ECan protest today

23 comments on “ECan protest today ”

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1. frog 1

   30 April 2010 at 9:00 am

   Cheers, r0b. As an added attraction, Nick Smith is going to be at the Shipley gloat-fest.
2. Hamish 2

   30 April 2010 at 9:14 am

   Are we expecting to fill one or two phone boxes ?
   • Armchair Critic 2.1

     30 April 2010 at 9:24 am

     It’s not one of those things that will go away if you ignore it, or pretend it didn’t happen Hamish. Your main worry should be the “one at a time per ballot box” crowd in 18 months time.
   • uke 2.2

     1 May 2010 at 8:08 am

     Looks like around 500 people turned up:

     http://www.3news.co.nz/Protesters-gather-outside-ECANZ-offices/tabid/209/articleID/153635/Default.aspx

     So that’d be about 150 phone boxes.
3. Jim Nald 3

   30 April 2010 at 9:31 am

   Has Sauron cometh to Middle-Earth to rule and subdue Canterbury?
   Good luck to the protest and the Fellowship of Cantabrians.
   I hope the Ringwraiths don’t get you.
4. vto 4

   30 April 2010 at 9:31 am

   But if I go along some people with power at that event might see me. That would tag me and have implications for activity for me in the future. This is an unfortunate truth.

   what does one do?
   • Bored 4.1

     30 April 2010 at 11:01 am

     Keep on saying what you have been saying about ECan here, put the same on other blogs. You might not be seen protesting but you will make yourself heard.
5. ianmac 5

   30 April 2010 at 10:46 am

   Wish I was there. May the rally be a powerful catalyst! As Rob says Canterbury is only a beginning…
6. Hamish 6

   30 April 2010 at 4:21 pm

   Armchair Critic said >>> It’s not one of those things that will go away if you ignore it, or pretend it didn’t happen Hamish. Your main worry should be the “one at a time per ballot box’ crowd in 18 months time.

   I live in an ECan controlled area in Canterbury and have no problem with the move. The fact is the pack of people “running” Ecan were slack and hopeless (suited for the Labour Leader position).

   If they could not come up with a simple water plan in 19 years, something is wrong.

   Most of the people I know always joked about how useless ECan were, and now that this has happened we laugh ourselves silly that they got the boot, while at the same time relived that ECan has had a good clean out.
   • NickS 6.1

     30 April 2010 at 4:39 pm

     As was discussing with a friend of mine who’s got a planning degree, there was no legal requirement for them to come up with a region wide water plan, what they did instead was a water basin by water basin system. And also the reports into ECan noted that they’d improved consent processing times, and aside from getting understandingly grumpy at the odd dumb farmer, hadn’t screwed up in their obligations under the RMA nor other laws. Instead, we have a government that’s sacked them for not caving in and giving out water consents for already over-used water resources, chasing after the small number of farmers too stupid to follow the laws on dairy effluent and finally not putting up with bone-headed developers etc ignoring environmental laws they had to stick to as part of the consents issued to them.

     It’s not say ECan was perfect, but throwing them out over the fact they’d gone with the evidence about the environmental issues created by increasing irrigation on the Canterbury plains and thus rejected certain requests for consents seems utterly stupid. Especially when the solution involves no elections until 2013, thus removing representation for the population of Canterbury.

     But hey, who gives a fly fuckstick over democracy when you can make money by draining the rivers dry?
     • ianmac 6.1.1

       30 April 2010 at 4:56 pm

       Sacking Ecan was throwing the baby out with the river water.
     • Swampy 6.1.2

       1 May 2010 at 12:47 am

       The sacking is reluctantly supported by conservation focused groups who wanted to know why Ecan wasn’t protecting the environment. Two recent examples of this are the toxic algae in Lake Ellesmere and the contamination of the Dunsandel domestic supply with E Coli.

       When the Hurunui Water Conservation Order application had its court hearings around two years ago, Ecan opposed it.

       The truth of Ecan is they had created the over allocation mess by giving out consents for 35 years without being able to predict what the impact would be, far better to have a 5-10 year consent period.

       Due to the excessive bureacracy and unproductive politics between RCs and TAs I would rather see central government take over some of the RC functions in environmental protection, some of the other functions go to the TAs where they are still subject to democratic process and therefore an end to Labour’s questionable RC model which is being abolished in Auckland of course.
   • Maynard J 6.2

     30 April 2010 at 5:12 pm

     Hamish, are you concerned that time and again, your elected ECAN representatives asked for powers necessary to make a water plan, but were rebuffed, and now the gobvernment has given their hand-picked people those powers, and then some, and admitted they could have just given those powers to ECAN?

     And are you fully comfortable with elected representatives being thrown out simply because the government wasn’t happy with them? That people winning in an election for which you were eligible have been removed without your consent, or without your ballot?

     What is your vote worth, to you?

     Say (absurd scenario follows) the Queen decided not to be a titular HoS any more and got Gov.Gen to boot National out, and in the mean time decided to give her hand-picked people some extra powers, and oh-by-the-way no elections till 2018.

     I assume you would be happy enough with this, surely someone wouldn’t be petty enough to be happy with the violation of democracy because they ‘didn’t like’ those who were got rid of? So democracy obviously doesn’t sit comfortably with you.

