2nd APRIL 2001

Auckland Region Water Review Public Consultation Hearings To Start This Week

The Auckland Region Water Review has received 2,272 submissions as a result of its public consultation process.

Chair of the Review’s steering committee, Grant Taylor, says the committee is pleased with the result and a preliminary review of the submissions has shown a wide range of opinions on how people would like to see the region’s water businesses operated.

“We have also received 3,048 postcards from the Water Pressure Group coalition which have been forwarded from the office of MP Judith Tizard. We will be analysing the coalition’s full submission along with all the other submissions we have received as a result of the public consultation,” says Mr Taylor.

A hearings panel of Councillors from the region’s Councils has been established to hear those submitters who wish to speak to their submissions. The hearings will occur over the next two weeks.

Following the hearings a report analysing all submissions together with views gathered through parallel processes, such as discussions with Iwi, and financial analyses, will be prepared and presented to Councils in May/June.

Mr Taylor says the public consultation process is just part of the consultation the Review has been carrying out since it started work last year.

“This is not simply a polling process”, he says, “submitters were asked for example, to say which of the various aims (or outcomes) e.g. security and reliability of supply, protecting the environment, minimising costs are most important to them. All of these matters will be taken into account in the decision making process which the Councils will now work through”.

He says it is also intended to conduct a second phase of consultation which will pick up on the issues and options raised through the first phase. The form and content of that second phase can only be determined after the analysis of the first phase has been considered by the Councils.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>