The attendance of Wellington City Councillors at an Antifa counter-demonstration, ostensibly to protest fascism, invoked the question, who exactly are the fascists here?

On Tuesday a ‘Freedom’ demonstration took place in Wellington.  Although the protest was against the covid vaccine mandates in particular, and for some the government in general, opposition seized on the fact that it was organised by Brian Tamaki, also the founder of a conservative church which opposed gay marriage.  Thus the protest was to some extent tainted by association.  As well as this discouraging some protesters, politicians and media are allowing the association to empower fascist hate groups such as Antifa.   

The Wellington Antifa organisation, Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition promotes a parallel between fascism and ‘anti-vaxx ideology’, and indeed all ‘conspiracies’ (i.e. dissent).

‘We are a group of people based in Pōneke/Wellington who are standing up against fascism, anti-vaxx ideology, conspiracy theories and bigotry in all its forms. Love community, hate fascism!’

Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition organised a counter-demonstration to Tamaki’s Freedom protest. Wellington City Councillors Fleur Fitzsimons and Rebecca Matthews, and a few other local election candidates attended the demonstration posing under Antifa insignia and the Antifa slogans ‘Love Community Hate Fascism’ and ‘Fascist Trash’. 

Response to the boastful tweets of the councillors was furious.

There is indeed much about Wellington City Council culture that is redolent of fascism. Two common definitions of fascism that are relevant:

1) Authoritarianism.

The Councillors’ desire to suppress free speech, well demonstrated by their hostility both to this protest and to February’s ‘Freedom Village’, is just one expression of what is now WCC culture.  The Council is imposing on the city a deeply unpopular cycle network – because they can.  The Council approves in principle the expansion of Wellington’s (ample) reserves at the expense of private property, overturning traditional rights and causing huge angst and material loss – because they can.  The Council is pushing towards co-governance, without referendum  – because they can.

2)  Achieving political ends through bullying, intimidation, through to violence.   Intimidation was a strategy of the Italian Fascists in the 1930, and is now an Antifa hallmark.

There is, of course, a sliding scale, when it comes to bullying.  At one end: at Onslow-Western local election meetings of 2019, a recurring theme of candidates was that the people who should decide every issue from climate change to town planning were school children, because they were going to live longer.  Every time a member of the audience queried the Council’s vision of a city of apartment buildings, up would bounce Rebecca Matthews and inform the sea of grey heads that ‘there is an age divide here.  Younger people …’.

As Matthews started, with disenfranchising the elderly, so she has continued.  Venom is directed at all opponents. Anyone who loves Wellington as it is, is a ‘f….. NIMBY’.  And not just by Matthews. Anyone who opposes democracy being replaced by co-governance is deemed racist by a body of councillors .  The sniping and whinging at Council meetings in order to cow opposition has to be heard to be believed.   Take, for example, the Council’s meeting to  approve the Proposed District Plan.  Every councillor had the chance to speak, but this did not stop Fleur Fitzsimons and others wasting everyone’s time at the end by complaining about how people voted.  Those chairing the meetings clearly feel it is not in their best interests to rein in this behaviour.

Matthews and co. may have established for themselves a reputation as bullies, however it is quite a step to attending what was essentially an Antifa rally. 

The protest passed off peacefully, and and there is no evidence that violence was planned, or is planned in the future, by Poneke Antifa.  I am certainly not accusing Wellington councillors of planning riots.  But the fact remains that Poneke Antifa is a nasty hate group that works to suppress dissent by equating it with fascism: a gobsmacking example of projectionism.   By attending an Antifa rally, by standing under Antifa slogans and insignia, by joining with them in accusing all anti-mandate protesters of fascism and hate, Wellington councillors, like the media, are empowering the Antifa movement – and fascism.

See also:

Wellington Scoop: Hundreds of anti-protest demonstrators watch arrival of “Freedom” marchers, via the lens of twitter.

A recent poll showed that satisfaction with Wellington City Council’s decision-making process is down to 12%. From Benoi Pette,12%:

‘This report was presented by officers to the Mayor and the Councillors on the 28th of June. The video of the meeting is available online and lasts one hour and a half. The section about satisfaction starts at the 46th minute.

‘In this presentation, the officers never mention, ever, the actual figure of 12%, as if it was too shameful, too dirty to dare say it. They list what Wellingtonians said were the three main reasons for this, let’s try, “low” level of satisfaction:

• Not listening to the public (someone, somewhere suggested it some time ago);
• Political issues (the in-fighting);
• Lack of transparency in decision-making.

‘Then an officer offers his own analysis. Yes, the rating is not great, but it is also relatively stable. I’ll be guessing here you always have to see the positive in things.

Continue reading “NZ Stuff / DomPost Conspiracy Theories Empower Hate Groups” →

Dear Councillors

In case you didn’t see my letter published in the Dominion Post this morning:

It is absolutely unconscionable that Councillors are seeking to fast-track the whole of the District Plan, thus erasing democratic rights including appeal to the Environmental Court.  This will include the Council’s illegitimate Significant Natural Areas (SNAs) initiative, by which the Council is claiming rights over private land on the grounds that regenerating bush, scrub, garden shrubbery, toxic weeds and lawn constitute ‘indigenous biodiversity of national importance’.

Councillors and council officers know full well that expropriating private land in the absence of exceptional circumstances is and always has been unlawful, as evidenced by:

Legislative Guidelines (adopted by Cabinet 2021) recognise ‘respect for property’ as a fundamental constitutional principle: ‘New legislation should respect property rights.  People are entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of their property.’

The Resource Management Act underlines the importance of property rights and makes it very clear that while all measures should be taken to protect the natural environment, and especially indigenous flora of significance, the welfare of people and communities comes first.

The Biodiversity Strategy 2000, in force when the SNAs were rolled out in 2019, emphasises, ‘Securing the willing and active participation of landowners is therefore pivotal to sustaining indigenous biodiversity on private land’.

As well as ignoring basic principles of property rights and the loss of value to land owners, the Council knows that the policy is counter-effective, as it punishes rather than rewards residents who care about native plants.  The Council is weaponising biodiversity, not encouraging it.

SNAs will also have the effect of reducing land for housing.

The aims of the project can only be to normalise expropriation of private land without justification, and to further the Council’s anti-people vision of Wellington as a city of apartments with humanity cut off from nature, with no gardens, none of the exotic flowers and trees loved by our birds and bugs: just concrete and kawakawa; Gondwanaland with tower blocks.

It won’t, of course, be Gondwanaland – Wellington’s fastest growing natives will not replace the biodiversity of either pre-human times or our mix of bush and exotics.

