Saturday, 29 June 2019

Plaman - "Fossil-mining company broke with millions in the bank" JUNE 24, 2019

The Foulden Maar site contains fossils which are 23 million years old. Photo: Kimberley Collins CC BY-SA 4.0

Farah Hancock

Farah Hancock is a Newsroom reporter based in Auckland who writes on conservation, technology and health.

environment

Fossil-mining company broke with millions in the bank

Insolvency documents for fossil-mining company Plaman Resources show there are millions in the bank and few current liabilities.
The offshore company, which had plans to mine a fossil-laden maar in Middlemarch for diatomite, quietly went into receivership late last week.
When information from a leaked Goldman Sachs report hit the press, local support for the project dissipated and public outrage grew.
The reason for receivership given in a newly-released insolvency document is delays in an application to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) to acquire land adjacent to land already owned. The additional land would allow space for infrastructure for the mining operation.
A condition of the OIO application was a corporate reorganisation to remove the majority shareholder, Malaysia’s Iris Corporation.
The insolvency document states: “The directors advise that, as a result of previously publicised delays in OIO consent, the Company was unable to acquire the adjacent land, nor complete the corporate reorganisation required to secure new capital.”
Current assets are listed at $18 million, $17 million of which is in a trust account of a US law firm. Non-current assets, such as land and mining and exploration permits are listed at being worth over $10 million.
Current liabilities are $1.63 million.
What appears to be the issue is what’s listed on the balance sheet as a non-current liability - a $32 million loan from Goldman Sachs.
Taking this into account puts the company around $5 million in the red.
It's been previously reported Goldman Sachs was the exclusive financial advisor of the company as it tried to secure more funds.
The loan has been reported as a “bridging loan” and repayments would not be needed until May 2020. It was structured so Plaman Resources could raise $50 million for their business needs before it would be required to pay Goldman Sachs back.
It’s not known what interest rate and conditions were on the loan and whether Goldman Sachs called the loan in, or if Plaman Resources decided it wouldn’t be able to raise the funds to repay it. The statement from the receiver’s KordaMentha says Plaman Resources “directors asked that receivers be appointed”.
Damaging report from Goldman Sachs
Ironically it was the leaking of a Goldman Sachs report which led to the souring of public opinion. The 112-page report has been described as appearing to be prepared for investors in the project.
The leaked report was contemptuous of local opposition to the mine and said no social or community issues were expected:
“Any appeal to the Environment Court is likely to come from a small number of local residents, who are not well-resourced and will not have comprehensive technical reports to the same extent at Plaman Global would have.”
It also said Dunedin City Council was “pro-mining”.
Dunedin's Mayor Dave Cull responded with a letter to Plaman Resources demanding the company explain itself and provide him with a copy of the report.
“The media report that the Goldman Sachs report suggests a number of ways that your company can ‘manage’ media and local communities. This includes suggesting locals are poorly-resourced to fight any proposal, which also left me concerned about how forthright you have been with information to us.
“The media reports appear to show that the full extent of the environmental impacts and loss of "pre-eminent" fossil cache at the Foulden Maar were not adequately disclosed at the presentation you gave us last year. At the presentation, we were given the impression that the site only contained black diatomaceous earth, and now we have information that it could contain fossil records of incalculable value. As such, we would like your assurance the site contains only black diatomaceous earth as it has a strong bearing on the support we continue to give.”
He did not receive a copy of the report - only a brief look - and later revoked the support he had previously provided to the OIO.
The leaked report also indicated the entirety of the deposit would need to be mined. This caused scientific outrage which bled into a public backlash. Social licence evaporated.
Letters of support for OIO process were revoked or updated. The University of Otago issued a formal statement and over 10,000 people signed the Save Foulden Maar petition.
The abrupt loss of support may have been seen as reducing the likelihood investors would get on board.
Plaman Resources needed US$300 million capital to build the mine and processing plant and get to stage one of the proposed project. This would allow them to produce 250,000 tonnes of product per year. Once underway, it was expected profits would be used to take the project to full capacity of 500,000 tonnes of processed diatomite a year.
