Christian Simon

20181103

The National Ratepayers and Residents association

or

The United Independent Self-sufficient Communities of NZ.

1.

For many people the community is still on the centre of their life. It’s the place for schooling, sport, shopping, recreation, cultural activities and for many people, also the place of work. For many people believe democracy is what happened at the community level. At this level everyone has the ability to have influence and make a difference.

2. Bureaucracy has been destroy our communities.

What we have seen since the rise of neoliberalism is decision-making being taken out of communities and centralised. Councils decide about local issues they really know nothing about. They rely heavily on “experts”, whose agenda is regional, or national or in many cases even global, and who don’t care a fig about local views. The experts all have “old” expertise related to and focused on corporate interests. Because of this urgently needed innovations are nearly impossible to achieve, and decisions are often made in the face of the overwhelming preferences of the local community.

“Structural Plans”, “District Plans”, “Long Term Plans”, “Annual Plans” are things that local government must, by law, produce. For the most part they are produced in a vacuum and once published, they are largely ignored on a day to day level. In this system, established corporate interests are far more powerful than the will of the people.

3. The results are now there for all of us to see.

-In the last two decades the waterways, streams, rivers lakes and soil have been contaminated, in some cases completely beyond repair.

-Even after 20 years of hard work a diminishing percentage of families can achieve the goal of owning a mortgage free home.

-Traffic volumes have grown until some of our cities (e.g. Auckland) have become more or less permanently gridlocked.

-Waste is contaminating and poisoning the land, the rivers, and the oceans.

-The incidence of cancer and other environmentally caused disease is rising and spreading. (The pollution is polluting humans, because we, too are part of the environment).

4. What can we do about all this?

On one hand, the global situation is becoming less stable and less certain. The so-called “Free Market” is breaking down and being replaced by moves to protectionism and “trade wars”.

Our entire global economy and way of life relies on oil for energy and depleting material resources. We keep going as we are and any of us, without needing any special education or training can see where we are headed. What will the price for oil be in, say, ten years from now? What will the price of basic commodities be? If the land on which all the grain is growing today is poisoned by chemicals, what is it going to cost to feed the human population ten years from now?

On the other hand, at the local level we have almost unlimited outstanding opportunities. Resources such as the internet provide basic information about everything.

Everyone has the chance to inform themselves properly and independently.

The necessary knowledge exists and is readily available. Knowledge of how to grow healthy food sustainably without destroying waterways and the soil and knowledge of how to produce clothes and shelter other items from readily available and plentiful plants (NZ options are quite unique in this respect).

Solar energy systems for household, industry and traffic are well developed and even today already cheaper, or would be if the artificial electricity market was reformed.

We have enormous opportunities to convert what is viewed today as waste into commodities that have value using smart and already well-established technologies at the local level. (Just one example: By sorting what is now plastic waste we can change short term “throwaway” products to long lasting ones.)

Human waste and waste water can be changed into valuable resources if we simply change the way we collect and treat black-, yellow- and grey-water separately.

Today the establishment (the food, energy and waste management corporates) largely block or frustrate these urgently needed conversation and changes of approach.

But now, working together we have a chance for the ratepayer and resident associations to support and develop local initiatives and local entrepreneurs to build local skill and confidence leading to infrastructural investments at the local level.

The influence of a national ratepayer association on policy-making at central government level could be enormous. The pressure that local communities can bring to bear on the political process of enacting anti-community, and anti-environmental laws and regulations can be seen. There are many excellent examples of community-based action that has forced central policy changes. (In Germany, for instance, community-based initiatives in the solar and wind industry formed the basis for implementing regulations that created further LOCAL development, where the benefits stayed at community level.)

The concept of united independent self-sufficient communities of NZ could be the underlying goal (target) to guide almost all of our collective decisions and actions. The world has to change. We can choose now whether we control that change or are its victims.

Christian Simon Town planner Mangawhai 03/11/18