I understand the motion put by Mike Cardiff today is going to be rejected on a legal technicality.
It is the most glaring example yet of the fact that the bureaucrats have taken over and the citizens of Kāpiti no longer have a voice. Our elected representatives have been silenced.
The will of councillors to have their concerns and the concerns of the people they represent, heard, has been smashed by the legal might of the KCDC bureaucracy.
If a concern is brought to the attention of councillors by the community, and particularly if those councillors share that concern, I think it is a reasonable expectation of the community that whatever cooperation is required from within the legal or technical resource of council, paid for by our rates, should be made available to councillors so the case may be presented in depth and with accuracy and put to the vote. It’s called democracy.
The fact that the full legal and technical resource of council paid for by our rates is being used to PREVENT the communities concerns from being heard is abhorrent. It is vile and it is evil.
From the day this issue arose, the people of Kāpiti and our elected representatives have been given incomplete, misleading and incorrect information by officers of this council in order to prevent us being able to effectively have our issues heard.
Whenever we have asked questions we have been made to wait the maximum time legally allowable for an answer under the OIA and often those answers have been deliberately inadequate – based on technicalities so that we get the minimum possible information, not the information that any reasonable person could see was being sought. We have been repeatedly and deliberately obstructed.
Of all of the questions I have asked of my elected representatives in public speaking time, not one has been answered by an elected member. I have only ever had answers from officers of the council.
I want to point out to the elected members today that your voice has been stolen. And if your voice is stolen, so is mine.
Now, instead of hearing your voice on my behalf, I hear the words that the bureaucrats are putting in your mouths.
Councillors, I implore you to stand up for your community. I implore you to stand up to the bureaucrats who are silencing all of our voices. Use your voice so our voices can be heard. That’s how this forum was designed to work.
I want to offer my thanks and encouragement to Mike and to the councillors who had made the decision to support his motion.
I hope what the bureaucrats have done in silencing half of this council today will make you wonder why they don’t want any of you to speak. Why they don’t want you to have an opinion. Why they insist you leave your opinion at the door and fall into line with their opinion when you enter this room.
There is one final thought I’ll leave with you today.
The theft of your voice, the deception, began at the Regulatory Management Committee meeting on August 30, 2012, 5 days AFTER information had been entered onto 1800 LIM reports. This council voted on and passed a motion that accepted the Shand report as a validated basis for everything that has happened since.
That first deception, the first of many designed to silence you and to silence the community, was this – at the very top of the report, point 2, it says this – Significance of Decision.
This report does not trigger the Council’s Significance Policy.
Of course it did. But the bureaucrats told you it didn’t.
Because if they had been honest and said it did indeed trigger the Significance Policy, guess what? KCDC would have been obliged by the Local Government Act to consult with the community. And god forbid that.
