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The Muster- Laurie Patterson: Groundswell NZ · The Muster on Hokonui

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the muster, Laurie Patterson of Groundswell New
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Zealand joins us in studio. Laurie, good afternoon.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, g'day Andy, how you doing?
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Not too bad, although when you came into the studio
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: you said it's like being ushered into the dentist.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Well it is really, you get told, you know, oh
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: come on through, but the only thing you've got in
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: your favour is it doesn't sort of smell of methylated
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: spirits and all that other stuff that a dentist does,
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: so I'm feeling relatively more happy than I would be
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: if I was going to the dentist.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: You guys at Groundswell, you've been pretty vocal around this
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: issue regarding the flood zone and what's being proposed.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Correct, Andy. Like when Bryce and I started Groundswell NZ
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: back in 2020, really, we were working against unworkable regulations,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: which was the, you know, the freshwater thing that David
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Parker put in and everyone's got to sow their crops
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: for the whole country on the same day and all
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: the rest of the absolute nonsense. But this thing that's
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: happening in Gore is actually right up there with that.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: And we're going to present to the council on Friday
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: the 18th at about three o'clock that the council really
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: wants to look after the people in the town and
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: their property rights. That's really what it's about because we've
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: got a flood zone in here and now people are
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: going to find it very difficult. It's 69 streets, I think.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: About 1205 properties and they're going to find it difficult
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: to get insurance or the price is going to go
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: through the roof and their property values may go down.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: When really what we want to do, and congratulations to
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Environment South for tickling at the river out there, we
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: want to clean it out properly and that would take
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: away the risk.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Gravel extraction, it's a no-brainer, but at the same time
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: there's a plethora of things on the table for the council.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: I suppose the issue around this as well, Laurie, is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: from a council perspective, is this was open for public consultation.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems to be that it wasn't actually consulted
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: on perhaps the way it would be. I probably shouldn't
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: say too much about things because we've got to go into...
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: mediation with the council on the 12th to 13th of October,
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: I think, about this. And me and my naivety, Andy,
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: I thought when we were going to have mediation, we'd
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: sit down with the councillors and the mayor and just
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: talk things through. But that's not how it works out.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: We had a preliminary one and there's lawyers from each
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: council and a hydrologist and a planner who seems to
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: actually live in Nelson. I don't think any of them
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: at all live in Gore. And so it's sort of
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: kind of an abstract exercise for them, I think. But
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: this is really going to affect Gore. It's going to
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: gut it. And the only positive thing I could possibly
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: see out of it is that they might have a
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: bit of a use for tourism, as in they could say,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: come to the crazy town and have a look because,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: you know, three houses in the street are suddenly up
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: on stilts and there's a house over there that's added
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: on a room and it's suddenly up on stilts, you know,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: 1.8 to 3 metres. and for builders in the town
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: and subbies in that, everything's just grinding to a halt.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: It's crazy.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: So you're quoting Gore as being called crazy town?
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so. It could go well that way.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you think about it, the new floor
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: level on some of these is going to be the
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: height of the ceiling on the rest of the building.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: How's that going to work? And in the main street
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: of Gore, where businesses have to have wheelchair access, there's
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: one building they'd be looking at there, and that would
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: mean The ramp to get wheelchairs in there would be
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: something like 32 or 40 metres. So how's any of
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: that going to work? But this adds a lot of cost.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And I'm already told that there's been two or three
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: people that wanted to build that have actually walked away
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: from it because of the added cost that it would
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: cost them. And they've said, oh, no, forget it. And,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: you know, there's people that want to invest and go.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: The southern economy is going well. And why would you?
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Do you think it's just public relations, though, coming through
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: from the council that transparency hasn't been what it could
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: have been? Or is this a matter of so much
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: has happened in such a short time that it's just
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: been lost in translation?
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: I think it's the way we do things, Andy. And,
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: you know, we get told that, you know, we've got
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to do submissions on something and it's got to be
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: in by a certain date. I would have thought something
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: as major of this. The first thing the council would
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: have done would have been probably to have called a
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: face-to-face meeting with all the builders and subbies in Gore.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: They know who they are. and sat down and see
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: if they could work some common sense into things. And
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: the other thing is, all the people on the 1,206 properties,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: or three properties, I should say, who actually pay rates,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and the council's only got two ways of getting income.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: One's from their ratepayers who pay them, and the other
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: is borrowing money. And I would have thought that their
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: ratepayers would have been the first ones they'd have called
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: a meeting and said, look, this is what Environment Southman
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: are proposing. What do you think? All this emailing and
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: submissions is all very well, but most people are hardly
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: sick of it, I think. A face-to-face meeting would have
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: done a lot of good.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Are other towns facing these issues?
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. Just about every town in New
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Zealand is actually built on a river for the reasons
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: of getting water for the town and also getting rid
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: of waste. So what's going to happen is they did all...
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Gore's just sort of first off the... off the ramp,
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: if you like. And what's happened is that they've changed
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: a thing called the AEP, or the annual exceedance probability
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: for the river, which means how much water is going
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: to go down from a 100-year flood to a 200-year flood. Now,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: when they do their modelling, and as you know, anti-modelling
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: is really just guessing, it actually says that the chances
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: of this happening in their modelling is 0.2%.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: But this isn't actually Gore District Council. This is advice
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: they've received.
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: Well, this comes through from Environment South and who are
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: in charge of that. And by the way, they actually
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: use a modelling system. Once again, we're guessing modelling based
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: on Australia.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Why is that?
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Well, you tell me. I would have thought that New
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Zealand's got a bit of a different system where we
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: have heavy rain and the rivers are quite steep and
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: the water goes down in a hurry and it's gone
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: on Australia. can have a flood and it takes three
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: months to get down to the mouth of the river
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: so I don't know but the thing is the people
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: that are in this area are actually you know they're
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: going to pay monetary wise the value of their properties
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: and things like that and there's a lot of retired
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: people in that area there because it's handy to the
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: shops handy to the RSA handy to the Bowler Green
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: all that sort of stuff so there we are and
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: It's interesting, Andy, that back in, I don't know, two
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: and a half thousand years ago, they had big floods
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: on the Yangtze River in China and a whole lot
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: of people died, of course, a few million. They asked
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: Confucius what he thought because he was supposed to be
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: a relatively clever dude. And he said, dig river deep,
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: build banks high. And, you know, they worked that out then.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: They got a few million more peasants out there to
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: do just that. and what are we doing? All we
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: do is we have a report on it, and then
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: that goes to someone, and they read it, and they
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: have another report, and there's reports going all around the place,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: and actually this bugger all gets done about fixing the river.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Was it Tina Turner that said river deep, mountain high?
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, she went a bit of an extreme, perhaps,
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: to get mountain high, but she was right with the idea, yeah.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, this doesn't really affect me personally, Andy, because
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I live out at, Waikaka am I allowed to say
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: that or you get the T-Row police on to me
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: again um but you know this is like many people
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: this is my town and I went to high school
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: here and and it's also a service town it's important
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: to all the farmers out there so um you know
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: we need gore and towns like it to be sensible
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: and um and enable everyone to get on with their
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: lives so What we want to do is have as
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: big a turnout as we can at three o'clock on
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: Friday the 18th, which is this Friday, outside the council offices.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: And we will present someone at the council, if the
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: councillors or the mayor or whoever can come out, and
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: we will present them with the petition.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Good on you, Laurie. Always appreciate your time. Better leave
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: it there.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: No worries.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: Laurie Patterson of Groundswell, who resides at Waikaka. Up next,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: Graham Butcher Farm Consultant. This is the muster.