the state of our environment | January 2013 : Hawke's Bay Regional Council & MPI

the state of our environment | January 2012

It’s either feast or famine. During the last few Januarys we were growing webbed feet and aquaplaning round our own backyards – we had 320%, 319% and 191% of normal rainfall in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively. This year there is less coming out of the sky than out of our sweat glands as the region gets above average temperatures and only 51% of the usual January average rainfall. It’s now the fifth month in a row that we’ve had below normal rainfall… and counting, so it’s no wonder the hills are a parched shade of brown and the low flow bans are coming on. There was the odd glitch in water quality at a small number of our watering spots during the month but in the main it’s been great conditions to enjoy the region’s beaches and to liberate the jandals rather than don the gumboots as in Januarys past.

20130205_HBRC_SOE_January2013.pdf

ENDS

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A (Sweary) Analysis Of Urgency Abuse And
The Consititution

Keith Ng: You’re looking at the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. Basically, the courts said that the Government had to pay family members who looked after people with disabilities (because not doing so was discriminatory), so the Government passed this law to say: “Yeah nah.”

The RIS isn’t just redacted for the public – it was redacted for MPs. *Parliament* voted on this, with all the relevant facts blacked out.

Sure, it’s understandable, right? If you’re passing a law that’s really dodgy, you don’t want advice from civil servants saying “uh, this is pretty illegal” to be public. But actually, that’s not really a problem here, because in the same piece of legislation, THEY SAID THEY CAN’T BE TAKEN TO COURT. More>>