GDC conflicted, commissioner overdue

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

The slash and sediment inquiry has recommended that Gisborne District Council’s Resource Management authority be removed and that a Resource Management Commissioner be appointed until 2028. This reflects Council’s failure to adequately monitor and enforce forest harvest consents and the subsequent damage that followed. The Courts have also criticised Council’s failure.
As background, Council has significant conflicts of interest that prevent it from being an effective Resource Management authority. 
The first is the conflict between its role as district council to deliver services and promote regional development, and its role as a regional authority to protect the environment. These duties often come into conflict. It’s an embedded conflict that prevents Council being an effective Resource Management authority. It has seen weak plans to protect the region’s land and waterways for decades. Council has seen its role to promote forestry development and often buckles to this lobby.
The second conflict of interest is that Council owns a near 4000 hectare pine forest through its ownership of Tauwhareparae Farms. This forest is in the same catchment that has seen large quantities of slash and sediment wrecking the Uawa in recent years. Council may argue the forest is at arms length managed by Gisborne Holdings Ltd (GHL). However GHL, and thereby the forest land, is 100-percent owned by Council. This forest income also incentivises Council to not introduce adequate planting and harvesting rules. To do so clashes with its fiduciary responsibilities which, while not so evident in public, play out behind closed doors.
The appointment of an independent Resource Management Commissioner is long overdue and should be welcomed by all Councillors and the Mayor.
John Kape