Various consents to proceed with the project would need to be gained from the Dunedin City Council, Clutha District Council and Otago Regional Council. With the high level of public interest in the project following the leaked report, consents would likely face challenges and delays.
Iris Corporation
Iris Corporation, the Malaysian-owned majority shareholder of Plaman Resources has experienced rough times of late. Originally, the company specialised in digital identification projects, such as e-passports. Its attempt to diversify into agriculture was not successful.
It has been getting rid of what it describes as non-core assets which it said were “bleeding the company dry”. Plaman Resources is one of the assets, however Iris CEO has said there will be no “fire-sale”.
The connection with Iris Corporation was also seen as a “sensitivity” for New Zelanders, according to the leaked report, because of links to palm oil plantations. The report said guaranteeing the removal of Iris Corporation as the majority shareholder “will be viewed positively” by ministers.
In a letter to MP Clare Curran, Plaman Resources indicated its intent to buy out Iris Corporation’s shares. The money was there, but lender approval was required and the OIO application appeared to be crucial.
“We currently have the full amount of funds required to buy back Iris’ shares in our bank account, and once we receive OIO consent and the approval of our lender, the funds will be released and Iris will no longer be a shareholder in Plaman and will no longer have any representatives on Plaman’s board of directors.”
The assets and creditors
Along with money in bank accounts, Plaman’s assets include the 42 hectares in Middlemarch the company currently owns listed as worth around $630,000 and mining and exploration permits listed at $4.9 million. A $550,000 deposit on a land purchase was also listed.
Secured creditors listed include Goldman Sachs and an Auckland-based container company. The company said it would be retrieving the single container Plaman Resources rents on a monthly basis.
Further creditors include Merril Corporation Singapore, Google Australia and O’Kane Consultants. O’Kane specialises in dealing with the waste from mining operations and would not comment on how much it was out of pocket.
The other creditors are family trusts of the founders Peter Plakidis and George Manolas. Both Plakidis and Manolas were also listed as employees.
Other employees were employed through subsidiary companies. Plaman Services in Austrailia employed two people, and Plaman Services in New Zealand employed one person. Both companies are in liquidation.
Full circle
All options are on the table according to a statement from receivers KordaMentha.
“The receivers are currently assessing options for the company and its assets. All options will be considered, ranging from recapitalisation to a potential full or partial sale of the company’s assets.”
Opponents to the mining proposal hope there’s now a chance the land can be put into public ownership and protected.
If a buyout is offered it will be full circle for Plaman Resources, which acquired the land and mining rights when the former owners Featherston Resources went bust.
A former shareholder of Featherston Resources describes his personal view of Plaman Resources’ conduct in the purchase as “clever, but not actionable”.
Plaman was originally brought in to help secure finance for the troubled operation. It then resigned from the role and made a buyout offer for the company on behalf of the Malaysian-owned Iris Corporation.
Plaman Resources ended up being one of nine defendants in an Australian court case around the demise and sale of the prior owners of the mine Featherston Resources.
The plaintiffs, 12 former shareholder of Featherston Resources, sought a number of court orders including: “an account by Plaman of profits derived from its role in proposing the DoCA [deed of company arrangement], on the basis that having been given a mandate to raise capital for FRL [Featherston Resources Ltd], it resigned it on December 4, 2013 and then used the knowledge it had acquired to propose the DoCA on behalf of Iris.”
Plaman Resources filed a court order against the case being held in Australia, claiming New Zealand would be a better location. The proceedings were dismissed and the case was not pursued in New Zealand.
Overseas investors hoping the third time would be a charm for diatomite mining at Foulden Maar would need to gain approval from the OIO to purchase the 42-hectare site.
With the scientific value of the site now widely known, any application is likely to receive considerable public interest.
Read more:
Hope as fossil site claims second mining company scalp
Foulden Maar fight rumbles on
Financial offers dangled for fossil mine support
Scientists reject fossil land swap
Southern discomfort at fossil mining plans
Answers from the fossil miner
Unjustifiable vandalism and grand promises
Fossil-dirt nutrition claims under doubt
Dunedin Mayor demands facts from fossil-mining company
Who is the fossil mining company?
Opposition grows to fossil mining project
Dunedin's 'Pompeii' to be mined to make pig food

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Foulden Maar - "Unjustifiable vandalism and grand promises" Rod Oram - MAY 26, 2019

Rod Oram

MAY 26, 2019

Rod Oram investigates the political, economic, and business spheres in New Zealand.

