MEET THE CANDIDATES
Last night I attended the Forest & Bird, Waitakere Ranges Protection Society & Waitakere Ranges Conservation Network, combined ‘Meet the Candidates’ meeting.
Again, only a handful of public attended, by far the majority were candidates. I did the best I could to give purposeful responses to each question. There were 3 questions and we had 1 minute to answer. Not ideal.
1. Man-made climate change is a major concern today and there is an urgent need to cut carbon emissions. What actions do you support or will you initiate to do so. (e.g. enhance the use of public transport, encourage more walking and cycling in our area, support sustainable initiatives)?
Answer:
I will champion the reopening of the Waitakere Quarry. This will take 7857 truck and trailer trips off our motorways, immediately. That’s the number of trucks it takes to bring 220,000 tons of aggregate into Auckland each year to replace Waitakere Quarry production. Reopening the quarry will give back a source of aggregate for our small local contractors, making them efficient and cost effective again. Reinstating this source of local aggregate will ensure the minimum amount of fossil fuels are used when constructing walkways and cycling lanes in our area.
I will advocate for trees under power lines in rural areas to be simply cut down, chopped up and allowed to rot. This will stop the teams of diesel powered trucks and trailers, equipped with huge chippers, to achieve the same result.
The point here is, while we debate reducing our carbon footprint, the reality of our actions, is exactly the opposite.
What I didn’t have time to say: I will put sheep back on the volcanic cones, to eat the grass. Doing away with the new phenomenon of a line of men wielding petrol powered weed eaters to do the same job.
2. What are your concerns about the environmental effects of any of the provisions of the unitary plan and why? What do you see as the biggest risk to the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act and how will you mitigate this?
Answer:
The Unitary Plan is 6961 pages long;
The Hearings Panel considered 1,493,600 separate submission points;
We are not UNDER planned were OVER planned
(The above three lines were just notes, I carried 25 kg of paperwork in as a prop to show the size of the unitary plan and I ad-libed this bit)
I then finished the answer to this question by reading the following:
Again the reality of the situation is that exactly the opposite of what we want to happen is taking place. As the largest landowner Regional Parks can cause far more damage to the Waitakere Ranges than small private owners of land in the Waitakere foothills. It is Auckland Council Regional Parks which have no CAP-EX a rapidly declining OP-EX, reducing staff numbers, tying them up on paperwork and not effectively controlling vermin and weeds.
3. What is your view on the scope of notifiable consents? What plans do you have to improve the process of communicating consent applications (E.g. for housing development, trees, erosion etc)?
Answer:
Auckland spent a fortune on the Unitary Plan. Planning staff use this document to decide whether, or not, a consent application needs to be publicly notified. We are told this document is better than anything we’ve had so far. It’s so new, we’ve had no time to judge how well it controls consent applications. I hope it fixes the present injustice where private landowners face micromanagement of their land, when public organisations like Ports of Auckland and Watercare can undertake huge projects without going through the same consenting process as the rest of us. (I modified this first paragraph as I spoke, to incorporate a challenge to many candidates who continually referred to ‘The Ranges’ and I reminded everybody that the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Act, primarily covers two distinctly different large areas. The biggest 17,000 ha of Auckland Regional Park and a smaller 10,000 ha of primarily privately owned foothills. Just referring to everything as ‘The Ranges’ distorts public perceptions of the issues in the Waitakere Ranges Local Board area.)
