One for all those screaming about da Māori stealing da water…
Ngāti Awa wins right to appeal billion-bottles-per-year water plant expansion
An iwi has won the right to appeal a Chinese-owned water bottling plant’s plans to expand its facility and fill nearly a billion bottles from an aquifer in Whakatāne every year.
Creswell NZ, a subsidiary of multi-billion dollar Chinese water bottling giant Nongfu Spring, was granted consent by the Bay of Plenty Regional Council in 2018 to bottle water from the Ōtākiri Aquifer.
However, the issue of consent has been consistently challenged by local iwi Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Awa, which claims the bottling activity would significantly damage the mauri, or life force, of the water which holds special significance to the iwi.
The iwi previously challenged Bay of Plenty Regional Council’s issuing of the consent in cases taken to both the High Court and Environment Court – both of which were unsuccessful.
…here’s co-governance and the Treaty actually saving Pakeha interests!
Seeing as Chinese Banking interests inside Infrastructure NZ were the ones to lead the NZ delegation to Scotland to study their water infrastructure that allows for privatisation, we should work hard to resist their influence.
On a burning planet, we can’t be seen by China as their South Pacific Well.
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Don’t know why you are bothering Martyn, people will still turn this into a race thing, you know, ungrateful hori’s trying to steal the water…
We can have effective commanders and military leader
we can have idealistic heros fighting for a genuinely good cause.
Inspiring and honorable warriors willing to die for a cause in service to his god, definitely.
But a good ruler over a kingdom? Oh, hell no.
I strongly suggest you adopt a wait and see position here.
It may not be all about what you think it is and the next step in the saga may well surprise you.
If you are that worried about a few tonnes of the sacred water leaving this ‘special’ nation in Chinese-owned bottles, then someone should go to Port Waikato and stop the river flowing off-shore, taking the sacred waters away from Aotearoa.
I don’t know what is the worst element in this issue: the racism against Chinese people, or indulging the woo-woo thinking of life-forces in the water.
Which is why pakeha like Ada clearly wouldn’t understand maori POV and its relationship with water. Remembering that Maori had to change its spiritual values and beliefs to appease pakeha ‘one white man god with a long white beard in the sky sitting on a cloud watching and knowing our every move and thoughts’.
“indulging the woo-woo thinking of life-forces in the sky.”
I’m real keen to hear about this mystical relationship with water Stephen, specifically Ngai Tahu and their consent application to massively irrigate a fragile area of Canterbury after first converting from forestry to Dairy- mostly refused under ECAN.
https://i.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/108049548/ngai-tahu-farming-replaces-forestry-with-14000-cows-at-eyrewell
“ Ngāi Tahu Farming will milk 14,000 dairy cows just north of Christchurch, once the remainder of Eyrewell Forest is felled.
However, the South Island iwi-owned business has abandoned plans to convert some of Balmoral Forest in North Canterbury to dairy, after failing to get the required nutrient and water consents”
Yes yes Maori governance will save us from dirty dairying.
Lol.
It’s basic Human nature , no race is superior in intent or deed.
So no one apart from Maori, have or feel a relationship to this planet, or these lands?
Seems a pretty arrogant position, infused with small shoulders big chip, syndrome.
I may be confused therefore I will paraphrase what you just said.
A god was forced onto Maori until the Maori god won and therefore we should now all pray to the winning god.
Well said!
Agreed Andrew, well said Stephen!!
just you belong to 1 ethinic group doesn’t mean you can’t be a rabid racist about other groups…no one I’ll repeat that NO ONE is sanctified by their ethnicity…no one
Or the lack of understanding the abundance of the resource.
Or the need to buy water in a bottle?
You took the words tight out of my mouth ……
What a ridiculous comment. Are you suggesting the only reason they are fighting this is because the Chinese are involved?
@Ada I think you need to think outside the plastic bottle. There are issues here to consider about water flowing into the sea. It’s part of the natural environment, and there will be an ecology that will have developed flora and fauna which grow in semi-saline water at or near the river mouth.
We don’t need co-governance to say no to China.
seems like we do
Fair point
Who gets the economic value of the activity?
No we do not.
Say who?
Good call. Its not democracy and legislates the creation of 2nd class citizens. There has to be a better way to sort historic grievances than by creating new ones.
What is it then? Spell it out and not just consign it to SEP hoping it will go away.
Now we know why Labour is hell bent on creating a three water authority even if it is 10 3 Water authorities.
Is that why the Maori elite is so supportive of the 3Water reform?
Co-governance is written in the Maori version of the Tiriti Article 2 it also promises Maori sovereignty ova their lands and resources. The Pakeha version hasn’t any validity especially when the majority of hapu (sub tribes) signed the Maori version. The British crown took a narrow version and relied on the pakeha version of the treaty which hid its obligations to protect Maori interest and sovereignty in their own country.
