Last Tuesday in Mapua I had a meeting with Peter Dunne and Alan Simmons of the United Future Party to discus a song that I wrote that expresses my thoughts of what sort of a world are we leaving behind for our children. I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to politics but I am on the same page as these guys with some of their policies . Here is Alan Simmons Speech from Saturday 11 Nov 2013.- Damon Alan Simmons. These are just rough notes of my speech last saturday 9th Nov at the UF AGM I just want to share with you some thoughts and ideas I have had around what I call the theft of public resources mostly caused by poor parliamentary oversight in the past and now a rush for New Zealand to be one of the worlds leading economies. New Zealand is a country blessed with many natural resources that are in demand around the world such as water, climate, scenery and incredibly fertile soils. Driven by greed and our desire to mix it with the rest of the world we bend over backwards to exploit those resources so as a country we can economically grow and enjoy the good things in life. Global corporates are very happy to fund these developments because they know the value of controlling natural resources. We seem to welcome them with open arms. Some examples of what I am talking about are: The rush to build huge water storage dams around the country in the name of economic salvation. These huge development projects will eventually leave to us at the mercy of those global corporations and international banks. Can anyone here imagine the financial chaos that will result in the collapse of the current milk price? Why big mega dams? Because local dams that irrigate for local farmers are too small on the world stage. They dont capture enough of the resource to attract big corporations. At present their are a huge number of these dams proposed all over New Zealand. The list is endless and the gold rush is on for developers and corporate farmers alike. Be Aware ...there is a mega dam coming to an area near you soon. An example is the Ruataniwha dam proposal. It went from 6 small local dams to a giant hydro dam project...... with a concrete wall of 190 feet high. Built on three earthquake faults considered by Geo Science likely to have a catastrophic event within the life of the dam all the while the town of Waipawa is right in the path. They say there will be 4 hours to evacuate the town. Its obvious the developers live somewhere else. This dam will capture the rain water right up against the Ruahine mountains and sell it onwards down river. If you dont want to buy the water then you are welcome to the polluted leftovers. This is our water, water owned by all life on earth. Without it we die. But now under this proposal someone else will own it and after they finished with it the land and water will be poisoned for generations to come as has happened now on the Canterbury plains. In the Hawkes Bay the increase in nitrates being allowed for by the regional council will kill babies if mothers use the water to mix milk formula produced, I might add, on that surrounding land. The Irony of that!. In Ashburton, inundated by a massive dairy boom, mothers are advised to use bottled water for their babies. The Nitrate Phosphate imbalance will poison the rivers for the towns of Waipukerau, Waipawa and Havelock North to the extent dogs and people will die if they swim in it. All of this so a company can make money from the publics resource. Our Water. Huge global companies go around the world buying up these captured water supplies as they are a license to print money. The water is free, it does not cost them anything...... they steal it from us! Make money for their overseas shareholders and leave the pollution here for us to deal with. Basically they take our resources, export the finished product and leave the pollution here. Another public resource stolen for commercial exploitation is our fishery both Saltwater and freshwater. In the freshwater environment trout are owned by the public of NZ and anyone who buys a license can fish for them. Our forefathers were adamant, NZ needed to be an egalitarian society, no one was to own resources like trout, deer and wildlife. Now the rest of the world in their own rush for economic growth have polluted their own rivers It has made them rich and able to travel here in pursuit of wilderness experiences. The desire to fish for trout in a pristine clean river has become a very valuable commodity. Again overseas interests move in, purchase the access to prime rivers and exclude New Zealanders so they can make money out the publics resource. The fish raised and paid for by new Zealanders are denied to them even though the law says you can not sell fishing rights........... it says nothing about access. Minister Nick Smith has said that he believes in private land owners selling the rights to fish and in doing so only genuine anglers will go fishing. Can you believe such a statement from a Minister of Conservation. While we have this sort of thinking in government the theft of the public resources will only accelerate. Once all fish around the coast of NZ belonged to the people and we fished to feed our families and friends. Commercial boats fished the local areas and sold their catch at the wharf or to a local fish shop. Fish were plentiful but overseas demand for our fish grew rapidly, fish stocks were at risk of being wiped out. Around 1980 the Government GAVE the commercial fisherman a quota so that they could manage the amount