Time to get tough. Time to adopt a way forward. Time to insist that the commissioners comply with the wishes of the community! FROM KaiparaConcerns: KAIPARA NEEDS A DECISION FROM THE COURT 03.10.13 John Robertson is at it again, using the Mangawhai Focus as a propaganda sheet to put across the somewhat confusing views of the commissioners. He has inherited and adopted the double-speak of Neil Tiller and has a great ability to sound authoritative but to actually say nothing. Or to recommend an action and then do the opposite. Take this John Robertson quote from the Focus: “Council needs the court to provide a determination on the interpretation of the protected transaction clauses within the Local Government Act. This is a relatively narrow but very important point that is being challenged by the MRRA. It is however a key point of law. It is about whether or not council can set rates to repay the debt incurred by the Mangawhai Community Wastewater Scheme." Note the first sentence: Council needs the court to provide a determination of the interpretation of the protected transaction clauses within the Local Government Act. Every single ratepayer in Kaipara would endorse that view. The law is unclear and needs to be clarified. Why should ratepayers be forced to pay for a debt that may not in law be their responsibility? The matter needs to be resolved once and for all and only the court can do that. We are all behind you, John. You appear to have realised at last that as commissioners you have the same legal obligations as councillors: to act at all times in the best interests of ratepayers. That is what the MRRA case is all about. The Judge who is hearing the case is also in agreement. He said about the submissions of the MRRA that: They raise difficult questions of public importance. But ……and this is where the double-speak comes in ………..if a decision from the Court is that important and so vital to ratepayers’ best interests, why are John Robertson and his fellow commissioners actually doing everything that they can to block access to the court and to prevent the law from being clarified? Why is he saying one thing and yet doing the exact opposite? The answer is quite clear. The words are all spin and puffery to show what good guys the commissioners are, and to suck in those who are disposed to be sucked in. The reality is that the commissioners are doing everything that they can to block access to the Court and to prevent the Court from clarifying the law. They are using stonewall tactics to delay the MRRA application at every stage and to increase costs to try and exhaust the MRRA’s meagre resources. It is a war of attrition and John Robertson has a bottomless pit of money at his disposal – ratepayers’ money. This is a cynical and calculated abuse of the judicial system. It shows how fundamentally rotten local government is in New Zealand when commissioners can ignore their responsibility to ratepayers and force ratepayers to pay debts that the commissioners acknowledge were illegal, and then use public money to block access to the courts to have the matter of liability clarified. It is the sort of thing that you would expect in some third world banana republic, and it is an utter disgrace that it is happening in Kaipara and in New Zealand. I should also point out that applications for judicial review have fairly informal procedural rules because the whole philosophy of the judicial review process is that the normal adversarial rules are softened and both parties are there to assist the Court to reach a decision on the precise meaning of the law and the legality of a decision. That seems to have been completely ignored by the commissioners and their advisers. This, to them, is a fight to the death, with no expense spared. And the real reason behind this fit of apparent madness? Quite simply the commissioners were appointed by the Minister (with the contrivance of the DIA) with the sole purpose of protecting the best interests of the banks, and to ensure that ratepayers are shafted for all the illegal debts of the KDC. They were also appointed to ensure that the fundamental principle that underlies local government in New Zealand, that all financial burdens, whether legal or not, are the responsibility of the suckers at the end of the line – the ratepayers - remains set in concrete. The commissioners, and those driving them, are petrified that the High Court would expose the whole concept of illegal council debts being guaranteed and ratepayers being obliged to foot the bills, as a total fantasy. The MRRA have an excellent case and there is a good chance that could be the outcome. The commissioners cannot take that risk. So, the recent so-called offer of settlement from the commissioners was nothing of the sort. It was simply a request to the MRRA to virtually abandon its case. The MRRA’s counter-offer to agree to have this matter of public importance resolved by the court in February by agreement of the parties - an eminently sensible proposition that is the reasonable way forward - will be rejected. The commissioners and the DIA will do all that they can to delay and block the application (strike-out application, and an appeal) and destroy the MRRA by exhausting its funding or by creating dissension in its ranks (note John Robertson’s recent comments), or using any other underhand trick to stop ratepayers’ access to the law and justice. But they can only behave like that whilst they have funding from rates to pay their lawyers’ fees. Until ratepayers make it perfectly clear to the commissioners that they are acting without any support from the community then they will carry on in the same way. Time to get tough. Time to adopt a way forward. Time to insist that the commissioners comply with the wishes of the community. And if they don’t, then time to starve them of money. kaiparaconcerns.co.nz
Posted on: Thu, 03 Oct 2013 05:37:01 +0000
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