Is it ASSET sale or RIVER sale?
Thanks to our forefathers, New Zealand’s rivers have always been owned by ALL New Zealanders.
Many of our greatest rivers are currently controlled by publicly-owned companies, directly impacting the surrounding wetlands, fish and bird environments.
All New Zealanders have contributed to the building of these companies and benefit from renewable energy and public profits.
Now there is a proposal to sell a large part of these companies to private buyers.
WHAT would this MEAN for our RIVERS?
Should New Zealand’s rivers and their waters continue to belong to all New Zealanders, as our forefathers wished?
Are the clean, fast flowing rivers that we inherited a legacy we wish to pass to our children and grandchildren?
In the long-run, is it not safer for the environment and more economic to retain full ownership?
Will investor profit be increasingly prioritized over the well-being of our rivers?
Will this accelerate the ever-increasing loss of so many of our bird and fish species?
Would we ever be able to buy them back if we changed our minds?
Is THIS what we want to DO?
Picnic with Brian Turner
Join us for BYO picnic to reflect on Brian’s thoughts and poems on our rivers
Thursday 24th Nov 12.30pm. Harbourside Gardens, cnr Itchen and Humber St,Oamaru . If wet, at Loan and Merc Building.
There is more information and download options at our website at http://riversnotforsale.wordpress.com
This is a general Appeal for our Rivers from a small core of veterans of 10 years of planning battles to protect the Lower Waitaki River from various new hydro development proposals.
We are deeply concerned that none of our leaders, or would-be leaders, are drawing attention to the link between asset sales of our major generation companies and the risk of associated loss of public control of our rivers with that transaction.
These publicly-owned energy companies have a very big influence on our hydro river catchments. On the Waitaki River, for example, among other things they have legal claim over waters, own big tracts of land, can have interests in irrigation supply networks, and can secure “requiring authority” to purchase land that they need for their schemes.
We don’t think that the the majority of NZers have made these crucial connections and therefore risk making under-informed decisions.
The list of questions below is intended to stimulate people’s thinking about this issue. If you agree that it’s important people think about these, we would be very grateful if you would forward this email generally to friends and lists. Even though we consider this a non-partisan initiative, there should be no dissemination after midnight on Friday 25 November.
Sorry this is all so late, but we did expect these aspects to have emerged as debate issues before now. Besides, if everyone sends it to several friends in the next 36hours then it will reach a massive number of people.