The Council has done its best to keep the SNA policy quiet, with little or no attempt to inform the public as a whole.  However it received a large number of submissions to the Draft District Plan, either demanding that the whole project be canned, or asking that private property be exempt.  This latest response shows that the Council is doubling down, quite oblivious to questions of democracy, traditional values, and human welfare.  Certainly there is no intention of allowing Wellingtonians the ‘peaceful enjoyment of their property’.

The Council is clearly out of control, bulldozing through a policy patently unlawful and anathema to almost all who know about it, while  showing throughout the project a total contempt for democracy.

Barbara McKenzie
Wellington SNA Committee

Note: ‘Wellington City Councillors will be asked next Thursday [31/03/2022] to support a staff proposal to seek government approval to fast-track the entire District plan’ (Fast-tracking the District Plan – and removing any right of appeal).  The Dominion Post has reported (28/03/2022) that some councillors have already expressed support for the proposal, including Rebecca Matthews, Fleur Fitzsimmons, Tamatha Paul and Teri O’Neill.

In July last year, Wellington Mayor Andy Foster addressed a meeting on the city’s Significant Natural Areas policy.  Foster had one reply to every question and comment:

• The policy is unlawful  – ‘ah, but biodiversity’
• The policy is an attack on property rights, an essential New Zealand value – ‘ah, but biodiversity’
• Home owners are being punished for nurturing bush – ‘ah, but biodiversity’
• Turning native bush into a liability will have a negative outcome – ‘ah, but biodiversity’

In fact, Council policy is nothing to do with nurturing biodiversity.

‘Significant Natural Areas’

Every morning the tuis wake up in Zealandia, yawn, stretch and say to each other, ‘Whose garden are we going to plunder today?’  And off they go, to find a flowering cherry, laburnum or banksia to gorge themselves on.  ‘We’ll show those tuis’, thinks Wellington City Council.   So Council has decided to get rid of home gardens and replace them with concrete and New Zealand’s six most common natives.

To this end it has set in train a policy of giving reserve status to private property, mostly suburban back gardens presently covered in bush regrowth, garden shrubbery, tradescantia, pine, lawn or even outbuildings.  Such land is the seed for the Council’s vision to return Wellington to native bush, while forcing humanity into high density apartment living.  So far almost 1700 properties are affected, but there will certainly be many, many more in the years to come.

Andy Foster may yearn to recreate Gondwanaland, but it will take hundreds of years for the bush regenerating on former farmland to regain the quality of virgin forest.  The Council’s SNA policy means Wellington residents will be forbidden from doing anything to speed up the process.  Want to dig out one of those kawakawa and put in something a little less common, like an orchid, rare fern, or totara?  You’ll need a resource consent.  Want to transplant a little taupata or pittosporum to somewhere more suitable?  Again, a resource consent will be required.  Want to create a new area of native bush in your back yard?  Get started, then the Council will come in and take it off you.

Want to replace that field of tradescantia and mahoe (designated by council officers as significant indigenous biodiversity of national importance) with a flower garden, shed or new dwelling?  Not a chance.

The fate of flower-loving bees or monarch butterflies, of low status because not indigenous, is not looking good. And nobody is asking our native birds what they think.

Let’s not be fooled by Wellington City Council’s talk about ‘protecting biodiversity’.  Biodiversity is simply a weapon – they can’t understand (they can’t stand) people who love the natural environment.  Hence the vision the council has of our future lifestyle: no home gardens, high rise apartments, and separation of people from nature.

‘Zero Carbon’

The Council’s junk science climate change policy is another example of ideology over ideals.  The evolutionary burst of life forms called the Cambrian Explosion occurred when atmospheric CO2 and temperatures were both (coincidentally) far higher than they are today.  The briefest glance at geological history indicates that Planet Earth has been in a trough in terms of both CO2 and temperature.

Although the earth doesn’t seem to be warming, unfortunately for both biodiversity and Wellington residents, the small increase in carbon dioxide in recent years has had a beneficial effect.  In 2016 NASA reported increased greening globally because of CO2.   Africa’s deserts are now in spectacular retreat.

WCC’s response?  We can’t risk another explosion of biodiversity – must declare a climate crisis.

Let’s destroy the environment to save the planet

WCC loves batteries – to show its commitment, it converted all its trolley buses to battery power.  Never mind that:

• The batteries are largely powered by coal (nope, electricity is not an energy source in itself, and nor is hydrogen).  New Zealand burned more coal in three months last year than all of 2016 and 2017 put together – we’re talking about dirty coal from Indonesia.
• Batteries are an environmental disaster at every stage of their lives.

‘Resilience’ and ‘Sustainability’

There is nothing more sustainable than a home garden, growing vegetables and fruit trees, maybe keeping chickens, providing recreational opportunities for everyone from toddlers to pensioners, and easy to get in and out of in an earthquake.  Not, of course, in the Council’s warped mindset.  Far, far better to have residents totally dependent on the supermarket duopoly, vulnerable not just to price gouging but to shortages caused by world trade moods, wars, passing viruses etc.  I can’t wait to be in a jerry-built tower block signed off by WCC when the big one hits, or when the government finds an asymptomatic case of influenza and puts the whole of my apartment building into lockdown.

Councillors are desperate to get rid of solid housing stock which has withstood earthquakes for a hundred or more years, in favour of  homes designed to last 50 years.  Given that the fittings of these new buildings will be rubbish (my experience of a rebuild suggests that the life of a new fitting is somewhere between a week and five years), a sizeable part of Wellington will have to be reserved for landfill.

High rise buildings and surrounding streets will be a disaster zone when there is a big earthquake.  Just look at what happened to the central city after the last minor shake from Kaikoura.

Replacing homes with apartments and paving will have repercussions for infrastructure.  Services managed by the Council such as roads, transport and 3-waters are already failing.  Slips in Wellington’s hillier suburbs have increased in recent years because of infill, and the problem is set to blow out.  Councillors aren’t worried – they can always blame the problem on ‘climate change’.

Nobody except Wellington’s councillors would try to suggest that their vision for the future is ‘resilient’ or ‘sustainable’, or serves either biodiversity or humanity.

The Wellington SNA Committee has been trying to create awareness about Wellington’s unlawful SNA initiative, despite the Council’s determination to keep the public in ignorance until it is a fait accompli – to this day very few Wellingtonians not directly affected are aware of this attack on property rights.  You can sign the petition against WCC’s SNA policy here.

On 6 January 2021 thousands poured into Washington DC to protest (peacefully) to protest the conduct of the 2020 presidential election.  However at some point an over-enthusiastic protester, or agent provocateur, led a few people into the Capitol building where they filed past the complacent security guards, took some selfies, and did little or no damage.  This little prank enabled the corporate media to rebrand the whole protest as an attempted coup.  (The same media treated far more kindly the BLM/Antifa riots of 2020 in which people were murdered, property vandalised and goods pillaged).

