Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Salient. Official Newspaper of the Victoria University Students' Association. Vol 41 No. 18. July 24 1978

The Clutha Proposals

The Clutha Proposals

The issue which brought the Commission to the greatest government attention was its unfavourable report on the Electricity Department's proposal to go ahead with large scale hydro-development of the Clutha river and valley. The commission maintained, in guarded words, that the proposal contained almost no consideration for the well being of the people who would be affected by the development.

These and other points brought up by the commission in its audit of the Electricity and MOWAD departments' report lent fire power to the now better organised (since Manapouri) Environment lobby. With the previous two elections, the matter had become a political one. After the Commission's inconvenient audit the government was again faced with an embarrassing situation, and so announced by decree that a certain 'scheme F' would be put into action. In doing so the government ignored the fact that no Impact Report or Audit had been completed on the scheme that it had just decided to implement, and a further report and audit were sent for.

In June 1978 the present Minister for the Environment spoke in terms of toning down the Commission for the Environment's role, by bringing it in to the decision making process earlier, and alluded to a future design and role for the commission that would take away it's independent power of reporting and auditing.

Even before the expected comments of environmentalists and conservationists were heard, the newspapers of the country picked the matter up. The Evening Post in Wellington ran a strong editorial decrying the Minister's proposed action on the matter.

The Minister's statements have been interpreted by many as being the reaction of the Executive to being told by one of its own subordinates that it should not precede with some scheme it has in mind. The idea was seen as an attempt to publicly shut the concerned commission up, and assimilate the staff and their duties into "the already existant higher decision making departmental structors". The removal, assimilation or "toning down" of this small but potent commission would probably result in a wholesale decline in the quality of resource management decision-making in New Zealand.

It is assumed for obvious practical reasons that some shell or remnant structure would be left as a block to the people's thoughts, considerations and solutions to resource-environmental problems, to continue to shelter the government from direct approaches.