I am one of your elected representatives, a Councillor on the Dunedin City Council. Today I am not speaking on behalf of the City or the DCC, but giving a personal view of freedoms in New Zealand, and how they have changed in recent years.
I have long been concerned about the erosion of freedoms by our Central Government, but in the past have kept my focus on local issues to help protect Dunedin citizens. Central governments, both National and Labour have long ignored Dunedin and invested elsewhere because there are no marginal seats here, not enough swinging voters to change from the solid Labour vote.
Much has been changing in Central Government that is now beginning to have major effects for Dunedin, with increasing bureaucracy, constant increases in compliance legislation, and now serious erosion of our personal rights and freedoms.
For me Prime Minister Ardern’s self-crowning as the ‘single source of Truth’ with regards to Covid science was the last straw.
Too much from Central Government is now ruining peoples’ lives here. Lockdowns have been a Government-paid holiday for many, but for some have become lock-ups, with isolation causing mental breakdowns and cabin fever.
As a Councillor I have been confronted with severe mental stresses of people too fearful to leave their homes, small business owners whose livelihoods will never recover, and older people sure they will die if Covid comes. Some hysterical phone calls to me have gone on for half an hour and would have gone longer if I had not shut them down. Just last week I was rung by a lady asking if she was allowed to go outside without a mask.
How has the loss of so many Freedoms come about?
Let me step back in history to a time when we were hunter-gatherers with few possessions, and so nothing much to steal. Theft only became a social problem when we became agricultural, and crops and land could be taken by force or by cunning. The cunning could take all the stored food but then next year everybody would face starvation again, so the really smart thieves learned to take just 10% of what was grown by the toil of others in return for ‘protection’. They would ensure that they were the only ones taking 10% and this elite became Governments. Governments have grown and got greedy over the centuries however and many new kinds of taxes and protection services have been introduced. Governments now control most of what we earn and supply a wide range of protections; police, military, health and safety, and education. As a result of new technology and reduction in tribal warfare, living standards have improved massively in the last 200 years along with more leisure time, helping us achieve unprecedented new freedoms which have been hard fought for.
What does FREEDOM mean to you?
Is it to be ‘as free as a bird’, able to fly anywhere and chirp all it likes?
Many countries now have Constitutions that guarantee these new rights and freedoms, but here in New Zealand we have a less ironclad protection of freedoms called the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990. The chirping is Right #14, Freedom of expression, and the flying is Right #18 Freedom of movement. Since 1990 these Fundamental Rights and Freedoms have been taken for granted, and warnings that we must constantly be vigilant about their maintenance have been ignored. In discussions of new Government Covid legislation I was surprised how few people knew that New Zealand has a Bill of Rights, and even fewer knew what was in it.
When I posted two topical Rights on my FaceBook page I was even more surprised at the 376 comments, most of them critical and some nasty.
Right #11 says “Everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.” I am not against vaccination, but vaccines should only be administered to patients who are VOLUNTARILY persuaded that it will benefit them.
Right #14 says “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.” I am exercising right 14 now, imparting information and some of my opinions. It seems that many people feel so threatened by current Covid hysteria that they do not want the right to refuse medical treatment and they don’t want me to tell others about it either. There is a strange social symptom of anxious or fearful people that makes them afraid of choice – To quote the DEVO chorus “Freedom of choice – is what we’ve got. Freedom from choice, is what we want.”
Freedom from our having choice is what our Government wants because it makes us more easily controllable, and the Government Elite less vulnerable.
People also don’t want to hear opinions that make them feel uncomfortable, and our Government of Elites has fanned such fears in order to pass laws that limit the our Rights and make us easier to control. ‘Freedom of speech’ has been reduced by new Hate Speech laws justified by the appalling Christchurch Mosque massacre with the dubious claim that Hate Speech radicalises potential murders. Benjamin Franklin said that “Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
He also said that “If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.” Check the meanings of ‘Groupthink’ and ‘Codependence’.
The Right to refuse medical treatment has been limited by new legislation including ‘no jab, no job’, justified by a nasty uncommon cold and difficulties insulating us from its spread and the claim that the new vaccination only works if more than 90% of us have had at least two doses. The Right to Freedom of Movement has been temporarily removed by lockdowns, and even worse, effectively permanently removed for some 30,000 overseas NZ citizens trying to get back to New Zealand but blocked by the Government’s bizarre Quarantine Lottery, which the Elite politicians and sports people don’t have to play, but the rest of us do. Our Government which claims to promote equality and a classless society has first set up Elite classes of their own that have Freedoms which we are being denied.
I have a Doctor friend who is unable to visit his close dying relative overseas because he has not won the Quarantine Lottery, so to travel overseas he has to resign his GP job because he can not be assured of getting back into New Zealand.
The Ardern Government has used unprecedented billions to undermine our Bill of Rights and buy media compliance to convince us of the necessity of reducing our Freedoms ‘for the greater good’. All Freedoms come with limits and the responsibility not to harm others.
Freedom is not the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right. Our Government is not always doing what is right, but what increases Government power over us.
Is it right that we are losing: the Freedom from forced Medical Treatment, Freedom of Movement, Freedom of Association, and Freedom of Expression? My mother’s reassurance of ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’ no longer applies, and if I have said something today that someone here finds hateful I can be now be charged with a criminal offense that attracts serious penalties.
Perhaps the most important Right of them all is the last one in our Bill of Rights, #27 The Right to Justice. We are all supposed to have the Right to the Principles of Natural Justice and our Rights or Interests protected by Law. Natural Justice is the legal basis of all our Freedoms, but the Law is a blunt instrument and too often accessible only to the wealthy. Beware Law changes.
The current changing of Laws, for instance the delaying of Local Elections and the proposed passing legislation to forcibly acquire our most valuable 3 Waters Council assets, should have alarm bells ringing for all of us. MP Mahuta’s attempt to have centralised co-governance with a Maori Elite over all Councils’ drinking water and drainage systems is the biggest attempted asset grab since the damaging centralised corporatising of our Electricity grid. Beware false claims that Maori should have control because the Treaty of Waitangi guarantees that Maori retain their Rights over Land and Water. Maori had no 3 Waters piped infrastructure systems at the time of the signing, and 3 Waters are not Crown assets, so there is nothing in our developed 3 Waters Council infrastructure for Maori to ‘retain’.
Beware also politicians twittering on that what they are doing is for “the people, the people, the people”, when it is usually for ‘the money, the money, the money’ to be controlled by their Elite.
Governments everywhere are driven to expand their power and control over us economically, and use our money to further their expansion aims.
Our Bill of Rights is sometimes all that stands against Government’s wider-control, so we need to know our Rights and work to maintain them.
