It Needs To Be Restored NOW!
Murray Horton & Steve
Howard of Keep Our Asserts Canterbury (KOA) appeared before
the Select Committee yesterday to speak in support of KOA’s submission on the
Environment Canterbury (Transitional Governance Arrangements) Bill.
They pointed out that it was appropriate that
the hearings were in the Christchurch City Council (CCC) Building, as KOA finds
itself in rare agreement with the CCC, whose submission on the same Bill
described it (and the Government pushing it) as “extraordinarily arrogant”.
Well said the mouse that roared!
But KOA also pointed out that the venue was
appropriate for another reason, namely that the former Mayor, Sir Bob Parker
and his Council, played a leading role in the 2010 Government coup that has
deprived the people of Canterbury of regional government level democracy ever
since. The CCC found out the hard way, and very soon, that it needed to be
careful what it wished for, because – only a year later – it found itself in
the same position, courtesy of the disaster capitalism shock doctrine imposed
on it by the very same Government under the guise of quake recovery.
The Bill is about a public asset, namely water, a vital necessity of life. What happened to ECan was a crude move to
remove any democratic input, let alone control, from the people of Canterbury and preventing
us in having any say about what happens to, and who benefits from, the public
asset that is our water. Who does benefit? Farmers and agribusiness. It’s a
textbook example of State-aided and abetted privatisation – the profits have
been privatised and the costs, primarily environmental degradation by the
dairying agribusiness monoculture, have been socialised.
Fundamentally the Bill is about democracy, or
the lack thereof. Democracy is the key public asset with which KOA is most
concerned. Everything flows from that. Canterbury
has been deprived of democratic regional government since 2010 and we have been
continually lied to, regarding when a fully elected regional council will be
restored. First it was going to be 2013, then 2016, now it’s going to be a
partial restoration in 2019. This year, next year, maybe, never? The Bill
continues the lie. No other regional council in NZ has had this mixed member
model forced upon it. This sets a dangerous precedent for the rest of the
country (just like so much else that has been done to Canterbury
and Christchurch
since 2010). And it’s not even mixed member proportional but mixed member first
past the post, with a rural gerrymander to boot.
The ECan coup was the issue in Christchurch
in 2010 and would have remained so if Mother Earth had not upstaged it in such
catastrophic fashion just a few months later. Amid all the devastation in Cathedral Square,
the dead heart of the city, the democracy cairn of stones still stands, erected
by Canterbury
people in protest in 2010. It is a vivid and literally indestructible symbol of
the strong desire of Canterbury
people for democracy.
The Bill removes ECan from the jurisdiction
of the Environment Court
and the Resource Management Act. This is clearly acting in the interests of
agribusiness and the water privatisers.
It is nonsense to compare the proposed model
of ECan governance with that used for DHBs. The latter are funded by central
Government, not through local government rates. And since that comparison has
been raised, KOA asks – why aren’t DHBs fully elected, like the old Hospital
Boards used to be?
New Zealand’s government
routinely spouts platitudes of support for the brave people fighting for
democracy in places like the Arab countries and China
but blithely removes it from the people of Canterbury, one of the country’s biggest
regions, at the stroke of a pen. Why? Because democracy is inconvenient,
democracy is literally bad for business – agribusiness that is, the private
business interests of the water privatisers.
No taxation without representation.
KOA demands that the Government scraps this
Bill and restores ECan to a fully elected body by no later than the 2016 local
body elections, preferably sooner. Give back the regional democracy to the
people of Canterbury
that is ours by right, not at the whim of central Government and its sticky
fingered mates.