Comment

Unjustifiable vandalism and grand promises

Take a close look at both the economics and science of the foreign investment proposal that entails the destruction of an invaluable fossil site dating back 23 million years. Rod Oram did, and is far from reassured.
Some offers by foreign investors to bring their capital to New Zealand promise such riches, at least for them, that their forecasts soar into the realms of implausibility.
Such are the promises of Plaman Global, an Australian/Malaysian company with its highly controversial proposal to turn the unique, invaluable and fossil-rich Foulden Maar in Otago into an animal feed supplement.
When it hits full production three years after starting up, Plaman reckons its mining and processing operation will generate US$1 billion a year in revenues and US$780 million in EBITDA earnings.
Given it’s promising 100 jobs, that works out at revenues of US$10m and EBITDA of $7.8m per employee. That would be fabulously profitable for the investors, while the locals would earn only typically modest mining, trucking and processing wages.
By way of comparison, OceanaGold’s Macraes mine, just 25km to the northeast of Foulden Maar, employees 559 people. A low cost and highly profitable gold mine by NZ standards, it generated US$449,732 of revenue and US$259,210 of EBITDA profit per employee last year.
Thus, Plaman’s claims for its Foulden Maar opencast mine turn out to be 22 times the revenue and 30 times the profit per employee of our most profitable gold mine. For the next 27 years.
No wonder the Overseas Investment Office is taking so long to decide whether to approve Plaman’s application to buy an additional 432 ha of land at Foulden Maar. This would lift Plaman’s estimated resource from 6.1m tonnes on its current 42 ha site, which is still not in production three years after buying it, to 31m tonnes of fossil-rich earth. Under the Overseas Investment Act, the OIO has to decide, among other issues, whether an investor’s bona fides are acceptable and its project of economic benefit to New Zealand.
Over the past 10 days, Newsroom colleagues have written about the importance of the fossils, the ownership of Plaman, the deep scepticism among scientists of its claims for its animal feed, and the rapidly growing opposition to its proposal. In addition, we have produced with RNZ this podcast.The issues are being heavily canvassed by other media too.
The mystery of the finances
This column will look at the economics of Plaman’s proposal and its abilities to deliver. The verdict is far from reassuring. As such, this column is the antithesis of last week’s which analysed three recent, large foreign investment proposals which will benefit the New Zealand economy, albeit with varying degrees of risks, downsides and impact.
Plaman’s claims for the economic upside of its project come from the report on the project written by the NZ branch of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, which has lent Plaman US$20m as seed funding for the project. Simon Hartley, a journalist at the Otago Daily Times, received a leaked copy of the report. He reported some of the highlights of it on April 20.
As for its ability to deliver on its promises, Plaman faces at least three substantial challenges of coming up with the expertise, capital and product required. It is still a skeletal company founded in 2014 to acquire the original 42 ha site at Foulden Maar. It bought it from the receivers of Australian owned Featherston Resources which had bought the asset in 2011 but had gone broke trying to turn it into an economic mine.
Plaman, led by people with investment banking and real estate experience, has hired a few senior executives with animal nutrition and mining experience. Its sole NZ employee so far is Craig Pilcher, a veteran of coal sales then mining operations in the South Island, most recently as Bathurst Resources’ GM for its mines producing coal for the domestic market.
On the issue of capital, Peter Plakidis, Plaman’s co-founder and chief executive, told RNZ’s Nine to Noon programme on Tuesday that if the OIO approves the land acquisition, Iris Corporation, its 50.9 percent Malaysian shareholder with links to palm oil plantations, would exit. Most of the other 49.1 percent of the company is owned by its other co-founder and chief financial officer, Geordie Manolas and his family, who are wealthy real estate investors in Australia.
The Malaysian exit would only deepen the mystery of the finances of Plaman. Given its plans to build a $36.8m processing plant at Milton, 100km south of the opencast mine, and to buy out Iris, the US$20 m of seed funding from Goldman Sachs will be far from adequate. Even more curious is the Goldman Sachs view that that the project’s cashflow will fund the US$470m of capex needed to achieve the rapid scale up over three years to 500,000 tonnes of finished product a year.
Product promises
Delivering on its product promises is even more daunting for Plaman. Its website says the black diatomaceous earth deposit it owns at Foulden Maar, which it hopes to expand with its additional land purchase, is unique. There are many large and long-mined diatomaceous earth deposits elsewhere in the world, likewise formed from fossilised remains of tiny aquatic life. But depending on their purity, they range from white to grey.
Plaman says its is black because it is “rich in natural organic matter (which contains humics, such as humic and fulvic acid) and other valuable nutrients, which have been shown to be beneficial in animal nutrition. Plaman Global is the only supplier of Black Pearl. No other known deposits of Black Pearl’s® unique composition have been discovered, nor are any comparable products being commercially developed for animal feeds.” (Black Pearl is a trademark it has registered in a number of countries for fertiliser and in some cases animal nutrition.)
In June 2018, Plaman’s Pilcher gave a presentation to the Strath Taieri Community Board, the part of Dunedin City Council which covers Foulden Maar and its neighbouring town of Middlemarch.
One of his slides claims that Black Pearl benefits animals in 10 ways. It “increases average body weight gain; reduces Mycotoxin via its binding qualities; safe and effective ingredient and safe for human consumption; slows oxidation in feed; reduction in waste released into the environment; increases feed conversion and improves carcass yield and meat quality; lower mortality; organic feed additive; increased nutrient absorption and improves gut health; and reduces prevalence of salmonella and E.coli.”
Five months later Plaman received a strong and long letter of support from the chief executives of Dunedin City Council and Clutha District Council, respectively Sue Bidrose and Steven Hill; and a letter of support from Dave Cull, Dunedin’s Mayor, although this past week his support has become more equivocal.
Indeed, diatomaceous earth is used in a wide variety of industrial, construction, agricultural and horticultural uses, and some brands are registered as organic here and elsewhere in the world.
However, Plaman is claiming it offers additional and unique qualities for the benefit of animals, even though the previous owner of the deposit struggled to find many uses beyond an additive to concrete.
A number of animal nutrition scientists are deeply sceptical, or even dismissive, of Plaman’s claims, as Newsroom’s Farah Hancock reported last week.
Last August, Plaman told the NZ Quarrying and Mining magazine that “Black Pearl is a unique product with proven efficacy from trials conducted by AHPharma Inc, one of the world’s leading animal nutrition research houses based in the USA.”
Seeking to verify that, I discovered from AHPharma’s website that it has facilities that could possibly do such tests, although it specialises in poultry. However, it had only 38 employees and revenues of US$7.5m last year, according to business directory ZoomInfo. It seems improbable it has the global standing or range of skills Plaman claims it has. Four of AHPharma’s executives, including its chief executive and VP business development, have failed so far to return my calls.
The only online reference I could find to any study for Plaman was one last June on Animal Pharm, a UK-based agribusiness newsletter. It said: “The company has already confirmed 'outstanding' efficacy in a 42-day study for Black Pearl in broiler chickens and similar results in a swine trial. Additional trials in turkeys and layer chickens are ongoing.”
Plaman has yet to reply to my request for information on the research studies it has commissioned, which organisations did them, and what the findings were. These would need to prove Plaman’s yet-to-be produced Black Pearl product had considerable and unique benefits over other diatomaceous earths to justify the substantial price premium and eye-popping business model it is promoting.

