Wooden debris is ubiquitous in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Warren Buckland
Wooden debris is ubiquitous in Hawke's Bay. Photo / Warren Buckland
Is forestry the bad guy?
Is it an industry that has effectively destroyed Hawke’s Bay?
Is slash the reason the region was so severely impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle?
These are questions that could be answered if a ministerial inquiry into forestry slash and land use had included more of Hawke’s Bay.
Catherine Wedd, the National Party candidate for Tukituki, doesn’t know who’s to blame for the wood that’s everywhere. All she’s sure of is that Minister of Forestry - and MP for Napier - Stuart Nash should not have limited his inquiry to Tairāwhiti and Wairoa.
“I don’t think there would be one person in Hawke’s Bay who, when they looked around at the devastation and the forestry slash or the wooden debris that has taken out bridges, washed up on all our beaches, strung itself across orchards and is hanging around people’s houses where they’ve seen slash torpedoes coming at them, would say nothing needs to happen,” Wedd told Hawke’s Bay Today.
“Something has to happen.”
Awatoto is just one area where debris litters the landscape. Photo / Warren Buckland
In explaining the focus of his inquiry, Nash told media it was partly to do with 10,000 petitioners from Tairāwhiti and Wairoa.
If that’s the threshold, then Wedd and National’s Napier candidate Katie Nimon say they are going to get 10,000 signatories of their own.
“Unless the minister or the Government says ‘no, good point, let’s extend the inquiry,’ we’re going to be out there getting signatures on this petition and talking to people in Hawke’s Bay and seeing and hearing the frustration and bringing this to Parliament, if that’s what it’s going to take,” Wedd said.
She and Nimon launched their petition on Friday, having been nonplussed by the ministerial inquiry’s exclusion of much of Hawke’s Bay. Not least because some of the waste appears not to have come from commercial forestry.
“We need to look at the wooden debris and look at the percentage of slash, compared to willows and poplars,” Wedd said.
“You’ve got your local MP, who’s also the Minister of Forestry, and he has a responsibility to the people of Hawke’s Bay to answer the questions they want answered.
“As it stands, there’s no way that we can get answers to those questions.’’
Nash told Hawke’s Bay Today on Friday that restricting the inquiry to Tairāwhiti and Wairoa would enable it to be completed quickly, adding that some of its findings might be applicable to Hawke’s Bay.
Wedd’s worry is that a quick inquiry means barely scratching the surface and certainly doesn’t provide the clarity residents in the region are seeking.
“I just can’t understand why you wouldn’t include your own constituents and your own people,’’ she said.
