(Letter in today's Southland Times from Lindsay Withington of Invercargill)
I was annoyed, but not surprised, to hear Nick Smith hint at his Government's intentions to get rid of regional councils.
Many readers will not realise that the reason National scrapped Ecan was not, as they suggest, "because they had been ineffective".
Instead, they'd actually become more environmentally concerned and were starting to question the appropriateness of resource consents demanding more water from falling rivers and aquifers.
Obviously this stance was at odds with this Government's desire to allow the intensive agriculture juggernaut to spread like a cancer across our previously "clean green" country.
Southland's rivers have never faced more pressure on their water quality and quantity and Southlanders have had a gutsful.
Now that Environment Southland appears to have taken our society's concerns on board and is proposing to consider the damage caused by rampant dairying development, it seems National is preparing to step in.
It will presumably be considering how best to spin the fact that it wishes to replace our democratically elected councillors with hand-picked yes-men.
These yes-men will be well briefed on this Government's desire to allow agriculture to intensify at all cost. This cost will be our environment.
We need regional councils to represent our society and not be pressured into allowing intensification just because they might be sacked.
It will be a sad day indeed for our environment if we lose our democratically elected council, replaced with National's yes-men.
Monday, February 27, 2012
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3 comments:
Regional council's have the distinct disadvantage of making decisions that have implications over the very long term, decades to lifetimes, and beyond. As a result, it will be easy for the government to say "they don't do much, so let's abolish them." The results won't be widely noticed for years.
I think it has taken a while for people to work out how regional government works, which as also contributed to the problems that central government has with regional councils. Initially (i.e. for the first couple of decades), there was sufficient inconsistency for regional government to not be a threat. The rise of regional councils with a mandate to protect the environment is a direct threat to the program of the current government. Hence the solution, as per the letter you quote.
On a related note, as an alternative to an upper house, or some presidential style executive instead of a monarchy, I'd like to see stronger regional government.
Naturally enouh, I agree with you, AC and with the writer of the letter to the editor. I've penned one of my own which should appear in the local rag tomorrow morning or perhaps the morning after that. I'll post it here when it does. My fellow councillors will doubtless be hoping that I don't make comment but it's too late for that :-)
yes I agree to but not the way they operate at present -there needs to be a robust process of accountability for performance and that is singularly lacking at present.
Also reform that looks at the broader possible futures of shared local services, the relationship between local and central government functions and agencies, and possibly at a better form of governance structure is necessary - greater competence would be a good start (present company excepted of course!) and a greater commitment to the responsibilities rather than to the positions and processes would be essential also.
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