If our farmers let their animals chew through such a unique and important fossil record, they would struggle to justify their vandalism to their fellow Kiwis and their customers abroad.

Even if the product is as extraordinary as Plaman claims, New Zealand farmers would damage their own brand and the country’s if they used it. Foulden Maar is a unique fossil record which so far has only been explored in limited and shallow ways by scientists. They believe it has far more insights to yield about, for example, the first glaciation of Antarctica and the last time carbon dioxide levels spiked in the atmosphere, and how those changed life on this part of the planet. These are insights that will help us cope with the climate catastrophe humankind has unleashed now.
Plaman this week offered to preserve some 20 percent of the site for science and to employ one geologist on its staff full time to watch over the mining of the rest. The latter offer is laughable given the large volume of material that would be excavated every day. And even if the part reserved was the middle, which is the deepest part of the former volcanic cone lake, that would still deny scientists the full fossil record.
If our farmers let their animals chew through such a unique and important fossil record, they would struggle to justify their vandalism to their fellow Kiwis and their customers abroad.
Three examples of how we can find the true value in Foulden Maar are:
- The proposed Waitaki Whitestone Geopark, some 125 km northeast of Foulden Maar. Last year, the Waitaki District Council made a submission to UNESCO for the project to be declared a Global Geopark. Currently there are 147 in 41 countries but none yet here. The submission is well worth reading.
- The Messel Pit in Germany is perhaps the only close comparators in the world to Foulden Maar; likewise the country’s Vulkaneifel is a good example of the value of UNESCO’s designated Global Geoparks.
- Above all, Te Papa has just opened Te Taiao, a major new permanent exhibition on our unique land and biological heritage. This link gives you a flavour of it, but best of all, go visit as I did this week.
It would be far better for the world and New Zealand if Middlemarch, which is at the end of the Otago Rail Trail, offered people from home and abroad such knowledge and amenity, rather than the destruction in less than 30 years of an invaluable fossil site dating back 23 million years.