A similar thing is happening with the protest now taking place in Wellington.  There is no evidence that the protest is intended to be anything but peaceful, with speeches, music and hanging out.  The only aggression has come from the police, who on Thursday decided to resolve the matter by force, arresting 22 people, often with unnecessary violence (see also Appendix, below).  The following day, Friday, the police backed off – TV One News reported: ‘it’s been a comparatively quiet day without the flurry of arrests that we saw yesterday’.  A different story, however, is being peddled by the media and the politicians.

In an email sent yesterday to constituents, Ohariu MP Greg O’Connor, described the overwhelmingly peaceful protest in Wellington as ‘one of New Zealand’s worst cases of disorder and mass law breaking’.  Protesters are compared with ‘the mob [who] invaded the Capital [sic] in order to overthrow a legitimately elected President’, and to armed insurgents in Somalia. The word ‘mob’ features six times in O’Connor’s email.

O’Connor also refers, rather oddly, to Timor-Leste.  On 1st September 2020, the Timor-Leste Defence Forces commander threatened to arrest the leaders of a newly formed movement which had planned a peaceful march to call for the resignation of President Francisco Guterres Lu-Olo after he refused to swear in several members of the largest party in the 2018 elections.   Is O’Connor suggesting that organisers of peaceful protest be arrested?

Earlier reports from media and politicians initially labelled protesters as anti-vaxers.  There of course, protesters who are especially focused on the vaccine mandate.  I spoke to a woman from the Philippines who hates Pfizer with a passion, because of children who died in the Philippines after being given the Pfizer dengue vaccine.

However many protestors are opposed to the establishment of what seems to be a permanent state of emergency and a permanent suspension of civil rights, with little or no justification, and not just the specific manifestations of vaccine and mask mandates.  An alleged disease which has governments around the world padding out statistics by recording deaths ‘with the virus’ is NOT a pandemic.  A disease repeatedly described by Bloomfield, Ardern and co. as ‘CAN be serious, especially if you’re old or sick’ (#savegrandma) is NOT a pandemic.  In any case, as former ACT Party leader and Minister in the National-ACT Government from 2008 to 2011, Rodney Hide has said:

I don’t agree with you that my rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are extinguished by a government declaring a pandemic. To me those rights are absolute.  (I support the protest 100%)

When the overseas press inconveniently revealed that the issues are broader than some knee-jerk anti-vax position, the message had to be changed.  O’Connor dishonestly describes protesters as the ‘anti-vax, anti- mask, and the anti-everything mob’ – anti everything good, he means – thus camouflaging the more specific issue of government overreach.

‘Kia ora All,

‘I’m sitting in the debating chamber in Parliament on a Thursday afternoon, while  my ex Police colleagues are out the front of Parliament dealing with one of New Zealand’s worst cases of disorder and mass law breaking for many years.  I speak of course of the anti-vax, anti- mask, and the anti-everything mob who have taken over the area and streets around Parliament.
‘As I have watched my old mates putting up with abuse and assault while they step up on New Zealanders behalf, I feel an anger and concern within myself that these people are prepared to leverage the goodwill and decency of our democracy in an incredible act of selfishness and self-entitlement that has impacted on businesses, workers and everyday citizens here in Wellington.

‘Mob rule is where those who operate outside the agreed rules and mores of society overwhelm those who are tasked with upholding those rules, our authorities.  Recent examples are Somalia, Timor-Leste and others where the ability of the state to keep its citizens safe and structured society operating for the good of the majority was overwhelmed by groups and individuals who, by force, put their own interests ahead of everyone else.

‘The leaders of such disorder use their ability to attract and organise the angry and disaffected to swell their ranks sufficiently to make policing them difficult, especially when those tasked with policing them rightly operate under and obey the rules that same society has imposed.  The ability to demonstrate against and criticise government decisions and strategy is a healthy part of our democracy.

‘Destabilising that same democracy is not.  We haven’t quite got to the stage the United States got to in January last year when a mob, not dissimilar to the one out the front of parliament, invaded the Capital in order to overthrow a legitimately elected President.  However, but for good policing, it could have happened a couple of times here.  We are actually a pretty caring society, which is why the response to the mob at parliament has been measured.  The presence of children, and a determination to prevent injury or worse inevitably governs the response of the Police.

‘The abuse those on the front line endure without responding is a tribute to their professionalism, and shows why those who make up these mobs should never get the power they are demanding.  If the gathering becomes the super-spreader event it is feared it will become, those same officers are incredibly vulnerable.

‘The lesson to be learned is we are only able to enjoy the democratic and economic freedoms we do because we accept that we must follow the agreed legal framework which enables society to function.  Overwhelming or ignoring that framework puts it all at risk.   Some media commentators who use their platforms to daily destabilise public confidence in those elected to operate and uphold that framework, combined with an ungoverned internet, contribute significantly as well. […] ‘

In other news:

‘My committee […] had Maritime New Zealand, Transpower, and Auckland City Rail Link in by Zoom to essentially explain how they have spent their money, as they are Taxpayer owned.

‘That is how democracy works, not through mob rule.

Appendix

Interview with the young 14YO brutalized by NZ Police yesterday (it seems he might be 17, not 14, still to be clarified).

New Zealand’s Shame:  Account of protester Jeanette Wilson:

‘This is me- front line – before I was assaulted by WPC. You can see the gathering was peaceful, good-humoured.

‘The WPC initially had her elbow on my windpipe -I told her she was hurting me – she moved her elbow then to my sternum – and I again told her very clearly you are hurting me – she said get your hands off me – I was linking arms with the people either side of me and told her this- she increased the pressure and the pain was unbearable. I felt something “break” in my sternum. I started to collapse, I felt faint and my legs just went under me – the people either side of me were holding me up and then agony as more police dived in pulling up my arms and injuring me further ignoring my screams that they were hurting me- I was already at a 10 for pain (!)( – unbelieveable -I was left on concrete on my hands and knees not able to breathe properly and in agony for about an hour before they called for an ambulance – the ambulance said they were there within 25 mins of the call – and you can see from this footage I was attacked around 1:30 pm.

‘I got to hospital around 3pm. Photographs have been taken of my injuries and I will be pressing charges against the WPC concerned. I am still in HUGE pain not able to talk / breathe deeply without extreme pain and breaking down in tears at this violent assault by another woman, who, along with her colleague is supposed to UPHOLD THE PEACE. […]’

‘There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.’ (Nelson Mandela)

Masking children is not indicated and a huge threat to child well-being, while masking anyone against a virus is of doubtful efficacy.  In a move of gobsmacking immorality, the New Zealand government has mandated masks for children from Year Four upwards while ‘the red traffic-light setting’ is in place.  This means that children from as young as seven or eight will be forced to wear masks for hours on end in the classroom, and also on publicly funded school trips.