So what can we do to try and regain the full Freedoms and Rights we had only a few years ago? If you are not Free then you are a Slave…
As Ezra Pound said “A Slave is one who waits for someone to free him.”
We must not wait. We can begin with ourselves, to decide that we really want Freedom of Choice, and that our Freedoms are worth fighting for. We need to act, often in many small ways, to resist unnecessary impositions, to question new compliance rules, to debate with others personally, and on social media if you can bear the insults. Read the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 and decide what are acceptable limits on Freedoms which prevent your Rights imposing on the Rights of others. Search both mainstream and less-Government-subsidised media to learn what changes are being made to our Freedoms, find out who is making those changes and who is resisting them, take notes and vote accordingly. Look up the term Sovereign Citizen, and decide if you believe that people are born free with rights — but that these natural rights are being constrained by corporations and governments who are artificial corporations. How much do you really need Big Brother protection and intrusions of the State? Recognise that extreme cynicism gets you nearest the Truth, and that there is no ‘single source of Truth’. Know that ordinary people are often afraid to speak out and often have similar concerns to you.
Listen openly to others, avoid pre-packaged views, don’t just accept the Party Line or running with the crowd.
To be free as a bird we need to be centred in our own nature, to be confident in expressing ourselves and to let our spirits fly…
Thank you for this opportunity of letting me exercise Right #14 of the NZ Bill of Rights.
Mayor Hawkins shut down the meeting during question time when awkward questions kept coming over his proposed suck-up letter to Mahuta claiming ‘broad Council support’.
A subsequent rewrite with around 30 changes still fell well short of Christchurch Councillors’ unanimous speaking against.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on There never was any discussion as claimed in this ODT article during a meeting solely to discuss DCC feedback on the MP Mahuta 3 waters takeover proposal.
My questions of DCC staff regarding 3 Waters were non-answered as below:
From: Simon Drew <Simon.Drew@dcc.govt.nz> Date: Monday, 27 September 2021 at 4:31 PM To: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz>, “Council 2019-2022 (Elected Members)” <council.2019-2022@dcc.govt.nz>, Sandy Graham <Sandy.Graham@dcc.govt.nz> Cc: “Executive Leadership Team (ELT)” <elt@dcc.govt.nz>, Scott Campbell <Scott.Campbell@dcc.govt.nz>, Tom Dyer <Tom.Dyer@dcc.govt.nz> Subject: RE: FOR REVIEW: 3W Reform Letter – Revised Draft
Kia ora Councillor,
Thanks for your questions in advance of the meeting. These are predominately questions for Central Government but staff have attempted to respond below in “….”. quotation marks.
Regards
Simon Drew
GENERAL MANAGER INFRASTRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT
From: Lee Vandervis <lee@vandervision.co.nz> Sent: Thursday, 23 September 2021 10:14 p.m. To: Simon Drew <Simon.Drew@dcc.govt.nz>; Council 2019-2022 (Elected Members) <council.2019-2022@oa.dcc.govt.nz>; Sandy Graham <Sandy.Graham@dcc.govt.nz> Cc: Executive Leadership Team (ELT) <elt@dcc.govt.nz>; Scott Campbell <Scott.Campbell@dcc.govt.nz>; Tom Dyer <Tom.Dyer@dcc.govt.nz> Subject: Re: FOR REVIEW: 3W Reform Letter – Revised Draft
Hi Sandy and Simon,
I have not provided feedback on our proposed feedback letter because it so panoramically endorses the Government proposed control of our 3 waters by 50% Iwi/Maori without explaining any benefits, and because it does not address the many inconsistencies and impracticalities of the proposed centralising of 3 waters control. I am disappointed that my questions of staff were not answered in our thwarted 3 Waters question-time because the meeting was cut-off during questions by Mayor Hawkins.
I would like to know in advance of our next meeting what DCC staff understandings are of what is proposed in the MP Mahuta 3 Waters revolution:
1 – why our proposed letter to MP Mahuta contained so many untranslated words? [we have a Plain English policy that seems to have been forgotten]
2 – why the main South Island proposed zone D does not conform to any geographic or catchment areas, but conforms to the historic spread of Ngai Tahu tribal control at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi? What have historic tribal areas of conquest got to do with efficient management of modern water catchment and drainage systems?
“The June 2021 Cabinet paper A new system for three waters service deliveryexplains the Government’s rationale for the boundaries of the proposed four entities (Entities A, B, C and D). In particular, refer to paragraphs 89-106.”
3 – Our 3 water’s infrastructure is based on piped and pumped systems. What traditional Maori knowledge can Maori bring to bear on modern piped; drinking water, drainage and sewerage systems, given that Maori traditionally had none of these systems. Article two of the Treaty has been summoned in support, ‘the right to make decisions over resources and taonga [treasures] which Maori wish to retain’, and there is some assumption that this applies to Council services. Council services were created by councils using ratepayer funds. How can Maori “retain” something Maori never had?
4 – Can anyone explain how the new proposed centralised 3 waters control group will “create an additional 5,800 to 9,300 jobs over 30 years” and also deliver efficiency gains?
“The forecasted additional 5,800 to 9,300 jobs are required to deliver the significant increase in investment that Government modelling has determined is required to upgrade NZ’s 3 Waters infrastructure to modern standards. The Government suggests this increase in investment is required regardless of how water services are delivered.
The Government financial modelling predicts 45% – 50% of operational and capital delivery efficiency savings could be achieved when delivering 3 Waters services under the four Water Services Entities (Entities A, B, C and D). The Government financial modelling predicts approx. 2% efficiency savings delivering 3 Waters services under a status quo model. The premise of the efficiency gains under the four Water Services Entities model is that scale will create efficiencies over time, particularly from centralised systems and aggregated procurement.”
5 – Will some of these proposed new efficiencies be obtained by using nationwide rather than local contractors?
“3 Waters service delivery will require local contractors in all areas of NZ”
6 – How will we be able to justify our enormous and growing debt levels when the asset base on which this debt has been raised and justified suddenly contracts by 2.5 BILLION $?
“If 3 Waters assets are transferred from Council balance sheets, the relevant level of debt will also be transferred with the assets.”
7 – Why have the ‘Crown’s duty to protect iwi/Maori rights and interests under the Treaty’ been invoked to justify 50% Maori/Iwi control when our 3 Waters are not Crown assets, but are Council created and owned assets?
“Refer answer 3.”
The broad Mahuta support in Mayor Hawkins’ original letter has been tempered in this post-meeting version, but the whole tone of the letter is still conceptually supportive of the proposed centralised control takeover, when the people we represent are mostly not supportive.