of fish being caught. Many of those given quota sold it immediately and retired to pastures far less dangerous. Now-days commercial interests are usually huge companies using overseas boats and labour, who have purchased their quota from another fisherman or had it given to them via treaty settlements. They now believe they have a prior right to what was once the publics resource. A great example of that is the snapper fishery and I will cover that issue later when we discuss policy ideas. Where did their prior right to the fishery come from. How did that reversal of rights to the fishery come about. Money and corporate interests have shown no restraint or social responsibility for our fisheries. Like federated Farmers they put their own spin on what they are doing is good for the country. These are the same people who wiped out the Orange Roughy fishery amongst others. They hire foreign crews and process much of their catch in China and send it back here at $40.00 kilo. At this very moment, as of yesterday a fleet of Russian trawlers are working the North island West Coast. What happened to the thousands of Kiwi Jobs promised by Sealord, especially for Maori when they were GIVEN all that quota? The commercial fishing industry have no social or moral conscience. Its about business. And they have stolen every New Zealanders fish so they can feed the people of China and make money. Another example is the current proposal for a monorail through to Fiordland. Without going into the merits or otherwise of this project it does represent what happens and has happened all over NZ since the 1980s. The consent applied for requires a 200 meter wide corridor through the Snowdon Forest and when finished a commercial bike trail will follow the monorail route. Locked gates at each end to a public resource and given time the next generation will be none the wiser that this was once public land. With the change of land tenure, access becomes an issue especially as time passes by and memories fade. A example of this is Kaiagaroa forest. Planted on public land in the 1920s to make work for the unemployed during the depression, it covered in total nearly 3000 square kilometers at its greatest. The forest service was disestablished by the Labour Government and the cutting rights sold off. Over time those rights have ended up owned by overseas interests... such as the Harvard University Pension Fund.. Kaiagaroa covers a lot of land and within it a lot of public resources such as rivers, hunting and wilderness. There used to be huts within the forest for sports people, camping grounds, great fishing in the Rangataiki river and access was encouraged. Whole towns died in this experiment, who remembers towns like Kaiangaroa, Minginui, Murupara all are now derelict and depressed. When the Labour Government sold off the cutting rights a number of us lobbied the Minister to preserve public access and especially driven access. With a forest equaling 3000 square kilometers walking is impossible. Vehicles run out of fuel in there, you need a map to find your way around. The minister replied that it was his expectation that driven access would always be available. The minister never listened and the legislation that resulted only provided for walking access. Leap forward to 2010. Large public meetings, threats to burn the forest, hundreds of hours of negotiations, ministers and MPs lobbying hard have resulted in little change. Access is still denied. No access to the publics resources within a forest that was once public land planted by the people of NZ. This is an absolute disgrace given all the warnings to ministers who pushed ahead without any due regard to the publics rights to our resources. Where are they NOW to put it right.? What are the lesson we need to learn as we go forward with so many big proposed developments in planing all in the pursuit of New Zealands economic salvation. -Do we need economic growth at the expense of our environment and Kiwi way of life. It could be said by many that we are happy the way we are. -Why do we need to destroy our country side to feed china. -Why do we allow the destruction of our rural communities by allowing overseas corporate farming to buy all our land and then use overseas labour. -Why do we need to destroy our environment so visitors can oh and ahh at our stunning remote wilderness from the comfortable seat of a monorail. -Do we need to destroy our wonderful views by building windfarms so dairy factories can have electricity to dry milk powder for Asia. -And who gave corporate fishing companies the right to deprive us of our fish so they can make huge profits feeding people in far off lands who have destroyed their own fish stocks. We need our governments to consider our unique way of life ...past and future We need governments who try to preserve our unique kiwi way not destroy it in a drive to compete with the rest of the world. Our Kiwi way of life will one day become a model for the rest of the world. It is now with millions of tourists wanting to visit. Parliament needs to think the KIWI way when framing legislation and listen to the people. That is where United Future has a valuable role to play reminding governments what is unique in our Kiwi culture and our way of doing things. Keep governments focused on New Zealand solutions. We need to make a stand to protect our unique New Zealand way of life. Back to top
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 04:58:43 +0000
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