Gro Harlem Brundtland, former Norwegian Prime Ministerdelivers the Brundtland Report with far reaching consequences for all regulations regarding farming and what was considered sustainable.
The results of the ensuing report affect, directly or indirectly, every living soul in New Zealand.
The report was delivered to the United Nations in 1987 after four years of consultations, meetings of experts, and so on. In previous issues of ‘The Informer’ I have pointed out the major changes in Local Government since 1980 and how, by and large, the ‘Local Input’ has been side-lined in favour of ‘Top-Down Planning.’ Councils now know what is best for ‘Sustainable Development’, ’The Environment’, your ‘Social and Economic Wellbeing’, all straight from the Resource Management Act.
The RMA has the same wording as the Brundtland Report to the UN. It is no accident that the UN report was tabled in 1987, and barely three years later the RMA was passed into law. The Government of the day in 1989, swept away what was truly local Government in the form of Catchment Boards, Counties and Boroughs, ready to enact the Brundtland Report morphed into the RMA.
The timing of all of this drama is beyond dispute. Why did Sir Geoffrey Palmer and Simon Upton not inform the New Zealand Public that they were introducing ‘law’ based on UN deliberations? What were they hiding, or if not hiding anything, why not front up?
Move forward to news ‘hot off the press’ so that an evaluation of the RMA in action can be witnessed. A farmer near Hamilton has been fined $94,500 in the Environment Court by Judge Melinda Dickey for not disposing correctly of effluent, which accumulated in such a way that it may enter ground water. The emphasis here on the word ‘may’. It may enter groundwater. The RMA permits prosecution on the ‘potential’ to cause contamination. The contamination could be a fuel spill, silt runoff from a construction site, or as illustrated, farm effluent.
Almost anything, including contamination, does not have to happen, it is just ‘the potential to happen’. So, on the Coromandel Peninsula, there will not be a single car not capable of exceeding 100kph; therefore, all those motorists should be fined as they clearly have the ‘potential’ to exceed the speed limit. Back to the Court Case report 21 June 2024; a hefty fine on what ‘may’ happen and be clear, this effluent is ‘biodegradable’ a very natural product of life, is imposed.
Let us look at what has already happened in the Waikato, and Environment Waikato is aware of these factors. Herbicides are already in the ground water, cadmium a deadly poison is rising to dangerous levels in soils, insect life is in crisis, the amphibian life non-existent and there is more; but I’m leaving that for the moment. Before we got all this weird legislation that permits poisoning and pollution by the authorities, the natural life was prolific with locusts, cicadas, grasshoppers, stick insects, waterfowl, and so on.
The rot starts at the top and this carnage started in Wellington. As Murphy’s Law states, “Your life liberty and property are all at risk while ‘Parliament is in Session’.