As an example of unprecedented public opposition to the whole concept, the following FaceBook post by somebody I do not know has today been shared by what must be a record 632 times:
3 Waters simply explained
I was explaining it to someone today in very simple terms:
• You have an asset that you and your family has spent decades paying for
• You pay a small fee each year to pay for the upkeep of the asset to be able to use it
• Someone comes and tells you that they will buy your asset for 10% of its value but you will still be able to use it
• They tell you that they will pay you in 3 years the 10% value of the asset
• They then tell you they are going to borrow the funds to pay you in 3 years but you are going to have to pay them for the loan, the interest and the team of people they will put in place to manage the asset because you are going to use it. So in short you are paying for your asset twice
• They also point out that they are going to have to charge you 10x the amount you paid each year for the upkeep of your asset
• They are going to give away half of the asset to someone else who has the ability to change the outcome to suit their own agenda which inevitably is going to cost you more money…….
And they tell us this is a really good idea and totally for your benefit……
Your Government in action working for that team of 5 million…unless you do the math and work out that its only the 15% proportional part of our population that will end up financially controlling the asset that you have already paid for… you will pay again and again and again
632 shares.
Looking forward to finally getting my questions answered.
Regards,
Cr. Lee Vandervis
My and other’s views follow for more detailed background:
Labour must listen to the multitude of mayors pleading for the Three Waters plans to be dumped.
With an overwhelming majority of councils not onboard, the Government’s programme is in dire straits and its four entity model is floundering fast.
Only a handful of mayors have explicitly supported the reforms, while the remaining 60-odd are not on board. Many are in fact urging the Government to suspend the process because they have not had adequate time to digest the detail or consult their communities.
The South Island entity D is in serious doubt, with mayors from across the West Coast, Canterbury, Otago and Southland writing to the Minister and asking for a pause.
The northern entity A has all but fallen apart, with Far North and Whangārei already gone and the remaining two councils, Auckland and Kaipara, in strong opposition and likely to leave next.
Meanwhile, Hawke’s Bay mayors are against the reforms and other councils throughout entities B and C in areas like the Waikato, Bay of Plenty and Manawatū are hitting the brakes.
It’s no surprise mayors are rebuking the Government’s woeful consultation timeframe and apparent need for speed.
National has consistently said that the supposed benefits and cost savings haven’t been adequately explained to the public.
We oppose the Three Waters Reforms. The touted scale benefits are unrealistic, ratepayers would end up cross-subsidising neighbouring areas, and the entities would strip power from communities and steal control of their water assets.
The Government must heed the mayors’ calls and at a bare minimum, pause the programme immediately.
I would encourage them to go one step further and dump the Three Waters plan altogether. We must keep the ‘local’ in local government.
Luxton suggests the important point that Mahuta’s 3 waters claimed proposed economies of scale only happen if most Councils climb on board. And those economies are illusory in my view even if most Councils do join. There is a wide variety of water supply and drainage systems across the country with a lot of local expertise that makes these often quite different systems operable. Centralising will lose local knowledge and effective local feedback, and bypass many local contractors The He Puapua proposal is to use our money [taxes] to buy our immensely varied water systems, and then centralise control, contracting and feedback. Trying to force all NZ’s varied water systems to conform to a one-level-fits-all set of quality controls is a bureaucrat’s dream that will become our nightmare if attempted, in my view.
7 reasons why the CCC needs to say a big NO to the Government proposal
1. it’s a total rip off for the people of Christchurch The three waters are your drinking water, the stormwater and wastewater .Christchurch over many many years has generally invested well in these assets and has had the expertise and knowledge base among its staff that it can deal with the water issues.
2. Your water assets represent a huge chunk ( about 40%) of the assets the Christchurch City Council has . Actually $6.9 billion !! and against that is held about $1.1 billion of debt .So the nett assets about $5.8 billion .They disappear into a new authority for a paltry 122m which is paid some time in 2024 .
3. Water assets are an absolutely essential part of local government . Everything you do in local government is interconnected because a city or a community operates in a very interconnected way . So for example detention basins become part of the neighbourhood facilities. Fixing old pipes means digging up the roads so you take the opportunity to sort out the roading, the footpath repairs, cycle-lanes and bus lanes at the same time as the work to keep businesses going . The work on Riccarton Road a few years back was a clear example of this .You can’t separate the three waters from all other local government . The whole point of the 1989 Local Government Reforms was to integrate all functions into stronger local government units.
4. Water will be the defining feature of cities and countries in the future. As the climate crisis deepens the access to good safe water , and managing all aspects of water becomes not just more important but absolutely vital .
5. The incentives the Government are offering to join these new authorities are a nonsense. In return for 5.9billion worth of assets the new authority awards across the country a total of $2.5 billion . But only $1billion of that even comes from the government as I understand it, and the rest is raised by the new authority presumably as debt which we get to pay for as well .. so as I understand it we get to pay for the cash incentives designed to make these seem attractive to Councils for the next 20- 25 years …
6. The new authority for the South Island extends over most of the South Island and you can guarantee you won’t have any capacity to go along and tell what you want done. So after taking these assets the new authority then gets to deal with all the water issues in the South Island ( except the top of the Island which goes to the Wellington based authority ) . The waste water, stormwater and drinking water issues in those other local authorities are potentially massive and this new authority gets to send the bill to you for doing all this . The rating base of the bigger cities is absolutely fundamental in making these reforms work because there simply aren’t enough people in the smaller areas to pay for theirs .You don’t just get to pay for the work that is done in Christchurch and given away those assets but you will now pay a share of areas which need huge investment and you’ll get that via a rates bill from the new entity .What you are going to pay is going to be huge . You can’t vote this new authority out and actually I cant see any way at all you can make them accountable but they are going to be rating you for ever .
7. Local government is that -it’s local government. It is the responsibility of the ChCh City Council to look after all things pertaining to Christchurch City -it’s not in its mandate to use its assets and its rating base to subsidise for ever the stormwater, wastewater and drinking water of most of the South Island.
The information on this deal is sketchy at best but based on what is available this deal looks like a very bad one for Christchurch residents.”
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on MP Mahuta’s 3 Waters $2.5 BILLION attempted asset grab of Dunedin’s drinking, drainage and waste water systems for $47 million plus promises of economies of scale has fallen at the first hurdle. Christchurch City Council has emphatically voted Mahuta’s 3 waters down, so there can be no economies of scale for the the South Island.
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on We need real debate and some balance for the tax-funded onslaught of politics and economics currently pretending to be Public Health.
“Not everyone knows that in NZ you are protected by the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 which amongst many other rights includes:
11 – Right to refuse to undergo medical treatment
Everyone has the right to refuse to undergo any medical treatment.
