2 POHUTUKAWA COAST TIMES (August 22nd 2014)
Let’s put politics back into our election campaign THE EDITOR SAYS BY DUNCAN PARDON duncan@pctimes.co.nz General elections are an irksome time for small community newspapers like the PC Times. How, with limited resources, do we do justice to a nationwide election campaign? We’ve tried various approaches over the years. These include letting candidates write their own articles… yawn. The past couple of elections we’ve attended meet -the-candidate meetings and tried to report on those. But these events are very stage-managed and it’s hard to gain much of an impression about either the candidates or their policies. So this year we’ve decided to take the plunge and actually meet and interview each Hunua candidate one-onone. This is not as easy as it sounds. Just finding them is a mission. This isn’t their fault. Hunua is a huge electorate and candidates by necessity spend most of their time in the major population areas such as Pukekohe. Their time in our sparsely populated part of the world is limited. THE BIBLE SAYS: But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57)
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WEEKLY TIDE CHART - HIGH WATER DATE
FRI 22nd SAT 23rd SUN 24th MON 25th TUES 26th WED 27th THURS 28th
AM
PM
4.42 5.36 6.26 7.11 7.52 8.31 9.08
5.14 6.03 6.48 7.29 8.07 8.44 9.21
HEIGHT
2.9 2.9 3.0 3.0 3.1 3.1 3.1
to focus on because most of the mainstream media is already doing that. And the danger is that in so doing, we lose sight of what elections are actually for. This can be dangerous because we then allow ourselves to become ill informed about the Bigger Picture. We will be asking our Hunua candidates to tell us a bit about themselves so we can get a small picture of who they are as people. We will be asking them how much they know about their party’s policies, which of those policies they want to champion, which do they believe are important to the people of our district, what do they want to achieve should they end up being elected, and what is their vision for the future of our nation. “Gotcha” politics may be fun for those in the media, but at the end of the day what the people of New Zealand want to know is that their families are going to live and grow-up in a country that is caring, safe, prosperous, treats everyone equally and provides quality jobs, education and health care. We hope to start introducing you to our Hunua candidates as of next week’s PC Times.
Barging in sand only solution to Maraetai erosion This is my view of the erosion problem at Maraetai: Back in 1957 I lived with my grandmother, Mrs Bregman, in Rosemary Cottage on Maraetai Drive. This was the second house from the eastern end of the houses on Maraetai Drive. Back then Maraetai Drive was a gravel road along the top of the sandbar in front of the houses. Between the sandbar and the houses from the Central Store (Birch’s) towards the eastern end of the beach was a depression which used to collect water in the winter and during very high tides. Just to the seaward side of the large pohutukawa was a large pond which remained most of the year (good for catching frogs and tadpoles in).
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What’s more, none of them - except the National Party candidate – have a dog’s show of actually winning, so it is understandable that the amount of time, effort and resources they are willing to put into a futile battle is going to have its limits. The candidates themselves no longer decide the election anyway. Under MMP, it’s the Party Vote that determines who governs the country. Electorate candidates are cannon fodder. Their job is primarily to stump up the Party Vote, except in electorates that are genuinely marginal (and Hunua isn’t one of them). They are a small cog in a very large wheel. However, I still believe voters like to put faces to parties and policies, so for that reason we will once again be focusing on the electorate candidates . Don’t get too excited though, because there are quite a few issues you won’t be reading about in these profiles. You won’t be reading about leaked emails, Kim Dotcom, dirty politics, racist jokes, gender apologies and Whale Oil. It’s not that these issues aren’t important. The moral integrity of those who govern says a lot about who we are as a nation. But these are not what the PC Times wants
On the seaward side of the road in front of the houses was a large shell bank which had grass on it in places. Locals pulled their launches on to the top of the shell bank for winter storage and maintenance. The beach was shelly, not sandy as it is today. Sea grass grew on the mudflats out to where the boats were moored in the summer. Back then, from memory, there was the two lane road, a shell bank with patches of grass on it which was wide enough for launches to be left at the top at right angles to the road. The large rock in the beach at the end of the houses only showed when a storm dragged sand down the beach and as children it was a big job to dig a channel around it so that it became an island at high water on spring (king) tides. So what changed and what went wrong?
Maraetai was a real trip away from any large urban population. Once cars became more common and more people came out, the shellfish beds were raped by people over-fishing the resource. This caused a lack of replacement shell as the existing shell broke down naturally and became sand. The road was widened and sealed. Iron implements were used to dig for shellfish. Vehicles were used very occasionally on the sand. Worst of all, in recent times, the council allowed contractors to use machines to push and scrape sand back up the beach to try to stop erosion along the edge of the road. Shellfish only live in the top 150mm of sand from the middle of the beach to the low tide mark. The very machines which are supposed to be repairing the erosion
LOOKING BACK From the files of the Pohutukawa Coast Times
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From the Pohutukawa Coast Times of August 20 1999... • Orere Pt residents and Manukau City Council can’t agree on the best way of dealing with the small community’s flooding problems. Manukau Consultants Ltd has now rejected an alternative flood management proposal put forward by the local residents association. • The annual Beachlands v Maraetai rugby clash has run into a slight hitch. The Maraetai team seems to have gone into hiding. “We’re ready, but where’s the opposition?,” Beachlands coach Ivan Lavas wants to know. • Clevedon Drama Club is hoping for a revival. The club has struggled in recent times and for the past few years a lack of members has meant it has had to combine with neighbouring Hunua to put on productions.
are actually making it worse for the immediate future. They not only crush and kill the juvenile shellfish but any which survive are pushed too far up the beach where they die. This leaves no, or insufficient, shellfish to grow and then die to replace the shells which are breaking down naturally. Consequently we end up with less and less sand so the waves come further up the beach and the erosion gets worse. My belief is that to remedy the current situation the only way is to barge sand in and
build up the beach so that the sand is about half a metre higher than the current seawall and maintain this for two to three metres out from the wall. Build up only half the beach – from the creek by the boat club down to the end of the houses – at the start then in a few years’ time when the shellfish have had a chance to recolonise this new sand, then finish the rest of the beach. This way we would be working with nature instead of against it. ROGER WALTON Beachlands
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Stone seawall built to last • FROM PAGE 1
But at that time it needed approval from the then Auckland Regional Council. The ARC didn’t like stone seawalls . “They would only allow a timber wall which is what they got. And they certainly didn’t get a permanent structure!,” says Len. He says sand dunes and planting won’t work, either. “There’s not enough room. It gets used by hundreds of thousands of people every summer who walk over it. It needs a permanent stone wall, constructed properly so there are no issues with it.” He agrees that stone seawalls are expensive but makes the point that, when built properly, they will last a very long time. “They’ve already spent a fortune along that beach with retaining walls and walkways and it’s just a big waste of money…all because the ARC said ‘no’ to a stone seawall. “It’s one of the most used beaches in New Zealand, yet one more big storm and the road will go.”
Beachlands Social Club report Beachlands Social Club met on August 5 in the Beachlands Hall. The club was entertained by the Pakuranga Ladies Choir, who sang a variety of pleasant songs, followed by afternoon tea. The raffles were won by Cushla Walton and Anne Kaire. – Chris Horton