Kauri dieback submissions received by email No. Name (from) Date (received) Page 1 Adrian Goldstone 31 March 2018 2 2 Auckland Catholic Tramping Club 19 March 2018 14 3 Auckland Outdoors Hiking Group 15 March 2018 15 4 Auckland Tramping Club (2) 19 March 2018 17 5 Auckland University Tramping Club 19 March 2018 27 6 Awesome Walks 22 March 2018 29 7 Bob Culver (2) 11 March 2018 32 8 Brian Cumber 14 March 2018 35 9 Dhammika de Silva 15 March 2018 36 10 Duncan Stuart 5 April 2018 37 11 Eric Nelson 15 March 2018 40 12 Habitat Tours 26 March 2018 41 13 James S (phone conversation) 28 March 2018 44 14 John White 18 March 2018 45 15 Malcolm Money 27 February 2018 46 16 Malcolm Webb 4 March 2018 47 17 Meg McMillan 5 March 2018 54 18 Murray Lazelle 19 March 2018 56 19 Paul Davies 7 February 2018 61 20 Praemi Perera 14 March 2018 63 21 Black Sand Tours 20 March 2018 64 22 Stephen Jones 20 February 2018 65 23 Terry Withers 4 April 2018 66 1 1 Adrian Goldstone 31 March 2018 Auckland Council Closing the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park: The Exercise of Good Judgment and Good Governance? Introduction The Auckland Council, and its bureaucrats, has notified stakeholders that Council intends to “close” all forested areas of the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park (the Park). This is in addition to the closure, already, of a number of important tracks in the Park. Notice was given via the Council’s “Our Auckland” website (the notice) on February 20 2018. Elements of the text (provided in the Appendix) provide an insight into the thinking of the mayor, councilors, and senior policy bureaucrats regarding their priorities, and this is my submission on this and related issues. It is clear to all that some form of public policy designed to address Kauri dieback in the Park (and elsewhere) has, rightly, been front of mind for Council and many of its staff for some time. We have seen escalating publicity and policy work-arounds, including access restrictions, decontamination stations, and voluntary limits on access, over the past year or more. It has been clear though, particularly from the increasingly strident rhetoric from Council and NGOs, that there was potential that Council would ignore the importance of the Park to this current generation of Aucklanders, and ignore its capital social, cultural and spiritual value to those Aucklanders in favour of “future generations” and Kauri. Now we see Council ignore the good practice of using a large body of published, peer reviewed and focused science to inform significant new public policy. Instead we see deviation from most well accepted definitions of the concept of “sustainability” by proposing a ban on access to a significant tract of public land. Council appear to have opted to depend on what in large part looks like ideologically or politically motivated science, or some cases “pseudo-science’ to attempt to manage ecosystem health. Council appears to prefer one driver to the broad range of cultural perspectives and drivers outlined in its own Regional Parks Management Plan. The Notice and what it Tells Us At face value the notice tells us that Council sees Kauri as an iconic species that should be preserved for future generations. Mayor Gough explicitly states that current generations must be denied what is our right because the potential extinction of Kauri (despite the absence of proof of this) and the impact that would have on future generations is a higher priority. 2 The concept of sustainability is raised by inference in the Mayors statement, as is an inferred reliance on science to inform policy direction. Both the Mayor and Councilor Hulse imply that the behaviours of the current generation of Aucklanders have driven the decision to escalate controls to the point where we will be denied access to an asset with a capital value that might arguably approach $1B, and a taonga of immeasurable value, which provides, if not the most valuable, then one of the most valuable “social returns” of any asset in Council’s portfolio. Looking at what Mayor Gough says a little more closely provides an insight into the political mindset that I thought we had left behind when we elected him. The mayor says: “The current approach that Council is taking is not working, for a variety of reasons, chief of which is the acceptance of Aucklanders. This decision sends a much stronger message that leaves no room for confusion”. Leaving aside the issue of whether or not the current approach is working and what evidence there is, or isn’t, for that, the real issue here is how the response to what the Mayor himself implies Aucklanders are saying. The only feeback that many Aucklanders are in a position to provide regarding access to the Park is to keep doing what we have been doing for generations. That is keep using the Park for the recreational, spiritual, and economic opportunities they provide. Mayor Gough sees that Aucklanders aren’t accepting of the idea of voluntarily restricting our access into the Park but sees it as his duty to to ignore what he is seeing. Councilor Hulse implies the same thing based on anecdotal rather than numerical assumptions; that the groups who want the Park closed are more prevalent and important than the groups that want continued access. My anecdotal observation is that there are many ordinary Aucklanders who use the Park every week, sometimes multiple times a week, to meet their needs for access to the kind of more or less unaltered environment that the Waitakeres (especially in the “back country”) provide. Those people arent all members of NGOs, can’t always afford the time to “engage” with Council, and often don’t have tribal connections or in fact arent Maori. Council obviously hears them by their actions, as the Mayor points out, but appears intent on not listening. Civil society isnt restricted to the NGO community. Civil Society includes individuals and families. It is Council’s moral and legal obligation to engage with all of civil society, not just that part organized into formal groups when setting significant public policy. Mandate & Governance I wonder what legal framework Council is working within to come to a decision to deprive Aucklanders of the amenity value that the Park provides. The notice itself gives no insight into the legal framework for this kind of decision making but does make passing reference to the Biosecurity Act. The Biosecurity Act is, in fact, not administered by Council but by MPI. It may well be the most effective tool for controlling how Aucklanders access the 3 ranges, provided the means of doing so is adequately funded and resourced, but it should not be used in this instance to close the Park entirely. The notice in fact makes this clear. I understand that the operation of Auckland Council and the governance controls it is required to have in place is regulated to a significant extent by the Local Government Act, by a second Local Government Act that pertains specially to Auckland Council, and by the Resource Management Act. The Waitakere Ranges sit within Auckland Council boundary and the 17,000 Ha Park sits within an area covered by the Waikarere Ranges Heritage Act. Finally Council has its own Regional Parks Management Plan and, specifically, a section relating to the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park. This section provides a framework and criteria for management decision making in the Park and is, in fact, required by the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Act. To those of us without a background in law or spatial planning, but with a reasonable grasp of English, it is difficult to reconcile the intent of these laws with the Council’s decision to “close the Park”. The presence or absence of a scientific basis relating to a single species for this decision is a secondary discussion to one focussed on the broader obligations imposed on Council by all of the documentation contained in the acts of parliament and the management plan noted above. The Local Government Act (Auckland) doesn’t provide any useful guidance with respect to the specifics of the Waitakere Ranges and the Kauri dieback issue. The Local Government Act provides some overall context with respect to what the obligations of Council are. Its purpose statement says: The purpose of this Act is to provide for democratic and effective local government that recognises the diversity of New Zealand communities; and, to that end, this Act— a) states the purpose of local government; and b) provides a framework and powers for local authorities to decide which activities they undertake and the manner in which they will undertake them; and c) promotes the accountability of local authorities to their communities; and d) provides for local authorities to play a broad role in meeting the current and future needs of their communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions. In general the purpose of the act speaks somewhat to the concept of sustainability and a requirement for accountability. Section 10.1 of the LG act says: The purpose of local government is— to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and to meet the current and future needs of communities for good-quality local infrastructure, local public services, and performance of regulatory functions in a way that is most cost-effective for households and businesses. 4 Section 10.1 specifically speaks to sustainability, but also to the need for Council to focus its decision making on its own community, including recreation and community amenities both of which are covered by the Act.