14 – Freedom of expression
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”
Posted inUncategorized|Comments Off on FaceBook Group ‘Dunedin News Uncut’ have cut the following purely Informational Post, because of feared FaceBook repercussions. Ironic, given the second of the 2 Rights quoted that are enshrined in the Bill of Rights Act 1990.
I shared the above post on 3 Facebook groups late last night, Dunedin News, Otago News, and Dunedin News Uncut, and this morning they had all been cut right out, not just the mandatory automatically added ‘f COVID-19 vaccines box’ you see immediately above on my FB page. Somebody has been busy censoring late last night. Makes me wonder who? and why? and who is paying them?
Appointment today of unknown unelected representatives to have voting rights on two Council decision-making Standing Committees!
Democracy denied by Deputy Mayor Garey saying that “Democracy came from a slave state – Greece”, Cr Laufiso saying that she was “a Communist”, and Mayor Hawkins “The interests of minorities are never going to be served by a popular vote”.
The Court case and the Appeal have been necessary to challenge the DCC bureaucracy’s public attack on an elected representative during an election process, to get rulings on unprecedented uses/abuses of Code of Conduct provisions, and to preserve elected representatives’ ability to criticise Council employees and/or management.
It has nothing to do with trying to get off a $12 parking ticket as repeatedly falsely claimed.
The Appeal issues before the Court are:
1. Did the Chief Executive of the Dunedin City Council follow the procedures in the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct in forwarding the complaint against the Appellant to the 2nd Respondent for investigation;
2. Was the 2nd Respondent validly appointed to investigate complaints under the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct;
3. Did the 2nd Respondent act contrary to the principles of natural justice and the investigation he carried out pursuant to the Dunedin City Council Code of Conduct;
4. Should the Appellant obtain the declarations sought;
5. Should the decisions of the Dunedin City Council on 11 December 2019 be set aside;
I have personally paid for all my own legal costs to settle these important issues in the public interest, while the DCC Bureaucracy has used public funds via Code of Conduct which influenced the Mayoral election to frustrate my Judicial Review of their actions in their own interests.
A significant confirmation from the Court process so far has been the acknowledgement that ex-CEO Bidrose ‘was concerned that Cr. Vandervis might become Mayor’.
Yesterday’s abusive accusations included Cr. Benson-Pope calling me “crass”, “boorish” and falsely claiming I told untruths with Mayor Hawkins again failing to keep order. By late afternoon there was no point in my subjecting myself to more. See for yourself.
Benson-Pope’s has a long history of doing what he falsely accuses me of, misleading Parliament no less.
“David Benson-Pope was a Labour Member of Parliament for Dunedin South from 1999 to 2008, and a Cabinet Minister from 2005-2008.
May 2005: Benson-Pope steps down as bully inquiry looms
David Benson-Pope stood down from the Cabinet last night until an inquiry decides whether he administered cruel punishment to former pupils and assaulted one of them.
The allegations were raised again last night on TV3 after three of the five accusers identified themselves. One included a man who says that as a 14-year-old he had a tennis ball stuffed in his mouth. They were all students of Bayfield High School in Dunedin, where Mr Benson-Pope taught for 24 years. They say there are other witnesses to some of the alleged incidents.
The accusations against him include throwing tennis balls at students to keep them quiet, striking a pupil with the back of his hand and making the pupil’s nose bleed at a school camp, and caning a student hard enough to draw blood.
Mr Benson-Pope asked to be relieved of his portfolios, the compulsory education sector and fisheries.
Helen Clark referred to the allegations as “the start of what is a rather ugly election campaign, where a desperate and dateless Opposition will drag out whatever it can to smear the character of whoever they can”.
Benson-Pope was reelected in 2005, became a Minister in the next Labour-led government but had more problems, leading to his resignation as a Minister in 2007. From Wikipedia:
After a week of intense pressure focusing not only on the allegation that his staff had acted improperly, but also that he himself had misled Parliament, the media and his Prime Minister about his knowledge and involvement, Benson-Pope offered his resignation from Cabinet at noon on Friday 27 July 2007. Subsequent investigations by the State Services Commissioners Hunn and Prebble make it clear that neither the Minister nor his staff acted in any way inappropriately.
Prime Minister Helen Clark accepted the resignation, saying: “The way in which certain issues have been handled this week has led to a loss of credibility and on that basis I have accepted Mr Benson-Pope’s offer to stand aside”. An editorial commented “Not for the first time, he and the Government have been embarrassed less for what he has done than for his inability to simply say what he has done.”
Benson Pope sought the Labour nomination for Dunedin South for the 2008 election but was replaced by Clare Curran.”
My name is Lee Vandervis and as one of your DUNEDIN CITY COUNCIL elected Councillors I am honoured to address you on this ANZAC DAY MEMORIAL 2021, organised by the Brighton Club Incorporated. My thanks to Colin and Bob and all those others that have allowed us to mark this important ANZAC DAY event.
‘Lest We Forget’ seems to be a simple reminder to acknowledge our current freedoms and to acknowledge those New Zealanders that fought alongside the Australians in the First World War to protect our way of life.
‘Lest We Forget’ also contains the strong suggestion that we need to remember what happened then, to ensure that such horrific History never repeats.
ANZAC DAY was originally intended to honour the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who served in the Gallipoli Campaign, their first and disastrous engagement against the Turks in the First World War. At the time, George Orwell called the Great War ‘the War to end all Wars’ but less than a generation later the ‘Great War’ was followed by the Second World War.
ANZAC DAY has since come to commemorate all Australians and New Zealanders “who served and died in all wars, conflicts, and peacekeeping operations” and “the contribution and suffering of all those who have served.”
My personal view is that we should also recognise the contributions and suffering of all those who served indirectly at home.
– The wives that kept the farms going while worrying about their husbands overseas.
– Those that slogged long hours in munitions factories, in uniform and supplies manufacture, and those that met the demand for wool and machines and raw materials.
There were heroic efforts at home as well with relatives taking in children whose parents were caught up in the war effort, and the children themselves who suffered dislocation and privation, some permanently, when parents never returned.
Heroism at home came in many forms, not least being the strength to carry on when faced with the War-torn fabric of fate, or the fateful news of a dear lost life.
There are many ways to lose a life: physically with sudden death, disability, or mentally with the erosion of the will to live, the loss of life’s joys, or not knowing what we are here for.
‘What are You here for?’ I ask. Not just, ‘What are you here at this Memorial Service for?” but what are you here on this earth for in general? What do you really value? What do really want? And what do you have to offer? are all important questions that should be asked.
The suggestion that ‘There are no great causes left to fight for’ given our unprecedented extended peacetime is a suggestion that I do not accept.
