First Published in NBR

There’s still Gold in Our Hills.

Readers may be pleased to hear that the negotiations between the family miner and DoC, which have been going on since 1998, may be progressing towards a satisfactory conclusion. It would be nice to claim a victory for “investigative journalism” or whatever. However, I am advised this problem-solving approach also reflects the “enabling” policies of “the new regime”.

Which is all to the good.

However, while DoC staff may think I am waging some personal vendetta against the department and its decision making, I am always careful to point out that the problem lies not with the personnel, but with the legislative framework under which they operate.

So, while Minister of Conservation, Tim Groser, may be determined to encourage a more enabling culture within Doc, he and his colleagues, and indeed DoC personel, will soon run up against the brick wall of the legal framework that governs the management of New Zealand’s Conservation Estate.

This “whole of government” problem demands a “whole of government” approach to the necessary reforms.

For example, the councilors of all our territorial local authorities are elected. But the members of the 14 regional Conservation Boards are appointed by the Minister of Conservation. I have yet to meet any regular citizen who can name a member of their local Conservation Board. Most do not even know they exist.

I believe elected Boards would do much to improve relations between local communities and DoC staff because landowners would have access to local accountable people, presumably with real powers of governance.

Just a thought.

Correction.

Some of you may have thought that a goldmine worth only about $3 million was hardly worth the fuss. However, my original script read:

One small family license has about 150,000 ounces of alluvial gold …. The gold is currently worth about $300,000,000.

NBR’s style-guide prefers words to large numbers of zeros. A sub-editor translated the $300,000,000 into words, but unfortunately came up with 3 million dollars rather than 300 million dollars. Naturally, I received a few emails pointing out I couldn’t even get my sums right.

So it goes.

We Worry about Auckland’s boundaries – but what about the rest?

The Royal Commission on the Governance of Auckland has been largely driven by the concern that Auckland has too many local authorities and hence too many elected officials and of course too many staff drawing down too many wages.

But in the course of looking at the Conservation Boards I began to realize that the boundary problems of the Auckland Councils pale into insignificance when compared with all the others.

Here is a list of Territorial Government Agencies, and their regions, that come to mind.

- Regional and Unitary Councils – 17 regions.

- Conservation Boards – 14 conservancies plus Chatham Island.

- Health Boards – 21 districts.

- NZ Police – 12 districts.

- NZ Land Transport Agency – 6 regions.

- New Zealand Fire Service – 8 regions.

- New Zealand Historic Places Trust –3 regional and 6 area offices.

- Ministry of Economic Development – 14 regions.

- Ministry of Social Development  – 11 Work and Income Regions.

- Ministry of Education – 5 regions.

I could go on, but you get the drift.

We are told that once Auckland becomes a Super City it will “speak with one voice”.

Really? About what? And to whom?

Maybe we should be looking at installing genuine regional government for all agencies. A host of boards could be collapsed into a few major elected Boards with true powers of governance. Co-ordination of services might improve too.

Absolutely Negatively Wellington.

The RMA Amendment Bill makes a good attempt to prevent trade competitors using the RMA processes to stifle their competition. A whole new Part of the RMA, Part 11A, Act Not to be used to oppose Trade Competitors, seems to cover the ground in relation to objections to applications, while a new Section 51 also confirms that Local Authorities when preparing plans “shall not have regard to trade competition or the effects of trade competition.”

However, this may not be strong enough wording to prevent councils including “retail hierarchies” in their plans, which are then used to refuse consents to applicants who fall outside the preferred locations or the preferred scale.  For example Wellington City’s Proposed Plan Change 66 openly declares its intention to:

Manage the location and scale of retail activities and integrated retail developments to ensure that they do not adversely impact on the sustainability of the Golden Mile and, where applicable, other identified Suburban Centre retail areas.

The Golden Mile is the main shopping street in the Wellington CBD, and sustainability is a PC code word for profitability. So in this case the “anti-competitive” agent is the council itself.

The end result is that any existing retailer, anywhere in Wellington City can oppose any proposal to open a new retail facility anywhere in the City, on the grounds that it conflicts with this objective. When times are tough they will certainly do so.

The Government must amend the current Amendment Bill to stop this anti-development and anti-employment planning in its tracks.

Why the Government is Right to Scrap Blanket Protection of Trees.

If you wonder why the Government has prohibited blanket tree regulations in urban areas in its First Phase of RMA reform go to the Centre web page (http://www.rmastudies.org.nz) and read the famous Woolley Environment Court decision posted under “Latest News.”

The NZ Herald ran a story on this reform headlined:

            Moves to Lift Protection Laws could mean OPEN SEASON ON TREES.

The headline should have read:

Moves to Lift Protection Laws could mean OPEN SEASON FOR PLANTING TREES.

Nothing discourages people from planting trees as much as the realization that they are planting expensive resource consents and could end up going to court and spending thousands of dollars just because they planted the wrong tree in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Burn Baby Burn – Time to revisit Waste-to-Energy Plants?

Remember the proposal for a Waste-to-Energy electricity generation plant at Meremere using high temperature incineration? It failed to get off the ground, mainly because the environmental lobby had decided that burning rubbish was not "appropriate" – presumably because it removed the need for recycling, which meant we could avoid paying indulgences for our sins. Recycling schemes also support many Council jobs.

Since then Councils have invested huge amounts of money in recycling depots and plants, and in transporting massive amounts of rubbish round the country in massive trucks. These investments have been based on the prices that could be recovered from local manufacturers and from countries like China. But local prices are collapsing under the weight of over-supply, while international prices are collapsing because of the global downturn. 

In the meantime electricity prices have been rising remorselessly and renewable energy is becoming even more fashionable than recycling. Eco-aware people like the Danes have been incinerating their rubbish for years. Now the British are having a second look at high temperature incineration.

New Zealand no longer has a high temperature incinerator for disposing of truly toxic waste and a modern Waste-to-Energy plant, including vitrification, would address that problem too.

Waste-to-Energy plants are best located close to the source of the rubbish and the demand for the power. Aucklanders in particular should be revisiting this means of generation.

In the meantime we shall continue dumping huge amounts of carefully sorted waste and colour-coded glass in our landfills.

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