Not indicated

There’s absolutely no justification for forcing children to wear masks: they are not at risk from Covid-19, nor do they spread it.  Early reports from Wuhan indicating that severe COVID-19 disease was rare in children, have only been confirmed by subsequent data.  German physician-scientists reported in December 2021 that not a single healthy child between the ages of 5 and 18 died of Covid in Germany in the first 15 months of the epidemic.

Nor are adults at risk from children: there has not been a single case of a child under 10 infecting an adult with COVID-19, according to a large medical review of paediatric evidence.  Furthermore, a major post-lockdown study in Wuhan China involving almost 10 million people, found zero cases of asymptomatic transmission in adults or children.

Inevitably harmful

Key risks to masks for children (from the World Council for Health, Face masks – the risks vs benefits for children): 

[Final]

The Wellington City Council’s Draft District Plan presents the details of its Significant Natural Areas policy, including SNA designations on both private and public land, in the Section on ‘Ecosystems and Indigenous Biodiversity’.

It is a matter of deep concern that this initiative, which has huge implications for the rights of all Wellington property owners and residents, has remained under the radar – to this day very few members of the public are aware of it.

The Council claims authority from the Resource Management Act, Section 6, which provides that appropriate authorities:

‘shall recognise and provide for the following matters of national importance: […] (c)  the protection of areas of significant indigenous vegetation and significant habitats of indigenous fauna’.

However there is no relation between the provisions of the RMA to protect valuable fauna and habitats and the Council’s Significant Natural Area programme, rolled out in 2019 in the name of satisfying the requirements of 6(c).  The policy will not even satisfy the claimed objectives of that section of the DDP.

I therefore totally oppose the Council’s SNA policy as detailed in the Draft District Plan and ask that the whole of the section on ‘Ecosystems and Indigenous Biodiversity’ be removed.

TRADITIONAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

‘Nobody owns land’ (former Deputy Mayor Jill Day, 2019)

The Council has designated some 160 SNAs, which include part or the whole of 1693 private properties, often but not always adjacent to existing reserves.  Once the District Plan has been finalised, homeowners:

• Lose the right to use and enjoy their property as they wish
• Suffer dramatic loss to the value of their property

The stated purpose of the RMA Act is to:

‘promote the sustainable management of natural and physical resources [which] means managing the use, development, and protection of natural and physical resources in a way, or at a rate, which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and cultural well-being and for their health and safety while […] mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the environment.’ (section 5).

The only references to private land in the RMA are in relation to heritage orders and serve to underline the importance of property rights, e.g.

‘However, a heritage protection authority that is a body corporate approved under section 188 must not give notice of a requirement for a heritage order in respect of any place or area of land that is private land’.

The RMA, then, makes it very clear that while all measures should be taken to protect the natural environment, and especially indigenous flora of significance, the welfare of people and communities comes first.

Central government’s Biodiversity Strategy 2000, in force in 2019, emphasises, ‘Securing the willing and active participation of landowners is therefore pivotal to sustaining indigenous biodiversity on private land’ (p. 38)

The Legislation Guidelines (2021 edition), which have been adopted by Cabinet as the government’s key point of reference for assessing whether draft legislation is consistent with accepted legal and constitutional principles, recognise ‘respect for property’ as a fundamental constitutional principle:

‘New legislation should respect property rights. People are entitled to the peaceful
enjoyment of their property […] The Government should not take a person’s property
without good justification. A rigorously fair procedure is required and compensation
should generally be paid’.

Wellington City Council, however, has launched an aggressive assault on traditional property rights, contrary to the spirit and letter of the RMA and other guidelines.  Furthermore the Council has indicated that it will not be paying compensation.

‘SIGNIFICANT’

According to Forest & Bird, SNAs are ‘New Zealand’s most important remnants of native habitat – places where rare or threatened plants or animals are still found’.  Except that they’re not – at least not as designated in Wellington.  It is questionable whether there is anything significant or ‘of national importance’ on any of the private land affected, of a quality to justify  trampling on traditional rights. If there is anything special, it almost certainly has a covenant already.  At best the cover is regrowth on former farmland, some very recent as old, soilrobbing pines are removed. Some of it is well-established and a pleasure to its owners.  On the other hand, much is very low grade – the Council website repeatedly refers to ‘bush and scrub’.  However the Council officer I spoke to at a walk-in session in Ngaio was adamant that regenerating bush constitutes ‘indigenous biodiversity of national importance’.

Many of the SNAs, furthermore, incorporate or consist of cover that has not the remotest claim to be of significance: garden shrubbery, toxic weeds, pine trees, agapanthus, lawn.

The piece of my land designated as SNA consists in its entirety of: a mix of common natives and exotics along the roadside; woodshed, lawn, and a bank of tradescantia dotted sparsely with wild cherries and an extremely common native.  The designation puts paid to long-term plans to put in a drive, maybe double garage, granny flat or separate dwelling, and of course wipes several hundred thousand dollars off the value of the property.

‘PROTECT’

The Council policy is designed in such a way that it will inevitably have poor outcomes:

1. The Council does not differentiate between virgin forest and scrub that self-seeded a couple of years ago – this is hardly the best way to ensure protection of flora that is rare and special.
2. Loss of good will: The Greater Wellington Regional Policy Statement states: ‘The restoration of ecosystems relies upon the good will and actions of landowners’.  Rather than working to engender good will and cooperation with landowners, by imposing restrictions on property without consent, the Council’s programme serves to alienate them.

The Council is punishing people for loving nature – property owners are being conditioned to seeing native plants as a threat to their rights. In Porirua, which has a programme serving a similar ideology, one landowner with several hectares of bush has reluctantly cleared two of them, and is contemplating clearing the rest.  I myself hoped to allow bush to regenerate on a piece of land which suddenly became fertile after the removal of a large macrocarpa.  Obviously I won’t be doing that now, but no matter – the Council will probably take the land anyway.

When SNAs are seen in conjunction with the Urban Development Act, Wellington residents with anything bigger than a golfer’s section – any who love the natural environment – are vulnerable to having their land taken from them, in the name of either biodiversity or development.

Claims that the Council is prepared to be accommodating are discredited – almost all o  those who have contacted me have found council officers intractable. At least one property owner has spent $25,000 on an ecological report showing that his land did not constitute ‘significant indigenous biodiversity’, which was summarily dismissed by Council officers.