Our forbears fought for their beliefs, for their values and for their families.
I believe that we have daily opportunities to do the same on the battlefield of everyday life. As Jordan Peterson has said ‘Everybody’s Life is a tragedy’. We all face hurdles some of which can be overcome.
If you have not already done so, I urge you to engage with your Grandparents or anyone who lived through either World War and try to get a sense of what it was really like for them. Many coped, and still cope by pushing the horrors of War experiences to the back of their mind. Yet valuable insights into the many varied experiences of War are most telling for us when coming from those we know.
Reliance on older memories may not be enough however, as remembering tends to focus on a limited slice of events, on what has not been blanked out as too awful… Or too shameful.
Of the thousands of books that have been written about War, two have stood out for me as particularly telling:
The first is ‘War and Peace’, a big volume by Leo Tolstoy which contrasts the expedient horrors of War and the indulgent fickleness of Peace, and both the heroic and the shameful excesses of people caught up in War and in Peace, as Western Europe fell to Napoleon, followed by Napoleon’s 1812 fateful drive to Moscow.
Tolstoy’s heroes, scoundrels and cowards are what they are, in War and in Peace, but it is in War where necessity brings individual characters into sharpest relief. Not all soldiers were heroes, few Generals were competent leave alone brilliant, and it was the character and motivations of individuals under fire that decided battle outcomes, rather than the strategising or the politicking of their leaders.
Tolstoy paints a picture of many different drivers for War, from protecting the fatherland and culture, to personal ambition, material gain or sometimes just despairing of Life.
We prefer to remember those idealists who were fighting for our freedom, but there were also those who were motivated by escape from boredom, wanting travel and wanting adventure, innate savagery, or simple personal gain.
It’s said that the History of Wars is always written by the winners, but on both sides there are always individual winners and losers. At the front-lines there are mostly losers.
Tolstoy describes the grinding boredom of marches and privations and digging trenches between the rare flurries of actual battle, and shows how front-line miseries are compounded by the plunder and ruination of ordinary people to feed the ravenous moving War machines.
In the second book, ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’, author E M Remarque describes German soldiers’ extreme physical and mental stresses during WW1, the horrors of trench warfare and also the separation from civilian life felt by many soldiers lucky enough to return home from the front. Extreme noise from shelling, bodies, horses and machines blown to bits in a sea of filthy trenches, the choking mustard gas and rats gorging on the victims, made for terror unimaginable for us.
Both books are anti-War masterpieces highlighting the complexities, tribalism and human failings that have made War such a transformative part of our human past.
My Dutch maternal Grandfather’s experience of both WW1 and WW2 was one of having to make extraordinary efforts almost every hour of most days just to survive and to keep his family and close community alive. His long investment in Social Capital – his wide range of friends and acquaintances with tradeable skills – were what saw most of them through both Wars.
My paternal Grandfather was a wealthy builder before WW2 whose first reaction to war being declared on Holland was to buy a whole trailer-load of his favourite Havana cigars, saying he did not want to sit out the war without a good supply. He was so miserable however under German Occupation that he smoked very few of them, and they were so hungry a few years into the war, that he traded the whole trailer-load of cigars on the black-market for a pan of fat.
‘Tulip-muncher’ comes from that time when there was no food and bitter tulip bulbs were all that kept many Dutch stomach walls apart. Audrey Hepburn was just one of many who survived starvation during the German invasion of Holland in WW 2 by eating tulip bulbs.
My father was an older teenager in Zeist in WW2 and his challenges apart from hunger were mostly psychological: He had to be hidden from the Germans to avoid being taken into battle, or to work in German munitions factories. To do this his father had built a large bookcase that could rotate if you ran against one side of it to hide somebody quickly in a space behind the bookcase.
Dawn raids by the Germans looking for hidden able-bodied males involved rushing upstairs and checking how many warm beds there were, and if there were more warm beds than females in the house, they would do an exhaustive search to find the hidden male. Consequently my father had to share a bed with one of his sisters for a good part of the war, and he had to stay out of sight. Staying out of sight, or at least staying in the background became a way of life for him, even after he escaped destroyed Europe and emigrated to New Zealand on his honeymoon with my mother.
Dad did not like talking about the War, but sometimes he let his guard down and gave us snippets: the taking turns pedalling a suspended bike with a light dynamo so that others could read at night, going into the woods with his sledge in winter to find fallen dry branches that they could burn to keep warm – and one night coming back with his English Teacher on his sledge. She had died of exposure while also trying to find firewood.
But my most surprising realisation from my forbears’ War experiences was that, despite the extreme physical privations, for many the War years in Holland have been remembered as the best years of their lives. They were years when people had to be real, when everybody in their Community looked out for each other, leaned heavily on each other, and did whatever they could for their common good. Their lives then had INTENSITY and PURPOSE.
It was only by working together and being committed to frustrating the Germans and outlasting the Occupation that they were able to survive.
United by a common enemy they found new strengths within themselves, new inventiveness and imagination to optimise what scarce resources they could muster.
We, all of us, have our challenges which we can confront and hopefully engage with others to overcome, or, too easily in peacetime, we can push these challenges into the background and pretend they are not important or don’t even exist.
My mother’s father once said, when no doubt we boys were being spoiled snots, that ‘it is a shame that we had never known war’. My view is that we don’t have to experience War to learn lessons from it, that by remembering and realising what our forebears went through we can learn some of the lessons that War has taught.
Following our tribal history of thousands of years of almost continuous Warfare we now enjoy an unprecedented reduction in war and murder, with most people experiencing a longer period of peace than any of their forebears.
My suggestion for today’s ANZAC service, is that we use this occasion to reflect and learn from our collective past.
I hope that with the mechanisation of warfare and its increasing reliance on economic power, that future Wars will stay at the level of economic contest rather than revert to traditional tribal slaughter.
I believe that our growing personal awareness and technological advances will reduce want and insecurity to the extent that War will soon become a thing of the past.
‘Lest we forget’, – we must remember that we owe the best living conditions in human History to those that went before us.
Thank you for the opportunity of sharing my thoughts with you on this sombre commemorative ANZAC DAY.
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Flagging away Brian Stewart’s immaculate Ford GT40 Replica which he built himself over many years, having been inspired at the age of 14 in 1966 when the GT40 trounced the Ferraris at Le Mans, using 3 NZ drivers – Denny Hulme, Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon.
