In fact social activists have been responsible for most of the quantitive change in NZ over the last 100 years and even perhaps more so in recent times. They have been a vital part of our growth as a progressive nation, often dragging reluctant conservatives into a new social era.
It was activists for social change that gave women in NZ the right to vote before any other country and who moved our thinking on gay rights and treaty issues.
They stopped the All Blacks' tour of racist South Africa and were instrumental in bringing change to that country, and just as importantly they forced us to take another look at ourselves on race relations issues.
It was activists for social change that forced the Government to pull our troop out of the ill-advised war in Vietnam.
It was activists who put pressure on the Government to deregulate the "State Collectives" euphemistically known as Producer Boards, opening the way for the development of the dynamic and vibrate pipfuit industry that we have in HB today.
And It is my bet that many of the critics today were mostly on the wrong side of all of these recent contests.
Greenpeace are at the forefront of social action in NZ today and it is my job to talk to them and understand their position. It's actually quite hard for me to avoid them as my daughter is an active member and she sends me regular updates on issues that she thinks I'll be interested in. Actually like all daughters she actually thinks I need be interested in these issues.
For the record I also talk to Federated Farmers, Grasshoppers and other sector lobbyist groups to also understand their position and I get emails and phone calls from all sorts of people with all sorts of points of view.
And I do agree with a lot of what Greenpeace advocates. I don't want the Japanese hunting and killing the whales in our waters. I don't want a Danish ship blasting our ocean with their seismic testing for oil, with dubious effects on our fisheries.
I do want us to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, and more importantly I don't want to take the risks of drilling and fracking for oil in or around our aquifers. I am extremely proud that this was one of the first initiatives that our Council moved on in this new term.
I do want our streams, rivers and lakes to be swimmable sooner than in 20 years and I do want a much greater effort put in to forestation programmes in our steep, eroding hill country.
And perhaps most importantly I do want a dynamic and profitable economy where our farming and industry works in harmony with our environment, not against it.
It is of course ridiculous to suggest that any of our councillors were complicit in this particular social activism event.
We had no idea of the campaign they were planning.
It is in fact as ridiculous as proposing that the councillors who supported investing $80m in the Ruataniwha dam should resign because they are complicit in wasting $20m of taxpayers' capital if the project doesn't proceed.
Rex Graham is Chair of the Hawke's Bay Regional Council. Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz
