Agriculture Minister David Carter has finally said it: ECan was sacked because it didn't "co-operate" with farmers and give them all the water they wanted. And other councils had better knuckle down and obey, or they too will be sacked:
Speaking at the Irrigation New Zealand conference in Christchurch yesterday, Carter said the Government had "no option" but to sack the councillors.(Emphasis added)"We had to act here in Canterbury because the situation was untenable if we are going to seriously make progress in delivering this irrigation," he said.
"I would have thought what happened recently with Environment Canterbury would be a signal to all regional councils to work a bit more constructively with their farmer stakeholders."
As for other stakeholders, who want clean rivers rather than open sewers full of cowshit, well, we're not important compared to the mighty farmer, I guess. Even if we outnumber and outvote them, as we now do in Christchurch, our views should be ignored and our environment destroyed in order to pander to the greed and archaic views of a tiny but self-important minority (of which Carter happens to be a member).
This turns democracy on its head. But then, the right have never been very keen on that, have they?