Unfortunately Brian can no longer drive his magnificent machine around many Dunedin streets because of the growth of new DCC low-body damaging speed-humps, for example near his home around Rattray st and Maori rd, with new humps threatening to block off his access to Arthur st from Russell street where the Mayor has recently bought a house…
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finally admitted in ODT after my questioning, after years of refusing to print the renewals underspend graphs that I presented repeatedly. RENEWALS is what we should have been spending on, and should be spending on now instead of $60 million George st/Exchange pedestrianisation, $20 varsity ‘surface treatments’, and $53 million transportation ‘mode change’ projects. https://www.odt.co.nz/…/water-repairs-backlog-needs…
The Hitch-hiker’s Guide is an invaluable aid for understanding our Local Government, and for reading between the lines of the ODT.
VOGONS RUN THE UNIVERSE:
=========================
Our George Street is about to be demolished for a planned cycleway, with just One Way 10kph traffic necessary for emergency vehicle access. Nobody will be there to lie down in front of the diggers to protest, because Dunedinites have learned that resistance is futile. ‘Their’ Council will go ahead regardless because THEY KNOW BEST, despite all consultation, surveys and a 6,500 person signed petition.
Councillors are egged on by the booming number of DCC bureaucrats known elsewhere in the Universe as Vogons, an alien species whose public cost grows cumulatively at an unsustainable rate of 8% per year, and who are intent on destroying City Life as we know it. For the greater good. The greater bureaucracy! The greater planet! The only limiting influences on Vogon power and cost in theory are the Elected Representatives, but in practice only the Mayor can do much, and he is usually codependent with the Vogons anyway. The Councillors appear to be just pimples on the bum of Bureaucracy, and much more despised if they insist on being scratched occasionally. Decisions are pre-arranged on agendas, agenda items only can be discussed, and voting is almost always a rubber stamp inked by the Mayor’s A-team and other Team Players.
There is a rumour, quietly whispered, that some Elected Representatives are in fact interbreeds with the Vogon species, and have never done real work, never made any real money, and never produced anything other than screeds of words which they hold to be modern poetry.
Vogon poetry has evolved to its ideal in the DCC Fifty-Page-Plus-Report, where nothing is allowed to rhyme and where cut-and-paste-repetition is considered a high art form. A Vogon sub-species known as Consultants are routinely contracted to produce such Reports, which are given colour and variety with poetic devices like Light-Grey-Tiny-Fine-Print to add mystery, Rainbow-Coloured Pie-Charts for snap-shot diversions, and Coloured Graphs which must conform to the complying deep-state format.
DCC graph format excludes any long-term X-axis time-line which might reveal how badly debt, costs, productivity, or dividends have performed over time, and also requires a compressed Y-axis to flatten all peaks into reassuring steady-state leveled lines. In this way the Annual Plan Debt Graph for instance, which over time has risen up like the Himalayas to BILLION$ heights, can be made to look like the shallow reassuring undulations of Hobbiton.
THE MAYOR REPRESENTS THE PEOPLE, but which ones? =================================
There are The People, and then there are the Political Party People, Big Money People and their Hangers-on. Party People and Big Money People need the status quo and narrowly achieved it again with the 2019 election. Media manipulation, smear campaigns and funding spliter candidates’ campaigns have been useful in keeping out Independent Mayoral candidates.
The newly-minted Dunedin Mayor has forged ahead, buoyed up by his own sharp-witted put-downs and interjections, powerful delusions of adequacy, and the grooming by his mentor all-mouth-and-no-trousers Cr. Benson-Pope. Together they have plotted a new Central City without cars, so that Mayor Hawkins does not have a panic attack when looking out of his Mayoral office window and seeing a moving car. Cars are the kind of vehicle that almost killed him once in an accident leaving him so traumatised that he can not bear the responsibility of driving. Even non-moving cars are unsettling, which explains the stealthy removal of car-parks. The Mayor’s enormously expensive Octagon Experience trial removing cars from the Octagon was supposed to show how car-removal would benefit public health and businesses. Following his patron ex-Mayor Cull who said that “Council should set a goal of reducing car parks each year because of the benefits to public health and local businesses a move away from cars would deliver.” [ODT 31 October 2018], Mayor Hawkins has ignored resulting Octagon Experience businesses losses of over 20% and clung harder to the anti-car ideology. Some simply refuse to learn from Experience.
Problematic Hitch-hiking from Port Chalmers has seen Mayor Hawkins buy a house close to the Town Hall off Arthur street instead, so that for him walking to work is a practical option. Sadly this does not work for most commuters like nurses and secretaries who can not afford Inner City housing that the DCC 2nd Generation Plan makes even more expensive. The fact that walking is not an option for most Dunedin residents who need more car-parking has not prevented the recent Mayoral push for $53 million for traffic ‘safety’ and ‘mode-shift’, none of which involves more car parking, but does promote cycling which is a far more dangerous ‘mode’ of transport than the car.
Mayor Hawkins puts his faith in his Improbability Drive called “Mode Change”. He believes Mode Change will Save the Planet by getting all of us to traverse Dunedin Central on bicycles, buses, or sustainable flax sandals.
Mayor Hawkins has said he wants to make it “more attractive not to drive”, when instead he has pushed through many changes making it much less attractive to drive or park in our central retail area, driving people on-line instead. His car-phobia has resulted in a budgeted $10.25 million to “encourage” drivers to leave their cars at new carparks in Mosgiel and Burnside and then use public transport to get into Dunedin Central. Another $7.75 million for more “Central Cycle and Pedestrian Improvements” has been added to the $60 million ‘surface treatments’ budgeted for the George-St-to-the-Exchange pedestrianisation. $9.5 million of this borrowed $53 million budget is for a Parking Management Software Project that will tell drivers where available parks are via an app and signage. This $9.5 million could have built 271 new carparks at $35,000 each, but instead drivers will be “guided” to the decreasing number of existing parks — if there are any.
A Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to what Mayor Hawkins words actually mean would require a book, but a brief list of his common words and phrases follows:
Piece of work = Staff report = Consultant report+staff template = Vogon poetry
Guided = given no choice
Consult = ask loaded questions of select groups
Engage with the public = avoid all but contrived ODT photo-opportunities
It’s all about Community = it is all about lots of public money
DCC Company oversight = see no evil, hear no evil, expect no profits
Hei konā mai me ngā mihi = Cheers
Useful medium = un-recorded non-public meeting with no accountability
Carbon Zero = ever-increasing carbon emissions plus talkfest
Sustainable = hopelessly impractical proposal for talk-fest
Diversity = the inclusion of different types of people except Cr. Vandervis
Communications and Marketing leader = a piece of work
VOGON KEY APPOINTMENTS
========================
Mayor Hawkins has created a new position of Mayoral Strategic Advisor [for his other ear that Cr. Benson-Pope does not have], in order to translate perfectly understandable howls of public protest into the soothing sounds of affirming popular engagement.