PUBLIC LAND

The programme also has undesirable implications for the management of public land, incorporating much-loved parks and open spaces.  It took months for Council officers to agree to remove the SNA designation from Queens Park, Thorndon, after the local residents association contested it.  There is under consideration a proposal to extend the Southern Landfill – on land that is now designated an SNA.  A very popular grassy area on Kaukau has been disappeared into the SNA – planting has already started (see photo below, Khandallah from Kaukau).

LAND IN FOREIGN OWNERSHIP

The policy is in breach of trade agreements with regard to assets in foreign ownership.  Does the Singapore Embassy know that most of its site has been designated an SNA?

LACK OF DEMOCRACY

The Council rolled out its SNA initiative during the election campaign of 2019, with a feelgood letter on pretty paper in a pretty envelope, offering to help people with their ‘biodiversity’.  The fleeting reference to the need for a resource consent to make use of the land went unnoticed by the vast majority of affected landowners.  Most people who attended a public meeting in Khandallah in July this year were unaware of the policy.  It was not until the Council sent another letter spelling out the implications of the policy, two years after the initial rollout and just weeks before submissions on the Draft District Plan closed, that affected property owners throughout the city woke up to it.  There has been absolutely no effort to advise the general public of the Council’s policy on property rights – there should have been full-page advertisements in the Dominion Post.

No sitting candidate referred to the policy during the general election.

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

The function of Wellington City Council’s SNA programme is clearly NOT to identify and protect indigenous biodiversity of national importance as required by the RMA.  Rather, it is to normalise land expropriation and compulsorily rewild the city at the expense of property owners and residents.

COUNCIL IS EXPOSING ITSELF TO LEGAL ACTION

The Council is irresponsibly laying itself, ie the ratepayer, open to the lawsuits that will inevitably follow, from individuals or as a class action. The Council will be asked to either desist altogether in imposing reserve status on private property on bogus grounds, or to pay compensation which will entail the payments of many millions of the ratepayers money.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Wellington City Council’s Significant Natural Area policy is wrong in law and wrong in principle. It is a worrying example of council overreach, while at the same time failing in its objectives of protecting significant biodiversity of national importance. The criteria applied by Wildlands Consultants in its SNA designations are completely inappropriate – the designated SNAs do not constitute ‘significant biodiversity of national importance’.

The Council should, therefore:

1. Reject the report of Wildlands Consultants in its entirety, rescind its SNA policy, and remove all SNA designations from public and private land from the District Plan.  If the Council believe existing reserves and protections are inadequate then they need to start again with a view to properly, honestly and fairly implementing the requirements of the Resource Management Act.
2. Apologise to affected landowners for the angst caused by this policy.
3. Reimburse affected landowners for any expense incurred in contesting the designations.

Barbara McKenzie
Wellington SNA Committee

(Submissions on the Draft District Plan close Tuesday, 14 November.)

Journalist Nicky Hager is best known for his book on ‘Dirty Politics’, targeting the National Party in the run up to the 2014 election.  He recently published a diatribe smearing not only opponents of the Labour government, its ‘covid response’ and the covid vaccine, but also critics of  the mainstream media and the United Nations.   The article is a fascinating example of the use of ad hominem to undermine dissent and the telling of truth to power.

‘When people I know march down the road with white supremacists, Trump supporters, fundamentalist Christians, people who are pro-guns, anti-UN, anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish, people who believe a powerful “them” want to kill millions and enslave the earth, things have got totally out of hand.’ (Nicky Hager: My Message to Friends Who Joined This Week’s Protest)

What follows is an open letter to Nicky Hager from Alex Hills, founder of Candles4Assange and co-founder of FreeAssangeNZ.  (Her views do not necessarily represent those of this blog)

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Dear Nicky Hager 

I thank you for your LED candles donated to ‘Candles4Assange’ / ‘FreeAssangeNZ’ and your amazing work on the open letter for Julian from 1,500 Journalists worldwide.  I have a lot of respect for your past investigative journalism, humanitarian efforts and work redacting documents for Wikileaks. 

However I must ask you to CEASE AND DESIST labelling protestors; ‘anti-vax’, ‘white supremacists’ and ‘fundamentalist christians’.  It smacks of desperation.

2021 seems to have brought about a kind of ‘changing of the guard’ in media when it comes to integrity and reporting of truth.  The ‘old guard’ self-censor to retain their ‘reputation’.  They give institutions the benefit of the doubt.  They even applaud the censorship and smears from time to time, all the while, becoming more and more out of touch from ‘we the people’.  After all, we have just witnessed Noam Chomsky, not only endorsing dementia-ridden war-criminal-candidate Biden, but now manufacturing consent for global mandates of a novel medical therapy and segregating society accordingly!  At the same time we have seen ‘Rage against the Machine’ literally roll over and push the establishment narrative.  This has led some to believe the ‘vaccines’  are more ‘effective’ than we could EVER have imagined!

Most of those Wellington protestors would not have the slightest inkling about any churches involvement.  If, instead of parroting what Associated Press ‘stenographers’ were reporting, you had witnessed the action first hand, you would have seen that crowd included disenfranchised mums, dads, midwives, doctors, nurses, scientists, artists, musicians and professionals from all walks of life as well as Iwi groups and a united front from gangs across the country.  This is unprecedented.  Surely these people should not be written off or labelled as the TV instructs?

They were from across the political spectrum, with different spiritual or non-spiritual beliefs, school-leaver through to PhD level education – an incredibly diverse bunch of people and far from New Zealand media’s ’chatter’ on this topic, they were full of love and concern for their family & fellow citizens.  Not hate.  Certainly not racism.  You, more than most, should be aware of how media misrepresents those who speak the truth.  The few Nazi symbols seen on signs at the protest were directed at the New Zealand Government’s policy of segregation, discrimination and medical apartheid.  Nothing to do with the beliefs of the 20k-strong crowd.

‘In times of universal deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’

I am afraid to inform you, this indeed, is one of those times in history.  We are witnessing what it is like when journalists are too frightened to report the truth.

My mother, a journalist who had interviewed Churchill in her twenties, died last week, following a stroke which happened to occur after the 2nd jab.  She was put on a euthanasia drug, which however may have been appropriate in her case, since she had suffered dementia the last twenty-two years.  All the same, I did not get asked permission for any of these medical measures taken, despite being her power of attorney.  This was especially painful to me, since I am aware these drugs are also part of the new pandemic NIH hospital protocol that the world is currently following blindly.  This not only involves sending people home without treatment to ‘self-isolate’, when they inevitably become poorly, but also, patients are intubated onto ventilators and are eventually given these damaging-yet ‘approved’ covid drugs, and all the while hospital managers are reaping the incentives for these measures to be carried out.