     If that happened to National, loathe and detest the pack of them I’d be marching on the streets (until the Queen’s pople made some special force to roam the streets and beat the crap out of people, but hey that’s how it works) until Key rightfully resumed his Prime Ministership. But you, you’d be fine, you’d have no problem with the move. Right?
7. Red Rosa 7

   30 April 2010 at 5:10 pm

   Of course, until the last election, ECan was controlled by the ‘rural lobby’, if such existed. The lack of a water management plan was certainly embarrassing, but it would be (would have been? is?) a broad-brush affair anyway. Each river needs individual scrutiny.

   And under the ‘old’ ECan, the Opuha dam was approved, as has the 40k ha Hunter scheme been in the last few days. So to brand ECan as some sort of total barrier to irrigation is quite wrong.

   Very likely, the four ECan councillors found to have conflict of interest by the OAG last year will turn out to the Shipley affair. Highly appropriate.
   • Swampy 7.1

     1 May 2010 at 12:56 am

     As I noted elsewhere, Ecan submitted against the Hurunui WCO application. Their submissions were essentially extolling their abilities to hand out consents to irrigators in a sustainable way.

     We need a big debate about the intensification of land use for dairying, the debate has not been around traditional agriculture because even with the irrigation schemes of past decades the impacts have been relatively minor due to the smaller amounts of water involved.
8. Hamish 8

   30 April 2010 at 6:05 pm

   Come down at ask your average worker in our area what they think of the ECan sacking. Try and tell them it was not needed and ECan was doing a fine job.

   Bring a towel to stop the blood rushing from your face, as well.

   When the Mayors of our region are supportive of the idea, and had been begging the govt.
   to take action, that pretty much sums up the situation.

   Problem with ECan was this: One half of it was tree hugging hippies who did not want to hand
   out water permits. The other half were people who wanted to maximize its use.
   • NickS 8.1

     30 April 2010 at 6:32 pm

     Get back to your hug-box.

     A bunch of farmers moaning about ECan is no reason to sack the ECan board, particularly when some of those farmers are too dumb to bother complying with the law when it comes to effluent and fertilizer run off, nor capable of understanding the need to keep river and stream flows up for other river users and ecological reasons. Of course though, ECan didn’t help by being slack until the last couple of years with RMA consent processing and being blunt with consent applicants, particularly when they failed to keep in line with their consents.

     Likewise, there was no mass support from Canterbury Mayors over the ECan sacking, not to forget either the local mayors are complete idiots (hello Bob Parker) and the history of antagonism between local councils and ECan over even small things.

     Problem with ECan was this: One half of it was tree hugging hippies who did not want to hand out water permits. The other half were people who wanted to maximize its use.

     And yet they still stuck mostly with the advice they were given by the people ECan employed or hired to do the research, which means they did grant water consents in basins where water resources weren’t in the red. So your framing appears to be complete bullshit.
   • illuminatedtiger 8.2

     1 May 2010 at 12:29 am

     Bring a towel to stop the blood rushing from your face, as well.

     So now not only do your pack of thugs hate Democracy but they’re prepared to inflict violence upon those who are willing to stand up for the values this country was founded upon. Nice one mate, you’ve just illustrated everything that is wrong with the National Party and their ilk.
   • Swampy 8.3

     1 May 2010 at 1:01 am

     One of the problems with your argument is the opposition at territorial councils would be mainly the mayor and perhaps one or two senior councillors. It would not be publicly debated within those councils and these views would not be unanimous across those councils.

     Think about this also: if the problems were so great why haven’t any of the Canterbury TAs applied to become unitary authorities?

     As Hide and Smith are finding out the Mayors views are about as representative of their ratepayers as the Press editorials represent the views of its readers.
   • Swampy 8.4

     1 May 2010 at 1:06 am

     Which area would that be?

     Would that for example be the area where Ecan prosecuted the company that built the Opuha Dam?
   • NickS 8.5

     1 May 2010 at 12:17 pm

     Bring a towel to stop the blood rushing from your face, as well.

     Internet tough guy sited!

     This just in, assault is a crime, if you can’t understand this, please gtfo and go live on an isolated island where the rest of us don’t have to put up with your issues that prevent you from sorting your shit out like a sane human being and releasing the very obvious advantages of talking things over rather than resorting to violence. Irrespective of emotional urges to just punch someone.
9. AlbatrossNZ 9

   1 May 2010 at 1:00 pm

   Congrats Cantabrians. I’m not sure what canterbury’s future is. But you’ve done a great job with this protest. As others have said, Canterbury’s just the beginning.
10. Helen Isra 10

    13 May 2010 at 1:13 pm

    NEW WEBSITE EMPOWERS ECAN DEMOCRACY – LINK TRAFFIC NEEDED
    Following the removal of our canterbury regional councillors and our
    democratic regional voice some of us Cantabrians decided to do
    something to help empower Cantabrians to maintain their regional
    democracy.
    We have put together a website type blog called ECan in Exile. We’ve
    submitted it for Google indexing and would now like to get it linked
    into as many related high traffic sites as possible.
    Please have a look at our site here:
    http://ecaninexile.wordpress.com
    …and if you like what we’ve done please link us from your website.

    Regards
    Helen
    “In democracy it’s your vote that counts; In feudalism it’s your count that votes.”

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