunately, Auckland City councillors and officers avoided solving this major health matter, and it is not encouraging that some of those officers are still peppered throughout the current Auckland Council and its (un)Controlled Council Organisations.

The results of this tardiness and irresponsibility means that all of the Auckland region will now face another burden of rates while the solution is provided over several decades.

Posted on by Tony Holman

This Planetary Emergency

 Our world faces a planetary emergency because of the massive environmental changes taking place.

Melting glaciers and ice caps; rising sea levels, disappearing islands, inundation of low lying coastal areas; major weather changes and patterns; increasingly violent storms; rising temperatures; desertification of more and more areas as rains fail and disappear; increasing pollution and salination of our remaining fresh water supplies, as well as the diminishing supplies of fresh water as the glaciers, rainfall and lakes disappear.

Arguments about why this is happening have gone on far to long, with the naysayers putting all of their trust in the historical fluctuations over aeons that have occurred on earth and denying that humanity has had anything to do with these problems.

Some even believe that none of this is actually happening despite all of the evidence to the contrary. It seems they would also deny that the destruction and removal of huge areas of forests in the Amazon Basin, Indonesia and elsewhere cannot be having any effect on climate, erosion, pollution of river systems, the fresh water and the life and spawning of the aquatic species that rely on that water. Presumably they will also deny that mining of coal, oil, fracking and numerous other human activities do not have consequences for water pollution, poisoning of fish and other fauna and flora.

But, deny it or not, these things are happening and on an increasingly large scale.

What is needed is for major co-ordinated attempts within each country and across the globe to minimise the abuses of the planet and to try to deal with these effects and abuses through an array of measures.

Some of the causes of this increasingly dire situation include the runaway burgeoning population of the world, undoubtedly unsustainable; and powerful governments intent on controlling other territories to control and take their resources.

Slightly more subtly, the huge power of soulless multi-nationals intent on gaining control of the resources for their own benefit, at the expense of the peoples they dominate. This process is gathering increasing momentum and power as it works through “influencing” governments around the world via so-called ‘trade’ treaties. These include the TPPA, TTIP and proposed EU-North American ‘Treaty.’

Some of the menace of these agreements (generally un-mandated by the governments that enter into them) have been played out under the North American Free Trade Agreement and the nascent Investor-State Disputes Settlement (ISDS) device which is now much more powerfully embedded as the centrepiece of the TPP and other proposed agreements.

So what is our future? – Frightening and probably terminal unless we are all committed to major, consistent and co-ordinated global emergency measures.

Politicians only deal with short time problems and solutions. They know that complex matters and severe measures – no matter how necessary they may be, will lead to them being sacked. – Unless the menace is staring everyone in the face because it is hitting them. By then it’s too late.

So it is up to us – each of us, to get better informed, and to pressure governments everywhere to combine internationally to take major actions to reduce the entire polluting agents world wide through a combination of inducements and penalties where non-conforming is occurring.

A new species of political leadership is required across the globe and this will only come about if the people at large focus on the inevitable outcomes for them, their children and grandchildren.

People must select honest, decisive and determined political leaders willing to put aside national and international rivalries who will work on behalf of their people for the ultimate survival of them and their descendants. Leaders willing to recognise that unless they stop attending international talkfests which end with no real, urgent or effective action, not only their people, but the whole of human existence on this planet is in dire jeopardy. Full and honest co-operation will be required to achieve this.

 

Undoubtedly a tall order, and new attitudes have to be learned. But, unless large numbers of people across the world become much more active politically, making their demands for better leadership and environmental action heard loud and clear, tomorrow will be too late.   — The time is NOW.

 Tony Holman.                                         1.6.16                                           ………………………………………………………………………………………….

Tony Holman is a sometime commentator on central and local government matters. He has wide experience in local government and statutory boards. Holds a BA (History) and Dip.in Local Govt & Administration. In 2001 he was awarded a QSO for Services to NZ.

Posted on by Tony Holman