The Guide also notes that a former fiction writer for the Otago Denies Truth, a Mr Chris Morris, has been elevated post-election to the top DCC Marketing and Communications job. Pre-election, Mr Morris’ ODT smear campaign against Cr. Vandervis combined with Green/Labour Party voting machinery, resulted in Cr. Aaron Hawkins becoming Dunedin’s Mayor with a slim majority of second-preference STV votes. Only on the day after the election did the ODT belatedly let the public know that their new Mayor hitch-hiked because he was fearful of driving a car himself and does not have a driver’s license. It was confirmed that he had no business or private-sector experience, going from Otago University to OUSA Radio One Disk Jockey, to Green Party City Councillor, and now Dunedin Mayor.
Against DCC Code of Conduct Objectivity Values, “members will make decisions on merit; including appointments, awarding contracts, and recommending individuals for rewards or benefits”, Mayor Hawkins followed ex-Mayor Cull’s lead in refusing any Standing Committee Chairmanships for Cr. Vandervis [who had almost twice the votes of any other Councillor in both 2016 and 2019], awarded $14,000+ per year extra paid chairmanships to promising follow-the-leader Councillors, and $19,000+ extra to Deputy Mayor Garey who he chose ‘because she shares my values’. Deputy Garey, also got Chair of Community and Culture, Chair of the Grants subcommittee, and LGNZ Zone 6 Committee. Cr. Benson-Pope of tennis-ball-bully and Southern Kinks fame, got Chair of Planning and Environment, Chair of Consents, and Acting Deputy Mayor.
WHERE’S THE MAYOR?
====================
As the new triennium began last year both Mayor Hawkins and Deputy Mayor Garey were reported to be unavailable to attend Civic Events, including the traditional Octagon to Brighton fossil-fueled Vintage Car Rally, and the Chinese New Year celebrations and fireworks. There have been many fossil-fueled Mayoral appearances in Auckland and Wellington, but many Dunedin events have been avoided. The Guide notes that the only businessman brave enough to publicly voice criticism of Mayoral neglect of Dunedin events was Sir Ian Taylor.
VOGON VEHICLE PHOBIA
======================
Many anti-car policies and actions have followed the election of new Mayor Hawkins, most slithering through the DCC without being put to a vote or debate by the elected Councillors.
George St and the Octagon became “trial” pedestrianising areas with removal of parking spaces for parklets, flower-box seats, a block of ‘Glow Experience’ plastic lanterns, and $34,000 worth of large plastic flowers. Three stages of vehicle bans in the Octagon Experience cost retailers a fifth of their earnings. “Traffic-calming’ blue and red tennis balls were painted on roads. A 10kph George St speed limit was largely ignored with the average speed still recorded as 28kph. The DCC lost a $1Million of parking income as free parking was ‘trialed’ to soften George St retailers’ resistance to pedestrianising changes, and to address the Covid retail downturn…but only in the George Street retail area.
All of these trails finally led to a 9-5 Council decision to turn George St into a one-way 10kph speed limit pedestrianised area. Deputy Mayor Garey disclosed her personal motivation for expelling cars from George Street, confirming her values as being close to the Mayor’s car phobia – Carey’s mother was once hit by a car in George Street.
The vast majority of consultation and submissions against the move-away-from-cars proposal were ignored. They included 172 Annual Plan submissions including all-but-one Community Board calling for a halt to Central City changes, over 6,500 signatures on a petition to retain traffic in George St, contrary advice from Council staff, and similar advice against from an independent consultant.
Mayoral/Deputy Mayoral traffic phobia became contagious as the Hawkins Council hiked parking charges and reduced many parking options including further extensions of metered parking, which badly effects central city commuters.
But Mayoral car phobia did not stop at the Central City. $700,000 was spent making a cycleway through St Andrew St commuter carpark with the temporary loss of all 300 carparks and a permanent loss of 75. In North Dunedin, 150 commuter parks were reassigned to paid parking. Scores more car parks were lost to expensive unnecessary kerb-protrusions on which safety signage was erected, but which could have been mounted from the pavement at a fraction of the cost. South of Dunedin Central, 125 parking spaces will be lost as the Dowling St parking area has been sold to a 600+ staff office development with no car parks. Further south, millions has been spent swapping car parks for under-used cycleways, speed bumps and kerb protrusions. There are still hopes to flog off the previously attempted sales of the Filleul st car park and the Frederick st car park.
VOGON TREACHERY =================
The Guide records how Mayor Hawkins leaked confidential motions and information about Head Vogon CEO Bidrose’s performance from a non-public, staff-excluded meeting, leaking directly to CEO Bidrose. She in turn re-leaked this information to other Vogons at her Communication and Marketing Department. A Code of Conduct Complaint against Mayor Hawkins for this was upheld, but deemed to be both material and non-material by the Vogon Investigator, so able to be ignored in the confusion. The investigator recommended that Mayor Hawkins apologise to Cr. Vandervis for this breach, which Mayor Hawkins failed to do.
Mayoral breaches and abuses of position continued with regular interrupting and shutting down of critical speeches and questions, refusing valid motions, deciding favourably on points of order against himself, and refusing to allow discussion or debate on uncomfortable topics like the DCC failing Council Companies. An recent example of question suppression was Mayoral refusal of the one question Cr. Vandervis attempted to put to the short-list of CEO applicants: “What CEO experience do you bring to manage the restructuring required to deal with DCC Council Controlled Organisation’s that have failed to perform for so many years despite some management changes?” Mayor Hawkins on the other hand allowed all other Councillors to ask a softer question of applicants, and asked two soft questions himself. The Mayoral groupthink A-team also suppress criticism and debate with Tone Arguments, defined by Wikipedia as ‘a personal attack and anti-debate tactic based on criticizing a person for expressing emotion. Tone argument detracts from the validity of a statement by attacking the tone in which it was presented rather than the message itself.’ Other diverting accusations included loudness, tallness and redness. Otago Truth Denied headlines quoting A-team claims of ‘Screaming and Yelling’ have been widely reported and the Independent Councillor expensively censured, despite the ODT reporter who was less than 10 meters away hearing nothing.
An unprecedented splurge of new pointless reporting and monitoring and submissions to Central Government has resulted in many 50+ page reports. These include DCC energy use, DCC CO2 emissions, requirements for contractors to monitor their CO2 outputs, Zero Carbon by 2030 strategies, and extended submissions to the Otago Regional Council for being insufficiently zealous in frustrating farming and increasing compliance costs. None of these massive mountains of environmental paperwork have had any effect on Dunedin’s ever-increasing CO2 output and energy use.
The takeaway message from a recent Zero Carbon Guidance Report was that “It makes little sense for all Councils to individually consider how to improve their reporting on climate-change issues”, which is why the make-work Vogons continue to do it.
