These are really big and difficult decisions. Key needs to be really careful here. If they promote one or two really over the top or environmentally destructive proposals, they will promote a large backlash, which will doom even good quality, well thought out proposals. They will also piss off lots of local iwi and hapu.

They also need to consider what is likely to happen to our coasts as we see more storms and higher sea levels. Bad decisions now could cost us big time in the future. Look at the leaky homes saga.

It is likely that these boaties had swing moorings around Whangamata before hand and in places close buy. People also do move about marinas and their berths are rented out to other people. There is so much demand for these berths. Most boaties whose boat is big enough and can afford it would prefer to be in a marina. Which is why rarely do we see an empty marina (the only marina I’ve ever seen empty in NZ is Marsden Point – but that was a week after it opened, so most people simply hadn’t got there yet). The market for marina berths is huge. Because demand is so great, and supply is so small, the price is ridiculous. A berth at Whitianga (in 2007, I think) would cost in excess of $150,000 and that isn’t even that expensive for a berth. At Gulf Harbour, I think I saw some at $200,000+ – all this does is illustrate my point that demand is such that it would create the infrastructure/business to create jobs. People wouldn’t go to so much trouble to build a marina if they thought that people wouldn’t buy into it – particularly when it costs such a large amount to build.

So my point is that there is such demand for berths that there will be new jobs created because the infrastructure/business etc is required to service the market. And that is a fact.

I’m not suggesting that what we call ‘economic theory’ is always correct (look at the trouble it has got us in atm! Keynes etc.), but I think supply=demand of some form is one of the truisms of economics. Sure, sometimes there is more supply and not enough demand (although rarely) and often too much demand and not enough supply, but in a country like NZ where it seems entrepreneurs are a dime a dozen, someone will fill the hole where there is suitable demand.

Of course, I’m just trying to demonstrate that there are many positive outcomes of the marina as well as negative ones. I don’t actually have an opinion. Just arguing a point!

EFA – just musings.

Actually it isn’t inevitable that money becomes concentrated within the wealthiest. – it is under neo-liberal economic policies. But that is not the only way we can structure economies, and it wasn’t the case before 1984 in NZ when we had one of the most egalitarian economies in the world – now we are second only to the USA in unequal distribution of wealth.
Your contention that a new market will spring up in Whangamata presupposes that there is an increasing demand. There may be. Certainly there will be an existing demand – but where did those boaties go before? Whitianga? Tauranga? Whangamata?
Yes I do have economics 101 in my degree. I found on further study however that much of economic theory was based on ill-founded assumptions and much of it still is.

The EFA has little effect on the pulling of strings unfortunately – witness the current silence by the NZ Business Council for Sustainable Development after being muzzled by Fonterra and Toyota after its initial criticism of the ETS on the 2nd November
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/3085273/A-costly-exercise-in-hypocrisy
and that’s just one example.

Reading the definitions on wikipedia, it would mean that Private-Public partnerships are a form of corporatocracy!

Interesting. Going on the definition, the EFA helps prevent a corporatocracy occurring.

Captha: “Poor” (cause thats what corporatocracy/plutocracy makes us!)

Is corporatocracy a neologism? Don’t you mean plutocracy? And yes, of course we do. Welcome to capitalism. It is inevitable that money becomes concentrated within the wealthiest portion of society – its all about capital and self interest.

There is no such thing as democracy and there never has been in any nation.

However, we potentially stand to make more money in the long, long term by guarding our environment. It all depends on too many factors to guess.

But, as we have seen with Whitianga (and I know that town reasonably well) the marina has been a huge success for the town and I’d be interested to see what people on both sides of the pro-Whitianga-Marina lobby would say now.

But immediately, and for the predictable future, the growth for Whangamata will be huge. And if we didn’t take risks we wouldn’t be where we were today. That’s the theme of the post! Responsible Risk Taking (I think that’s one of the core values in the new curriculum). lol.

My captcha is “guard” – rather appropriate for a post about the environment.

How exactly does a marina negatively impact the town? Further than environmental damage and potential damage to the quality of the surf, I can’t see that it does. What a marina does do is bring in more people from out of town that spend MONEY in shops and cafes and this MONEY will have a positive effect on the local community as the majority of people living in seaside towns work in the service industry or a retirees. I’m certainly not advocating a ‘trickle down’ effect of neo-liberalism because we know that doesn’t work. However, if business improves, it will hopefully mean that the benefits of more business are passed on to the workers. And yes marinas attract wealthy people and wealthy people are more likely to spend more money in the town which benefits it more. By restricting such development (other than for environmental reasons etc.), one is restricting the growth of business and, because we are a capitalist country, this adversely effects the workers. Development is important to grow the economy of small towns as well as the entire nation – every little bit counts.

However, the environmental concerns are grave and the economic benefits do not necessarily out weigh these concerns.

NOTE: I’m not making any judgment about whether the Whangamata Marina is positive or negative.