What happens behind closed doors

And a drongo writes

There has been a few interesting public excluded sessions of council in recent times.

We know about the one concerning Barry Williams, I’ve written a few of those stories and today on Stuff published what he said, “Stupid black b****”.

Williams was less keen on chatting yesterday.

As an aside, since publishing the stories I’ve had a mixture of positive and negative replies of my own.

Including this (from an Auckland businessman, yes, I looked you up, John):

“Don't you have any news to generate? The Mayor of Auckland's spot-on referring to you all as drongo media.”

I don’t understand how a community board chair calling a hotel worker a “stupid black b****” in a packed pub is not news. I guess I am a drongo.

Here is another one. I get ones like these semi-regularly:

“Journalists are one of the least trusted professions, nobody trusts you, so its naive at the very least to expect us to trust you.”

Thanks.

I’ve said it before, if you write any stories that touch on racism or the country’s Covid response I can expect my inbox, and particularly my spam folder, to fill up fast.

So back to closed door meetings.

Well, there is another one being held this week, this time at the Otago Regional Council.

The agenda for Thursday’s meeting, included Item 4. RESOLUTION TO EXCLUDE THE PUBLIC.

The only information available is: Proposed Maritime Reserves.

That’s interesting. This has been floated (excuse the pun) for a number of years (since 2019) but for whatever reason (Covid, too-hard basket) that has been delayed.
That could be because the six maritime reserves – which reach from Timaru to Waipapa Point – are in areas of rich biodiversity, but that rich maritime hotspot is also popular with recreational and commercial fishers.

Public consultation on the proposal to establish a network of marine reserves and marine protected areas off the coast of the south east coast closed on 3 August 2020.

By way of background, marine reserves offer the highest level of marine protection, and come under the Marine Reserves Act 1971.

The department responsible for the management of the country’s maritime reserves is the Department of Conservation.

That means that DOC is responsible for the implementation, management and monitoring of New Zealand’s 44 marine reserves. 

I was surprised when I checked, that DOC and Fisheries NZ received 4,056 submissions. Submissions were extended - due to Covid - and closed on August 3, 2020.

And then radio silence.

But if you wanted to fill up that silence you could always read those submissions. They are here.

What jumped out at me about this process has been how open the departments involved have been in proactively releasing information.

That includes the following:

• Recommendations report (PDF, 17,879K) (opens in new window)

• Map of Network 1 (PDF, 1,149K) (opens in new window)

• Paper from Ministers of Conservation and Fisheries to Cabinet Environment, Energy and Climate Committee 14 March 2019 (PDF, 212K) (opens in new window)

• Minute of Cabinet Environment, Energy and Climate Committee 14 March 2019 (PDF, 115K) (opens in new window)

More of this please.

And at 4.30pm I got the following response from DOC:

We are currently in the ministerial decision-making phase for the six proposed marine reserves, which are part of the southeast marine protection network, and anticipate having decisions soon.

It’s not appropriate for the Department of Conservation to comment on the proposed marine reserves ahead of these decisions.

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It is coming.

It was interesting to read that the Dunedin City Council was investigating a voluntary property acquisition scheme for flood-prone South Dunedin.

Mayor Jules Radich said purchased properties could be used for a range of adaptation projects – pumps or pipes, parks or wetlands, or new more resilient housing developments.

“If we start acquiring property today, it will give us more options tomorrow, meaning we’ll be better placed to build a new pipe, expand a park, or move a house – whatever is required to make South Dunedin a safer and better place to be,” Radich said

Council’s statement added that, as part of a draft indicative business submitted to Treasury, it estimated costs up to $132 million over an initial five-year period. That was based on buying 65 properties a year.

So my maths works that out to be a budget of $26 million a year, so in order to buy that targeted amount of 65 properties, you are buying home for an average of $400,000.

I jumped on TradeMe to see if there were any properties at that price in the impacted area. I found these:

Two bedroom unit ($369,000):

Three bedroom brick villa ($429,000):

Three bedroom ($352,000):

But obviously the key matter will be if other (newer, warmer) housing is available, and I suspect the former Forbury Park will come into play.

Watch this space.

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I laughed when I read the ODT’s Today in History column as it had reference to a large crowd of youngsters becoming unmanageable, with several boys pushed through large glass windows.

The reason for this? Barton’s Butchery was handing out free kites. I found the original story here.

That happened on September 5, 1932, right next door to my actual office. Below is a picture from the Hocken of the building.

If you know where the below was taken, please comment below.

Nice to see the Otago Community Trust awarding $30,000 grant to He Waka Kotuia Trust to support the Ngā Manu Kōrero National Secondary Speech Competition.

Dunedin will host this event for the second time in its 58 year history.

And NZ On Screen has announced that the Making New Zealand series has been uploaded. Dunedin, as you would expect, features heavily.

Speaking of TV, I don’t really watch any free-to-air anymore, but was contacted by a mate to say some footage I had shot was in a TVNZ documentary.

The footage is of old mate Barry Kloogh grimacing as he walked from court to his awaiting car. You can watch that doco, Crime: Need v Greed, here.

I loved this image from Critic about the trip into town from Dunedin Airport. Outstanding.

criticmag

A post shared by @criticmag

Spot the Dunedin locations on this new video from Dunedin muscian Neive Strang:

As an aside, the Could I Reset video was made by Sean Donnelly, who is known as the artist SJD and is a new(ish) resident of our fine city.

This week I located one of my all-time favourite Dunedin songs, it kicks arse.

Here is the Dead C with Scarey Nest:

And if you liked that, this is even better:

And lastly I went down a nostalgia bent, and found this. Who else had their school books covered in wallpaper?

Have a great week!