In the past decade particularly we’ve seen a switch from the old school democracies where Councillors truly represented the views and wishes of their rate payers, to a very different animal. Cameron Slater of the Whale Oil blog summarizes here some growing anomalies with District Councils, describing a Government culture that’s in ‘moral decay’.

There’s much pollution going on now as rivers NZ wide are no longer safe in terms of cleanliness, to swim in. Our Government (which is really a corporation) has set a low bar of acceptability and has announced intentions of lowering it even further. The authorities mandated to protect our waterways are being found to be the biggest polluters.

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Insights from Penny Bright, Bruce Rogan & Vinny Eastwood on Local Governance & Corruption in NZ

We recently posted information from the Horowhenua where a whistle blower, a former Councillor, spilled the beans on what really went on behind closed doors down there. Then again we had revelations of a man’s experience with the Rodney Council. He lost his business and his home following his second attempt to expose corruption within the Council.

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Whistleblowers on Agenda 21

For further insight into the increasingly familiar scenario of corruption within Councils, listen to former Australian politician, Anne Bressington’s  speech on this topic as she saw similar happening in her country. Agenda 21 is planet wide, basically, the filtering down into our local governments of the United Nations’ agenda termed, ‘Agenda 21’. It is masked with environmental rhetoric however, as you will see, it is everything but. (See also our Agenda 21 in NZ  page).

“We are at present working discreetly, with all our might, to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. And all the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands.”                                                       Arnold Toynbee – International Affairs, p.809, November 1931

LG and Pollution

The blame for the major pollution of our waterways can be placed squarely at the feet of our District Councils and Horizons. They are each as bad as the other as Horizons fails to make the District Councils accountable with the consents they issue. In our district we have 10 years of non compliance & refusal (it seems) to conduct an in-stream biota survey to tell us how healthy or otherwise our waterways are. They are of course polluting it themselves with excessive quantities of leachate, beyond that which was consented. Some 12 tanker loads per day, far in excess of the cited 2-3 every two days.

Always for these councils it’s the cheapest solution is best & to hang with the environment. And so we have another round recently following a water tour, of ‘tell us what you think’ but we plan to do what we want anyway which would be ….’keep trashing the waterways with raw sewage, leachate, pesticides, herbicides, effluent’ you name it. The whole thing is farcical & I marvel at how gullible people are. And folks have spoken up for decades to no avail. These authorities are laws unto themselves and clever enough to put the ‘clean green’ spin on their websites. ‘Sustainable Practices, Sustainable Development’ in case you missed it.

Check out what’s happening in other NZ District Councils. Some of it is pretty shocking.

If you have any matters to highlight about your local District Council or Horizons, anywhere in NZ, please either submit your own write up, or send me links to publish here.

EnvirowatchRangitikei