You label the protesters as ‘anti-vaxxers’.  ‘Anti-vax’ is a pejorative slur similar to ‘Conspiracy Theorist’ which we know is used to dispose of informed opinion and facts that people do not wish to hear.  Many of the people in the protest are not ‘Anti-Vaccine’, as they and their families have accepted traditional vaccines in the past.

Have you looked into the dramatic, recent change in the definition of ‘vaccine’?  Eg. Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary:

I and many others have accessed scientific research from public web platforms which has informed us about the many downsides of mRNA gene therapy.  We recognise the dangers of surveillance capitalism: ‘ID 2020’ and the ‘Internet of Things’, along with the issues in fast-tracking and injecting the global population with a novel mRNA gene therapy injectable.

We need to stop dismissing people as ‘racist’ or ‘white supremacist’ just because that is convenient for our party politics.  This is NZ.  Proudly anti-racist.  Those are labels think-tanks and paid ‘trolls’ use to discredit anything other than government narrative.  The freedom groups are cosmopolitan and inclusive, they are not racially based.  The crowds are a beautiful mix of races, sexes, ages and cultures – people from all walks of life – willing to question the BigPharma PR-cesspit our media has become.  Perhaps the government has a handful of genuine ‘white supremacists’ they are presumably watching, but how on earth could anyone witnessing the protest last Tuesday make the assumption it was full of white supremacists?

You call them ‘Trump supporters’, but truth is, the vast majority of these people have done enough research to uncover Trump not only rushed the vaccines through #OperationWarpSpeed, his executive orders allowed a police state to flourish, set precedent for military control of medical services, allowed bigtech corruption to thrive unchecked and lifted the gain-of-function research ban Obama had put in place, all while the establishment continues to short-out the globe’s health service and economic system from under our feet.  I don’t wish to make liberal heads ‘explode’, but he pushes the vaccine proudly to this day!  Most of the people in this protest would have long-ago transcended kindergarten playground-style party politics.  Certainly not supporting any of the current poor-excuses for ‘representation’ we have right now in this country.

You label them ignorant extremists, however the sources they were listening to in independent reader-funded media were reporting lab-leaks, gain-of-function research, vaccine passes and the shorting-out of the health and economic system as early as April 2020.  This led to their preferred news sources being censored, mocked and demonetized only to later discover that same news gradually seeping out into mainstream talking points TWO YEARS LATER!  The psychological operation known as ‘QAnon’, neuters and discredits dissent and I imagine couldn’t be further from this crowd’s mind.  This, along with the unhinged legacy media psychological operation, mean the truth is now largely missing from Google platforms.  The polarisation and division we are seeing now is the direct result of the interplay between two highly contradicting narratives and is by design.

‘What is the difference between conspiracy and fact? …About six months”

You call protestors ‘climate deniers’ but climate / green activists have gone along with the legacy media narrative which directs their action into punching down and laying guilt on the people, introducing useless 0.01% enriching ponzi-schemes like carbon tax, instead of directing the efforts where they are really needed to improve the environment (eg. target the polluting corporations, banks, military, oil companies and monopolies raping this earth right now, such as  ie. PUNCH UP!).  They have no interest in self-sufficient people producing power, food and building with low toxic materials.  Hell!  I should know, I taught Agenda 21 ‘values’ as a Sustainable Architecture Lecturer at Victoria University Wellington (as well as in UK and Australia), but after 4 years near full time on the front line of this propaganda battle fighting for free press, you can not avoid but see the wider eugenics / technocracy agenda at play.  Sadly academics are given precisely the ‘carrot’ and ‘blinkered-narrative’ they need, to go along with the madness.  If they see the de-humanising part of the agenda, they put it down to being for the ‘wider good’, yet don’t have a clue they are building their own prison (as well as ours!).

You call protestors anti-UN, but like many Brexiters, they are all too aware of the unelected power structures which need to be resisted, who are engaging in disaster capitalism at biblical levels with the ultimate aim of a global technocracy. That is the New World Order with lipstick on, also known as: ‘Build Back Better’; ‘The Great Reset’; ‘4th Industrial Revolution‘; ‘Bio-security State’; ‘biological-digital convergence’; and ‘The Panopticon’. A cursory glance at materials relating to agenda 21 / 2030 will make the transhumanist agenda crystal clear.

You complain they refer to media as the ‘enemy of normal people’, yet you know these same media voices have lied us into EVERY war for many decades and at this point, have the blood of millions on their hands.  In the current crisis they have suppressed and mocked effective patent-free nobel prize-winning antiviral treatments, deleted or discounted victim testimonies, and ‘disappeared’ whole careers of doctors, scientists, epidemiologists, virologists, nobel laureates, academics and even the inventors of the technology being rolled out globally? It doesn’t matter whether they are from Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, Lancet, British Medical Journal, Nature etc. Speaking out is being rewarded by being smeared, struck-off and/or deleted from history.

The evidence of eugenics agendas at play right now globally NEEDS CALLING OUT. We are now suffering from the intellectual descendants of those Nazi scientists the UK & US rescued in ‘Operation Paperclip’.

To claim legacy media has any integrity in 2021 requires a SPECIAL level of brainwashing.

Perhaps you could look into the government / military / intelligence-linked organisations like NUDGE / SAGE that weaponise Applied Behavioural Psychology & Neuro-linguistic Programming (the receipts are there if you dare look).  Why not read the SPARS document, Lockstep 2010 or watch Event 201 to see these agendas planned ahead in FINE DETAIL. How ethical is it for the government to bypass consent, by use of messaging to induce fear, to drive the behaviours of the population?

You talk about fundamental Christians, as though spiritual beliefs are disallowed in 2021? Have you not witnessed the media’s last TWENTY years of islamophobia (while behind closed doors our own leaders support & deploy these extremists themselves? – see Kiwi-trained ‘White Helmets’ for instance?).  How are you enjoying the Russia / China xenophobia we are seeing right now? Is it helping?

We are a global family suffering under the same globalist tyrants & psychopaths. As a former atheist I too, used to mock and sneer those who spoke about their religion or spirituality. I was misdirecting my anger at organised religion, that barely anyone could defend following the billions paid out in abuse-hush money & the clear link with war criminals, blackmail and psychopaths in power.  Most people, even those previously secular, are recognising we are in a spiritual battle between good and evil right now. 

I’ll give you this, perhaps some people in that crowd have it wrong.  Maybe ‘Communism’ isn’t the right term.   They may be wrong to focus so much on China or have hope for a puppet like Trump, but their dislike for Jacinda Ardern and her policies of: segregation; discrimination; removal of habeus corpus; wanton censorship; and her past record as senior policy advisor to Tony Blair while he was committing his worst war crimes, is entirely justified. It should turn ANY person’s blood COLD and cause them to question ‘the single source of truth’.

