While the important people go about their holidays:
The public are left to live in the mess they have created, over many years of impropriety coordinating and facilitating
zealous marketing for use of the public and abuse of their fund.
Is it reasonable to say that the recession is a result of greed? If the answer is broadly ‘yes’ identifying loaning practices by banks that were unsustainable by the general public or a capture of a housing market
demanding that false capital economy lost foundation, then it appears (in New Zealand anyway) that those responsible for
perpetuating this behaviour have largely escaped public reprisal and natural justice.
Such freedom from a stern reproach against serious public damage costing universally billions of dollars to those
damaged, and billions, trillions even, backing and supporting those who perpetrated the condition of greed may be
undeniably excusable, simply because of the size of the problem and that the only real redress is revolution.
Yet this Christmas holiday period, some things should be considered differently and if the matters of fiscal collapse in
New Zealand are going to be perpetuated by repeating local behaviours of ‘excusing the problems’ then the ‘ordinary
public’ should begin to seriously consider what is before them and additionally what alternatives can be implemented.
For someone, such as myself who has paid no living interest to the business pages of newspapers or the financial reports
on the daily news, the many articles above rightfully cause me a heavy concern. I can still read. This means that in
general I can understand what is written, even if it takes me longer to consider than a traditional Chief Executive
Officer, or share investor. My attitude, I am certain, is representative of many thousands of New Zealanders, where
effectively our energy is more comfortably centred on our own existence and the accrue of financial return for
considered investments is less of a concern than how we go about our lives in order to stay alive.
By the headlines of the Infratil search, I read that Infratil has a business and going concern for market loss in
International Airports which, unless the market of international flight can be revived from after the recession, may
well be heavily expensive. Investments that are not core, such as NZ Bus may be sold off to protect the investments and
any capital shift. NZ Bus have recently been allowed in what appears to be a cabal decision to run through the most
narrow of passageways in Wellington, a heavily frequented pedestrian mall – apparently because it will save time getting
to the Airport.
Why have Infratil been given an ability to select the route for buses through central Wellington over and above the
public, in integrated fashion, electing to run the buses through a treasured pedestrian mall, in itself statutorily
protected as a significant physical resourse through a demanded public consultation?
How is it possibly a reasonable and fair decision where the public are just as entitled to consideration and to be asked
which route suited them as prior to the further protection of this significant legislative consultation being entered?
How is it possibly not a business and trade negotiation, excused from the provisions of submission under the Resource
Management Act 1991? And how is it possibly reasonable that the decision to include the Wellington Airport owners
Infratil, majority owners over the Council with the Mayor who takes director’s fees ‘privately‘as director of the Airport, and the plan to put the buses through the mall prior to the public consultation is agreed
by all other responsible integrated parties as ‘required’ and ‘necessary’ and ‘priority’ and ‘catalyst’? How is it that so many responsible parties in New Zealand blankly accept that the public are of no consequence to a
decision to which they should be and are statutorily protected? How is it that our bureaucracy is so blind to this
conflict of interests?
As I attempt to bring these points of alarm to the attention of those who have the democratic responsibility to protect
the public who pay them, I find that they and their respective media all appear to be on holiday. And to add the insult
to the injury the Wellington City Council has jammed the statutorily protected appeal period into this festive season,
removing considerable access and days from the construction of a reasonably considered and balanced appeal.
There are some types of cheating of a public of their value and rightful access to respect that should not be tolerated
and this is certainly one of those occasions. What the public do with this ordinarily is largely down to the information
fed to that public given by those who run mainstream media. If that media is on holiday with the bureaucrats, directly
repressing information, protecting those who are coordinating the misuse of public responsibility and purse then they
too must eventually be the subjects of attention.
What is required in this environment where the pecuniary relationship between a Mayor and the private sector is so
openly wrong, directly protecting that private sector from damages of a recession enacted through a directed cost to
public space and through that public’s given relaxation and recreation, is that those still with responsibilities within
and with duty to public responsibility engage the impropriety prior to the effects of a naturally building animosity and
repugnance by the public for national injustice. You need to negotiate.
Individually, I am involved in many exposures of inefficiencies and serious injustices in the public sector. These now
span into the judiciary. So there is little that can be argued against the rallying of a crowd where there is no
entitlement to justice through ordinary democratic means. As a political busker, I am not responsible to parliament, to
Council or to the judiciary to assist them out of the considerable difficulties for which they have bound themselves. I
am responsible in a citizen’s sense to discover the truth and prosecute the fact.
If the relationship between the Mayor and the bus operator Infratil was legitimate reasonable and fair, then arguably
the saving would be that Council received the director’s fees. I am assured Council does not receive these fees. There
is something very seriously wrong happening in New Zealand and as at today so far, there seems to be no one around to
fix it.
At minimum, the Mayor has money to pay back to the public whether or not to compensate the mall.
Respectfully,
Benjamin Easton
The Political Busker
ENDS