Hekia Parata, panel chair of the ministerial inquiry into land use in Tairāwhiti and Wairoa, releasing a report and recommendations in Gisborne on May 12, 2023.
Hekia Parata, panel chair of the ministerial inquiry into land use in Tairāwhiti and Wairoa, releasing a report and recommendations in Gisborne on May 12, 2023.
Opinion
Clive Bibby is a farmer, consultant and commentator who lives in Tolaga Bay.
OPINION
They say “time waits for no man”. Actually, it’s worse than that! It has a habit of leaving innocent people as collateral damage of either indecision or bad decision-making.
In other words, those at the bottomof the social ladder too often become casualties of the elite lust for, and retention of, power.
Think of the masses who are daily put at the mercy of the elements simply because their struggle is less important than the position of those who have the ability to prevent the carnage.
We only need to look at the aftermath of cyclones Hale and Gabrielle to see how the clean-up is based more on a political response to the disaster rather than making decisions that will ensure these preventable events are less likely to happen again.
For example, the Parata inquiry set up by the previous government was framed in a way that the terms of reference shielded both local and central governments’ culpability for the damage that could have been avoided.
As a result, its focus spent little time with those people who live and work at the coalface. And as a consequence, the blame for actions or inactions was almost totally laid at the feet of forestry companies - most of which were innocent of the charges laid against them.
Sure, we have seen the responses from government that will lead to a more acceptable and less damaging environment than what existed before, but you can’t help noticing that the main determining factors have and always will be those based on political survival.
Is this likely to change even if the will is there for it to do so?
Some will say that the “squeaky wheel is the one that gets the oil” and too often that is true, but wouldn’t it be nice if the response to individual cases was based on merit rather than responding to something that pays a greater dividend at the ballot box?
Returning to the aftermath of the 2023 climate events, it has been noticeable that many of the recovery programmes and the amounts of money allocated to them are the result of a reaction to ideological persuasion from those who know how best to manipulate the political system.
You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar in order to work out why vast amounts of government money are being poured into areas where the political dividend is more easily discernible. And l’m not saying that all of these projects are not worthy of the money being spent.
Clearly, in most cases government has set priorities based on local advice and the positive results of that expenditure are already beginning to show. That is how it should be, but there is still the need to listen to those whose survival is hanging by a thread - and for them, the prospects are grim.
You see, in a democracy such as ours, unfortunately political wisdom is something born from experiencing survival in the ‘beltway’ - and, sadly, in that environment, there is no place for the few who don’t live there.
That scenario is never going to change until the rich and powerful make their decisions mainly based on a humanitarian response to each crisis.
I believe that, as a species, we are capable of getting the balance right but it will take a quantum shift in attitude from those at the top before the benefits of those changes are seen at the coalface, where the common people are just keeping their heads above water.