Back in the eighties my mother tried to explain how I would be able to get a little closer to the truth by, say, reading between the lines about a certain topic in the Guardian (traditional left) and then reading the same topic in the Independent (traditional right).  This was good advice in the eighties.  It largely worked.  But that advice today, would be utterly meaningless when these media mouthpieces are run by a combination of CIA, Mi6 (integrity initiative), bigtech, think-tanks and Bill Gates et. al.

Six corporations control the entirety of legacy media…  Yes, I’m afraid that includes ABC Australia and RNZ, whose journalists seem to have problems spelling ‘Assange’ let alone covering the case properly!  These institutions died a while back along with the censorship drive, arguably many years before that in #OperationPaperclip.

How any self-respecting Assange supporter (or indeed any serious journalist) could be so blind to the authoritarian, fascist, global government rolling in right now, is a mystery to me.  Could the rarefied air in Roseneath be far, far above the concerns of ordinary people?

Alex Hills, B.Sc Dip.Arch Dip.EEB MBSc ARB(uk) LBP(nz), Founder Candles4Assange, Co-founder FreeAssangeNZ

New Zealand’s National opposition has released its strategy ‘to tackle COVID-19, end lockdowns and reopen to the world’.  The plan is based heavily on ‘elimination’, and emphasises vaccinating children, first from the age of 12, and then from the age of five, once approval has been fast tracked.

‘Improving coverage

• Vaccinate 12+ year olds in schools before the end of the year
• Be ready to go immediately with 5-11-year-olds […]’

From the point of political expediency, the plan has some merit. Who in the media, or parliament, cares if it’s breathtakingly immoral?

The Clever Bit

Vaccinating children are an obvious solution if the only concern is to raise the vaccination statistics.  Small children are an easy target, and can be cajoled or blackmailed into having the vaccine.

At the moment the vaccine is approved for 12 year olds, who do not need to have parental approval for ‘informed consent to vaccination’. Given the failure of the authorities to fully inform the public, it seems most unlikely that children will be properly informed. Nor is there any guarantee that this right to informed to consent will not be extended to five year olds.  In any case pressure will be put on the children to convince parents to allow vaccination.

The novelty of the pandemic is wearing off, as the lockdowns bite into the economy and people’s livelihoods.  Instead of wondering why we are sacrificing so much for a disease that on average kills people over the age of life expectancy, many New Zealanders are embracing the view that the vaccine is the magic bullet.  Little dissent has been voiced over the child-abusive measures so far (e.g. masks, distancing, isolation); few are going to fuss over health risks to children from the Pfizer vaccine.

The Immoral Bit

The vaccine is well proven to be not indicated (and certainly not for children), not at all effective, and very unsafe.

Not indicated

The risk to children from the virus is statistically zero – for those under age 20 survivability is around 99.995%.  Figures out of China as early as March last year, published in our leading newspapers, indicated that children were not getting covid.  This has been subsequently confirmed by figures showing that the median age in most Western countries is higher than life expectancy.  It is impossible for politicians not to know that covid does not present a quantifiable risk to children.

Furthermore children do not present a risk to adults.  Again this was shown early on and has not been disproven.  But even if children could infect adults, those they come in contact with, such as teachers and parents, are themselves not at great risk.  No doubt those who are worried would be vaccinated, and it is possible to protect the elderly.

There is no possible justification in health terms for putting children at risk by forcing an experimental vaccine on them.

Not effective

That the NZ government – and the opposition – have been talking about allowing vaccinated people to serve a reduced time in quarantine, but only if they come from safe countries, shows  that they know full well well that the vaccine isn’t effective.

Increasingly countries are finding that the majority of those hospitalised for covid are vaccinated.  Vaccination of the entire population of Gibraltar (115% including visitors) was followed by an 800% increase in mortality, from 10 to 94.  In  heavily vaccinated (80%) Israel, 90% of those hospitalised are fully vaccinated.  The medical director of Israel’s leading center for respiratory care reports that the vaccinated account for 85-90% of all new hospitalizations and 95% of severe cases.

Israel has now declared that a person is considered unvaccinated unless they have had a third shot.  There is no evidence whatsoever that constant boosters will provide immunity – if anything, the opposite.

Not safe

The European vaccine reaction database reports that through September 25, 2021 there were 26,041 deaths and 2,448,362 injuries reported following Covid-19 vaccination.  In the US, between Dec. 14, 2020 and Sept. 17, 2021, a total of 726,965 adverse events, including 15,386 reports of deaths, following COVID vaccines were reported to VAERS reporting system.

A recurring theme throughout 2021, both in terms of reported adverse events and in academic research, has been the association between Covid-19 vaccines and blood clots leading to thrombosis.  As the age of vaccination came down, it became clear that young people, especially young men, were particularly vulnerable.  Just some of the clues:

• In March numerous European countries suspended AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccinations after blood clot reports.
• In April leading Israeli health experts published a report into the Pfizer vaccine, which found that the side effects indicate damage to almost every system in the human body.  They noted that a significant number of adverse  reported are related, directly or indirectly, to coagulopathy (myocardial infarction, stroke, miscarriages, disruption of blood flow to the limbs, pulmonary embolism). There were a relatively high rate of cardiac-related injuries.  26% of all cardiac events occurred in young people below the age of 40, the most common diagnosis in these cases being myocarditis or pericarditis.  The verdict was that ‘there has never been a vaccine that has harmed as many people’.  (Report in Appendix)
• The June 10th report of America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that there were 216 reports of heart inflammation after the first doses of the Pfizer and Moderna shots, and 573 reports after the second shots.
• In June 2021 the FDA approved for the first time a blood thinner for children.
• In July, a Harvard Medical School publication acknowledged that:                             ‘Currently, about 1,000 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been reported after vaccination against COVID-19 with one of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna. The cases have been most common in male adolescents and young adults, occurring most often after the second dose, and usually within several days of receiving the vaccine.
• There have been multiple reports of eye problems, sometimes leading to blindness and even death.  In July a 13 year old French boy lost his sight 10 days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine – specialists have diagnosed corneal thrombosis.
• In August, research from an MIT professor showed that Israel was experiencing a surge in cardiac arrests and heart attacks in young people.
• Also in August, the report on ‘SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccination-Associated Myocarditis in Children Ages 12-17 concluded that: ‘For boys 12-15 without medical comorbidities receiving their second mRNA vaccination dose, the rate of CAE [cardiac adverse events] is 3.7 to 6.1 times higher than their 120-day COVID19 hospitalization risk as of August 21, 2021 […]’.
• Top German pathologists who investigated 10 post-vaccination deaths found clumps of red blood cells (which ultimately cause clots and thrombosis), and giant cells that formed around trapped foreign bodies. In three cases out of the 10 they found rare autoimmune diseases.
• In September Slovenia announced the suspension of Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine, while it investigates the death of a young woman who died after developing ‘blood clots and bleeding in the brain at the same time’ according to medics.
• 30 September: Health experts have been left baffled by a big rise in a common and potentially fatal type of heart attack in the west of Scotland. During the summer there was a 25 per cent rise in the number of people rushed to the Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank with partially blocked arteries cutting blood supply to the heart.
• October: Sweden and Denmark have decided to halt vaccinations with Moderna’s Covid-19 shot for younger people – Sweden for under 30s, Denmark for under18s – citing new data on the increased risk of heart inflammation.