Why it took ‘Te ati Awa’ 1000s of dollars and wasted resources to come up with the correct judicial findings is flabbergasting to say the least. The Treaty of Waitangi is the founding document of what we call NZ today. Many ill advised pakeha especially on TDB don’t like that but their ancestors used the treaty to forcibly remove Maori from their culture and their lands.
Your history and education is wasted on Johan
Really Stephen!
Let’s not forget that that the draft version of the Treaty was in English, and missionaries translated it as best they could into Māori, inventing words as they went along because of the limitations of the language.
Firstly there is no chance the British Empire would agree to any form of co-governance with such a minor and primitive people.
Secondly the letters we have that the various chiefs sent to each other confirms exactly what they were signing and the records of the 1860 Kohimarama Conference confirmed both their understanding AND how pleased they were with the results: Rule of Law instead of utu, an end to slavery and no more musket wars.
You’ve been terribly mislead by faux academics and their endless reinterpretations to suit their radical agendas.
Maori, elite Maori and iwi are not the same thing.
The elite represents themselves. ‘Maori(dom) is not one voice for all because it has never been.
Iwi is a corporate structure created and invented for the Treaty Settlement process/negotiations and settlement with the Crown.
The Mana is always with the Whanau who are represented by their Hapu. They are the sentient human beings in all of those descriptors.
No iwi are the same. They speak for themselves as individual entities and, or groups.
https://nwo.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/QandA.pdf
I think this is why they failed, and lost in court.
“the mauri, or life force, of the water which holds special significance to the iwi.”
That statement holds no water in the real world because it is part of a belief system.
Right or wrong those values aren’t of this world as they are part of another system and belief structure.
You would need another court system for that case to be settled such as a Maori High Court.
Only an idiot politician would allow water privatisation in New Zealand.
Lots of idiots in the Labour Government.
Gullible idiots who are about to be taken for a ride under the guise of 3Waters.
How would “significantly damage the mauri, or life force, of the water which holds special significance to the iwi.” hold up in court?
Does ‘protection of sacred’ in the treaty include this claim?
Does the water flow nearby out to sea like most in NZ or is it an aquafer?
Without the water does it create an environmental issue?
Other than Maori not profiteering from this directly, does the BOP Council? Is it shared with all rate payers which would mean local Iwi’s as well?
If this was not China but Australia would we be so incensed?
Personally – my only issue is if they are using plastics for containment and any environmental damage from pollution – but that’s all business I ask of.
“claims the bottling activity would significantly damage the mauri, or life force, of the water which holds special significance to the iwi” What a joke. We mock religious people for this sort of anti science fake crap but we pretend that Maori have a point.
Yes it’s ridiculous how some agree with this mythical nonsense.
More contrary are those that ridicule religion but believe in Maori fairytales.
I’m with the science.
What science would that be to indicate that God existed?
The fairytale that Jesus walked on water or that you would go to this mythical Heaven if you repent?
Yet you ridicule Maori beliefs, hypocrite.
Oh Bob the last still a bigot
I don’t care what the rationale is. As your mob Bob insist on degrading our water sources we should not be letting any company local or otherwise take massive amounts at next to nothing out of the country
And unbelievably, Labour is trying to force this religion into our new Science Curriculum – they think its part of Chemistry. And I’m not kidding.
Specifics please. Genuine question, not trying to smash you down, I really am interested in specifics.
Martyn – Elite Maori will sell it to the Chinese for a share of the profits…
Nathan,
Of course that’s so obvious.
Isn’t the problem that there are business rules which enable the privatisation of water – so if it’s profitable to bottle our water and sell it offshore, it doesn’t matter whose doing it – someone’s going to do it because we have systems and rules that enable that to happen. Basic capitalist commodification of everything. That is largely unchallenged.
Sure, Maori co-governance can function as some kind of brake against outright privatisation through treaty claims.
Yet the IWI up north was happy to sell its treasured harbours health to the, now Japanese owned Waste Management, to build a mega rubbish dump in Dome Valley. It seems their taonga isn’t worth much after all.
I saw two chinese people fill up their water bottles at the end of the Waikato where it hits the beach. They put money in the honesty box. There you go then.
Maori should not be the only ones to launch appeals – relying on Maori to somehow save NZ assets is a failing strategy.
Dome Valley environment court shows how dangerous this strategy is – when a few members can somehow change their mind with a 2 million dollar housing gift and jobs if they agree with NZ wastemanagement. If iwi get the polluted land back when NZ waste management are finished – what happens if it requires significant money to remediate it? Already have had Auckland Council taxpayers pay for Mobils remediation at the tank farm in Wynyard Quarter.
Assets should be related to the communities around them and laws should be to protect the assets from damage aka in the case of water and land, pollution.
No-one should own water and therefore no-one should have the right to export it. In addition water bottling is highly polluting and should be minimised as a worst case scenario in natural disasters not being sold with meals at McDonalds and becoming a number one polluter of our landfill and seas due to government laziness at regulation.