Editorial - October 9, 2012

The lack of action by any authority over the problem of traffic, particularly the two-wheeled variety, on the beach at Ahipara over the years is disgraceful. Plan A, it seems, has always been to do nothing, despite the momentum that should have been provided by a fatality on Dargaville's Ripiro Beach almost six years ago.

It was on New Year's Day 2007 that 13-year-old Daisy Fernandez died when she was struck by a motorcycle. That prompted what was mistakenly interpreted as action from all quarters, including the Northland Regional and Far North District councils, and then Northland MP John Carter. In the Far North regulation was most urgently needed at Ahipara and Tokerau Beach, but almost six years later nothing has changed.

The finger should probably point first at the district council, although to be fair it does not have the legal right to impose rules over the entire beach. Other authorities, including the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Transport, hold sway over specific strips, a ridiculous situation which, at one end of the spectrum, could be seen as preventing any individual authority from exercising common sense, and at the other as allowing them all to maintain a state of inertia without attracting criticism.

At the end of the day Daisy's death has inevitably lost its impact, however, and, regardless of who could or should be held accountable, nothing has changed, and seems unlikely to. If it's up to Parliament to simplify responsibility then that should have been done years ago. The district council should have been driving that change. It seems rational now for the council to decline an invitation to impose a speed limit on the beach at Ahipara given that authority for managing the beach is about to be vested in a new statutory board, whose membership will include representatives of the Crown, iwi, DOC and the council, but that can hardly be offered as an excuse for what hasn't happened over the last six years, and indeed longer.

Daisy Fernandez' death should have given irresistible impetus to calls for the regulation of traffic, but the potential for disaster goes back much further than 2007. Serious injuries have been suffered on that stretch of beach, and further north, over many years. No one could have failed to recognise the growing likelihood of further injury, or death, arising from the increasing presence of vehicles, especially motorbikes, often with inexperienced riders aboard, in close proximity to other beach users.

The fact that many of those at risk are children, whose ability to assess a vehicle's speed and likely trajectory is rarely well developed, has always made the mix of wheels and people even more dangerous. It should not have taken the death of a child at the other end of the province to make that danger apparent, but the fact that Daisy Fernandez' death has effectively been ignored is appalling. If someone dies on the beach at Ahipara or Tokerau before officialdom in one form or another does something any number of people will, to coin a cliche, have blood on their hands.

The police have questions to answer too, at least as far as Ahipara is concerned. This newspaper has noted on numerous occasions that the Mangonui County Council adopted a bylaw long before the district council was even thought of, imposing a 30mph speed limit on the beach from the Kaka Street access west. Thought was also given to banning traffic altogether, but was regarded as impractical, or at least unduly restrictive, in that while it would free the beach of hoons it would also ensnare those who drove on the beach to launch boats or gather seafood, and who represented no danger to anyone.

The district council clearly has no memory of that bylaw - a mysterious fire that destroyed a mountain of documents inherited from the four counties and two boroughs that became the Far North District Council in 1989 may have a lot to answer for - and no apparent interest in investigating it. And there would be little point in doing so, or considering a new bylaw for that matter, without an undertaking from someone, presumably the police, to enforce it.

That's long been one of the "outs" for the council. It can pass bylaws until the cows come home, but unless the police are going to start issuing tickets there seems to be little point. For their part, the police have long argued that they don't enforce council bylaws. But they do.

The liquor bans that have proliferated around the Far North over recent years are bylaws, every one of them. And the police enforce them with a will. The difference seems to be that they want to enforce liquor bans but have no interest in enforcing speed limits on beaches. The police in Kaitaia do deserve credit, however, for the commendable efforts they have made to enforce the other rules of the road at Ahipara, on the road and the beach, at least over the peak holiday season. Judging by what the locals are saying that effort hasn't done much to improve motorcyclists' behaviour, but that hasn't entirely been for lack of trying.

Both Ahipara and Tokerau have conservation issues that sit alongside safety concerns, and they too need to be addressed more seriously than has been the case so far. The council has been told that a significant section of beach west of Ahipara's Kaka Street already has official protection, in recognition of the birds and other wildlife it is home to, but again that seems to have come as news to those who should be enforcing it, and pleas for action have once more fallen on deaf ears.

Hopefully the statutory board that will soon govern 90 Mile Beach will change things. Maori seem to have a much greater awareness of cultural and conservation values than Pakeha bureaucracies do, and are perhaps less likely to genuflect at every opportunity to "higher powers". If all goes according to Hoyle, Haami Piripi will be chairing the board and he is unlikely to sit on his hands as everyone else seems to have done.

Tokerau Beach has no such saviour on the horizon. The best it can probably hope for is that whatever happens at Ahipara will rub off on the Karikari Peninsula, but something needs to be done there as well. Ahipara might tend to be the squeaky wheel when it comes to bikes on beaches, but the risk of calamity is just as real at Tokerau, where areas of high historic and conservation value are also being destroyed despite the best efforts of some very committed local people.

It was a sad day the first time some idiot took a motorbike to Ahipara or Tokerau and decided to let rip. Riders and other beachgoers could co-exist reasonably happily, but as always seems to be the case common sense has gradually been discarded, and, sadly, until someone comes up with yet more rules it will only get worse. The kids who ride many of these bikes may not have any brains but their parents should; given the evidence that they don't, it's up to those who have the ability to kick them into line to do so.

If they're not going to do that they should be working on the statements they will release when someone dies, expressing their sorrow, condolences to the family of the deceased, and explaining why they let it happen.