The DCC has become a rate-paid Dunedin Climate Change talkfest.
Meanwhile skeletons continue to fall out of DCC Infrastructure departments, with worsening roads, footpaths and weed-control, and the Council-owned Companies continue to increase debt, fines and losses instead of profits.
VOGON DEEP PLAYBOOK
=====================
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide also summarises some of the many personal attributes that are helpful in finding one’s way to the Mayoralty, once the necessary Political Party Machinery and Media have been aligned.
One needs a consistent flow of smiling head shot photos and positive headlines, which can be complemented by the avoidance of specifying any particular intentions.
Preferably, avoid being publicly specific on anything, using statements that begin with ‘To be perfectly clear…’ and then being perfectly unclear. Awkward questions about anything can be answered by saying that one is committed to “sustainability” on the that thing, and then adding the ‘diversity/inclusivity’ catch-all, which usually reassures any number of minority groups. ‘From existing budgets…’ is a good introduction to questionable new spending, or even better ‘Likely to attract Government/NZTA funding…’, as these arguments suggest that the spending can be done without raising local rates and the hackles of voting Dunedinites.
A history of candidate personal immorality is useful as it allows the Big Money Boys and Political Party Back-roomers to blackmail/control the Front-men they put in to power. Any recognisable opponent characteristics can be harnessed to create voter doubts that are especially important in STV elections:
Loud = bully
Tall = overbearing
Male = threatening
Ruddy = angry
Businessman = corrupt male exploiter
Politically active = attention seeking
Voting against spending = not a team player
‘Bullying defenseless staff’, ‘Not team players’, ‘Blind to the benefits’, or ‘Grand-standing’ can be labels attached to any Councillor who questions or criticises.
VOGON ADMIN – UNBALANCED BIG BUREAUCRACY, JOBS FOR THE BIG BOYS
Mayor Hawkins’ unshakeable belief in the value of increasing Vogon Big Bureaucracy saw staff costs increase by 8% again this year, as it has cumulatively year on year for 3 years. Vogons KNOW BEST how to spend your money, and how to keep taking more of it.
Mayor Hawkins also had no problem with CEO Bidrose having been unavailable in her DCC office for 150 of the previous 365 days.
Overseas travel pre-Covid was often called ‘professional development’ with the costs spread across Sister City Relations, business development, and salary add-ons, so that the true costs are difficult to discover.
The Hawkins’ Council response to budgeted DCC Group Debt approaching a $1 BILLION and a predicted further blow-out has been to double the debt ceiling of the DCC-only component and to push the DCC Group debt budget past the $1 BILLION level. A 4.1% rates increase was fantastically “achieved” by pushing through Dunedin’s first ever UNBALANCED BUDGET, where an extra $7.5 million was borrowed for the year to make ends not even meet. Most DCC fees and charges were again increased cumulatively at double the rate of inflation.
Contracting incompetence has long been a DCC weakness, a source of embarrassment and enormously wasteful for Dunedin Ratepayers. The contracting problems have been non-solved by abandoning standard competitive tendering for major DCC infrastructure contracts. Instead, the big boys Fulton Hogan and Downer have been handed the biggest-yet contracts uncontested for 10 years. The Hitch-hiker’s Guide shows this is being achieved by ‘contracted-out contracting’, where all bureaucratic responsibility is effectively removed by ensuring that the contracting-out contractor gets enormous sums of public money for doing no work except for sub-sub-contracting the contracts so that the inevitable non-performance by the sub-sub-contractors gets safely swept under the carpet. Where non-performance becomes too publicly obvious despite duck-shoving, the Vogons can simply change to the alternate contracting-out contractor, and back again as required. Under this sub-sub-contracting system, time cures everything, and what time does not cure, the alternate contracting-out contractor surely will.
Business oversight of the profitless DCC-owned companies was again absent last year. Aurora has again continued to gobble more debt having been fined $5 million by the Commerce Commission for repeatedly failing to supply a safe reliable electricity network. There were again no dividends from the Companies, and reputational harm, financial debt harm and Aurora black-outs all continued to increase.
VOGON CONNECTIONS – IDEOLOGIES FOR YOUR INDOCTRINATION
========================================
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide shows how easy it is for organised media and political parties to manufacture convenient realities and public consent. DCC reassurance publications like FYI compliment the soft-pedalling of DCC issues in the monopoly print publications of Allied Press. There are close links between DCC Company Vogons and those at Deloitte Dunedin Accountants and Auditors, and between DCC Vogons and those running the ODT.
With not much happening apart from stealthy carpark removal, Dunedin commentators abroad have suggested that the population is dead and closed for business, but most are just waiting until the economy improves. It could be a long wait. Dunedinites will soon discover a second billion dollars of debt has been planned on their behalf and is being doled out for ‘environmental’ projects to the well-connected.
The ‘two-wheels-good four-wheels-bad’ ideology is supplemented by the ‘public transport’ ideal where mostly empty big buses are somehow good for the environment. The DCC used to run buses worse than the ORC, but the Hawkins Council wants them back and wants to run more buses to keep CO2 polluting cars out of the City.
All these ideologies are inspired by the GREEN PARTY ORACLE. Our leaders therefore know for certain that South Dunedin is going to be reclaimed by the sea, and that we are all going to fry unless we give up our cars and businesses and turn farms into mud-free wetlands with no hoofed animals…
Finally a Poem that defies all Vogon poetry requirements: it rhymes, is less than 50 pages, nothing is cut and repasted, it has no coloured diverting images, and it is devoid of Vogon praise or sympathy.
BEWARE
Beware beware the mongrel Mayor And the Councillors driven like sheep, It’s not good enough to pretend we don’t care Look aside as the bureaucrats creep
They have crawled from the Mall right through the Town Hall Bought traded trashed trounced our trust, All accounting in ledgers with dishonest pledges We are taken for every last crust
The good with the bad we are all being had Narrow gains are just petty revenge, A Town that had beauty become bender’s booty Meek thugs mugs inherit how strange
And how have they done it rip rape rob and run it? By playing the system and luck, With media boredom keep new out ignore them And the rest of you don’t give a damn
SUMMARY
=========
The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Mayoralty PART 1 details how the DCC has become a debt-doomed, booming bureaucracy and Climate Change talkfest, as skeletons continue to fall out of DCC departments, and Council-owned Companies continue to post losses and failures instead of profits.
Next year PART 2 of the Guide will update the far-reaching effects of the new Mayoralty, the imported ideologies, the growth of rates, fees and charges, staff costs, and the second BILLION$ of DCC GROUP DEBT.
Lee Vandervis - lee@vandervision.co.nz 