It should be noted that New Zealand’s vaccine provider of choice, Pfizer, has a dreadful record, having paid out billions for fraud and injury.  A notable case was its Swine Flu vaccine, which it brought out after the WHO handily changed the definition of pandemic so that mass deaths weren’t necessary, and then designated Swine Flu thus (the new definition holds for the current pandemic).  The vaccine was withdrawn after six months due to the deaths and injuries, and Pfizer has paid out millions in compensation.

NZ politicians have refused to take cognisance of Pfizer’s history, or past lack of success on the part of pharmaceutical companies in developing a safe coronavirus vaccine, nor quibbled about Jacinda Ardern granting Pfizer immunity from prosecution.

It is clear that the vaccine presents a far great danger to children than the virus itself – it is hard to believe that National MPs, or any New Zealand politicians, are unaware of this.  Given the lack of a safe vaccine for Covid-19, vaccinating children can only be justified in terms of political expediency, and not at all on health grounds.

The ostensible purpose of the ‘Significant Natural Areas’ being established throughout New Zealand is to protect indigenous biodiversity of national importance on public and private land.  However the policies being implemented go far beyond the requirements of the cited legislation, the Resource Management Act.

The controversy over Significant Natural Areas has largely focused on private property rights.  However, following a public meeting held in Khandallah, Wellington, I was contacted by Peter Steel of the Thorndon Residents Association (TRA), who offered a new perspective – public parks. 

The TRA Committee has been working to oppose an SNA designation on Queens Park, a space of lawns, exotic trees and native bush above the old suburb of Thorndon.

‘This area is part of the Town Belt and has been a colonial deciduous/exotic park for over 130 years. The Council currently proposed to include Queens Park with most of Te Ahumairangi Hill as an SNA which will require native vegetation in place of the existing planting.’ (Peter Green)

The Council appears to see no value in the special characteristics of the park as it is, a place of lawns, deciduous trees and flowering shrubs.  While a lawn area has been excluded, the SNA takes in the bulk of exotic plantings.  

 ‘[In July of this year] following the TRA approaching the Council to oppose the proposed SNA listing for Queens Park, a Council group accompanied by three of our Friends of Queens Park group did a walk-through assessment of Queens Park, to allow the Council team to decide whether to retain or drop Queens Park as an SNA.  As I understand it, this walk through simply assessed whether the vegetation in the area was more or less than 50% native – the Council attendees said that if they assess the native vegetation as more than 50%, they intend that the SNA proposal should remain and be included in the draft District Plan.  We haven’t yet heard the outcome of this.’

This suggests that any park that retains a certain percentage of native bush can be earmarked for rewilding of the whole, regardless of its original purpose.  Overall biodiversity will be reduced.

A workshop on the future of Queens Park involving local residents produced the following priorities:

• More open space and feel,
• Contrast with the rest of Ahumairangi Hill,
• More colour and seasonal change, while
• Keeping some wilderness areas for children.

A park for people in other words.

The Council commissioned from Boffa Miskell Wellington City: Landscape Evaluation, which assessed landscape attributes ‘that make them valued in terms of the RPS and Resource Management Act 1991 (RMA)’.  Wellington’s SNAs appear, however, to be based solely on a report entitled ‘Audit of potentially Significant Natural Areas for Wellington City’ prepared by a consultant called Wildlands: 

‘ As far as I can see, none of the checks and follow up work that Wildlands recommended before determining SNA areas appears to have been done.   It appears that the Council have simply taken all of the SNA proposals directly from these reports and included them in the Spatial Plan.’  (Peter Steel)

It is notable that while Boffa Miskell have assessed Te Ahumairangi Hill as a ‘special amenity landscape’, this does not include any of Queens Park (the two smaller areas to the east, separated from Te Ahumairangi Hill by Wadestown Road).

Other parks that combine open space with native bush are also affected: some examples are most of the Botanical Gardens, including the bush surrounding the very popular Dell, and the bush edging of Appelton Park. 

Also designated as SNA is the whole of the reserve on Mount Kaukau, including the large bare area around the top.  Down in the bush there is a sizeable clearing with a table and benches, and a separate seat towards the other end, with wonderful views over Wellington suburbs to the harbour.  The clearing is popular but could do with more seating, as it is an obvious place for groups of walkers to have a rest stop.  

However rather than improving seating, or eliminating the gorse and broom, the Council has already started to plant more natives of common species around the edges, presumably with a view to rewilding the whole area.    

The lawn area is very obvious in aerial photographs, but this did not deter the Council.

Wellingtonians on the whole enjoy the different experience that walking through native bush gives.  But when did we decide that lawns and specimen trees had to give way to ‘indigenous biodiversity’, even when this consists of fast-growing natives, which in the wrong place are normally considered weeds?  Who decided that New Zealanders did not ever want parks with deciduous trees and flowering shrubs, or rather, that the needs of human beings had no value ? 

There are major issues about overlaying the management of bush reserves, parks with open space, and private property, with a ‘one-size fits all’ designation under the RMA.  

• Councils or local bodies will have no control over decisions on the parks, any maintenance work will require higher level approvals and any changes will need to go through a comprehensive RMA planning process.  The same will apply to volunteer community groups, who will be heavily constrained.
• While existing paths through the bush can be maintained, no new paths can be created, except via a resource consent under the RMA.   Likewise any enhancements such as benches or noticeboards along the paths will be problematic.
• There are of course serious concerns about the implications for private property rights where relevant, but there is also the question of who is responsible for care or enhancement.
• The totality of areas like Kaukau have been zoned for rewilding with no respect for present usage.
• Expansion of popular parks or edging them with colourful shrubs will be virtually impossible.

Note: Applications for resource consent under the RMA are notoriously expensive (sometimes prohibitively so), time-consuming and frustrating. 

There has been no call for the native plants edging spaces like the Dell or Appleton Park to be replaced by exotic shrubs.  However if Wellington City Council achieves its vision of replacing our suburban gardens with high-rise apartments against a backdrop of monochrome green, with maybe the odd bed of native grasses, many will be desperate for the sight of some daffodils, a camellia or a flowering cherry.