Bruce Bisset: Same issues tabled 10 years on

Bruce Bisset.

Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same. And while a decade's not a lot of time for evidence of change to emerge, looking back to my first columns in 2006 I find while some of the targets have shifted, the same issues remain firmly stuck on the table.

Yep, this week marks the 10th anniversary of this unapologetically left-wing pro-environment column flying in the face of an increasingly rabid right-wing media bias - a weekly snippet of what I like to think is sanity amidst the greedy elitist madness of our suffering world.

No slight intended for this paper's current editor, Andrew Austin. Having survived three before him, I applaud Andrew's efforts to make Hawke's Bay Today a better-balanced newspaper serving up a multitude of viewpoints. I'm sure regular readers will agree it's in good heart under his watch.

However a leftie-greenie immigrant from Auckland was bound to get some flak, and I've drawn a fair share, but I've also been humbled to garner praise from ordinary folk I meet when I occasionally stumble from my cave. Bottom line, I don't ask people to agree, but I do ask you to think.

My first column was about the proposed new town at Ocean Beach - remember that? - and the gaping holes in a process that was run more by the developer than Hastings council. Fast forward to now and we have the Ruataniwha scheme being run even more opaquely by an arm's-length "company" the regional council is happy to hide behind.

Then I tackled foreshore access, pointing out that two-thirds of beaches were closed off by foreign owners or long-time pakeha farmers, not Maori; and that the basis of Te Tiriti O Waitangi was partnership, and wasn't it about time we all recognised and built toward that. While racist barbs see print less often, there remains a deep divide that only genuine open-minded reappraisal can span - a "back-story" lesson we should have debated instead of a new flag.

I stuck the boot into Federated Farmers for saying there was no real value in being "clean and green" or organic, a mind-set they still cling to - as evidenced by their promotion of genetic engineering - and now, look where we are, with two-thirds of our rivers heavily polluted.

Support for women's refuge, exposing chemical pollution of land, upbraiding councils for shoddy wastewater treatment (still shoddy), the absurdity of religious hatred, the technological dumbing-down of children, and arguing for incentives to move people out of Auckland were among the first few weeks' topics.

And, of course, climate change. The file shows a June 2006 column quoting scientists warning of "unstoppable" global warming in 10 years' time. This week's news of unprecedented early melt of arctic ice had climatologists scrambling for the hot-lines. But we don't seem to care for predictions, even when they come true.

Among the variety of subjects covered, there have been philosophical pieces and even the odd poem .

Unavoidably, the corrupting influence of neoliberalism and our growing enslavement to big corporations is never far from the surface, and I freely admit I am a socialist reformer at heart. Simply, I put people over things, and environment over money, every day.

Until the apocalypse, editors willing, I'll continue to raise the issues and pose the questions that you, the people of Hawke's Bay, need to think about in order to make up your own mind about what's really going on.

That, in a nutshell, is the right of it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet