Ariana for Wellington Regional Council – Campaign Launch

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[When]    Saturday, 10 August

[Time]    2PM

[Where]    Bucket Fountain – Cuba Street, Wellington CBD

MANA Candidate Underscores Right to Water in Regional Council Campaign Opening.

Entertainment by the beautiful Marama Te Kira and Free Water from Wellington Springs will be served.

The right of everyone to have free access to water will feature in the launch of MANA’s campaign for the Greater Wellington Regional Council.

The launch will have a group giving away water while another group tries to sell it.

Candidate Ariana Paretutanganui-Tamati says that proposals for a super city and a proposal that all councils should charge for the use of water by volume could lead to the commercialisation of water. She says that people who are already struggling financially will find it hard to pay water bills.

The Greater Wellington Regional Council’s proposal for local government reform is very much like the Auckland super city she says. In Auckland many of the services are now run by Council-owned profit-making companies and all properties now have water meters.

Greater Wellington Regional Council Chair Fran Wilde also chairs the Local Government Infrastructure Efficiency Task Force, which has produced a report whose recommendations include compulsory water meters for everyone says Ms  Paretutanganui-Tamati.

Other concerns featuring in her campaign are the proposed super city for Wellington and pollution of the sea  and coastline if drilling for oil goes ahead.

The campaign launch will take place at the Bucket Fountain, Cuba Mall at 2pm on Saturday 10 August.

.If you would like to help get Ariana elected for the Wellington Constituency of the Greater Wellington Regional Council please contact:

Warwick Taylor Campaign Manager
Phone: 022175 8362 or 04 9344626
ariana4wellington@gmail.com

Donations can be made to:

MANA Wellington Campiagn
Kiwibank
38-9015-0095533-00

And or please join us at our Fundraising Dinner:
Saturday 17 August at 6pm
Trinity Union Church, 14 Hall Street, Newtown
$5.00 waged $10 Unwaged
For tickets phone Warwick Taylor (contact above).

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Blogger’s Note

Having met and campaigned alongside Ariana on numerous occassions, on issues such as fighting state asset sales, I heartily endorse her candidacy for the Wellington Regional Council. As well as tireless* dedication to justice, sovereignty, and peace issues, Ariana is a woman of political  integrity and personal honesty.

She has my support, and my vote.

– Frank Mascskasy

Blogger

(* Tireless – I mean that literally. Ariana is a Wonder Woman of energy and enthusiasm!)

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Spying on the spyers…

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So once again, the State (through the Police), is found to be spying on a citizen,

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Source: NZ Herald – Police seize Cuppagate texts

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That complaint, as we all recall, resulted in police raids on the NZ Herald and Radio New Zealand newsrooms. It’s the sort of thing that might be commonplace in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe; Fiji under the military;  or Chile, under Pinochet.

It appears to be becoming more and more commonplace in our own country. This doesn’t make New Zealand a “nanny state” as National and it’s supporters once screamed hysterically in 2008 (see:  Showers latest target of Labour’s nanny state) – this is morphing a once liberal, progressive country into a policed surveillance state.

It’s as if the ghost of East Germany and thousands of it’s STASI operatives have descended upon our country.

Key, however, doesn’t like being spied on. No, not one bit;

John Key had called in police to investigate whether Ambrose had deliberately recorded the eight-minute conversation in front of a media pack in a Newmarket cafe, after Ambrose gave the recording to the Herald on Sunday.

Source: IBID

Key will happily empower the GCSB to spy on all New Zealanders and force telcos to hand over information on their clients. His right-hand man, Chief of Staff Wayne Eagleson,  will spy on a journalist and strip away her right to privacy.  And Key’s appointed “investigator”, David Henry,  will gain access to an MP’s emails and phone log.

But if anyone dares to invade Key’s privacy (even if he was in front of a couple of dozen journalists and cameramen at the time), the Prime Minister will have no hesitation in bringing down the full weight of the state apparatus on the hapless ‘offender’s’ head.

What was it that  Russell Norman said about John Key?

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Source: NZ Herald:  Norman: Key ‘acting like Muldoon’

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Despite a bit of screeching; gnashing of teeth;  and juvenile feet-stamping from rightwing tossers like Karl du Fresne, Cameron Slater, and others of their ilk – Russell Norman called it perfectly: John Key is as autocratic and manipulative as Muldoon was in his hey-day.

Which is not good. As Martyn Bradbury pointed out in a blogpost on 2 August (see: With all due respect to ‘Si & Gazza’ in the morning ),

It’s like the more Key rips up our civil liberties, the more the sleepy hobbits love him – we are a nation of political sado-masochists. There seems to be a dark streak of anti-intellectualism in our Shaky Isles that embraces Key’s nonchalant ignorance with the passion of a junkie to their dealer.

Enough New Zealanders loved Muldoon and his autocratic style to vote him into office as Prime Minister for consecutive nine years. Now we seem to have Muldoon v.2 – and that worries me.

All I can say is; thank god for MMP.

And to hell with the notion of a four year Parliamentary term.

This blogpost was first published on The Daily Blog on 5 August 2013.

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