https://www.newsroom.co.nz/2019/05/26/601769/rod-orams-foulden-maar

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Foulden Maar - Sifting through layers of history - 25 May 2019

Saturday, 25 May 2019

By Elena McPhee

The site of Foulden Maar, near Middlemarch. PHOTO: GREGOR RICHARDSON

Foulden Maar, near Middlemarch, contains thousands of tonnes of valuable diatomite, but is also home to hundreds of previously unknown species of insects and flowers, the world’s oldest whitebait species, and the oldest freshwater eel in the southern hemisphere. Elena McPhee spoke to University of Otago geologist Associate Prof Daphne Lee about the origins of the lake, and its importance. Each spring for 120,000 years, a thin layer of diatomite algae blooms appeared on the surface of Foulden Maar.
Each autumn and winter, the blooms would die and sink to the lake bed.
Gradually filling in the 200m-deep lake, the layers of sediment preserved flowers, insects, fish and plant material that sank to the depths.
They created a record of life in the water and the surrounding rainforest, from 23million years ago.

What Foulden Maar would have looked like 23million years ago. IMAGE: DR PAULA PEETERS

Today, the site, about 800m by 1000m, is largely covered in grassland. The remains of Featherston Resources' failed mining operation, which was sold in 2014, form a white scar on the landscape where diatomite sediment is exposed.
The area contains a smaller 5m deep pit, about the size of a tennis court, where researchers work finding fossils.
Another small pit can be found nearby.

Daphne Lee

For 16 years, University of Otago geologist Associate Prof Daphne Lee and her team, along with dozens of other scientists and students, have examined the fossils at the site. Each diatomite layer had the texture of wet cement or cardboard, and separating them was like prying open the pages of a book.
About 100 different types of plants had been found, 200 different insects, three or four species of fish, and 40 different flowers from 15 different families.
"When a fish or insect or flower or leaf sank to the lake bed it would be covered by the next year's layer of diatoms, and because there was no oxygen there was no disturbance by predators, and no current disturbance because it was so deep," she said.
Thousands of fossils have been found, and researchers are still looking at only a small portion of the lake.
"Most of the fossils we find are leaves," Prof Lee said.
"Sometimes we are lucky enough to find flowers."

This fossil was taken from Foulden Maar, near Middlemarch. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

The maar - a German word meaning shallow crater - was created about 23 million years ago by a volcanic explosion, as magma hit water. Debris stopped streams from flowing in or out of the lake, formed from ground and rainwater - so it was puzzling how it had also been teeming with fish.
After learning about other maars overseas, Prof Lee realised water birds like herons would have brought them in in their bills.
Some of the fossilised fish would have perished when they swam too deep, unable to breathe in the lake's anoxic depths.

A fossil found in Foulden Maar. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

The site has drawn the attention of overseas scholars, including German researcher Dr Uwe Kaulfuss, who uncovered the majority of the 266 individual fossil insects in the maar. They include termites, beetles and ants, which is particularly interesting because New Zealand today has only native ant species remaining.
New Zealand's fauna was "much, much more diverse" than it is today, Prof Lee said.
She travelled to the site about once a month, and described it as "treasure-hunting".
"You have no idea what the next layer will have in it."
Fish fossils found include the oldest whitebait species in the world - and the oldest freshwater eel in the southern hemisphere, a recent discovery which is still being examined.

The majority of fossils taken from Foulden Maar are leaves, but 40 different flowers have been found. PHOTO: SUPPLIED

Scientists who pried the layers apart gained information not only about the species that had lived there - all long since extinct - but the climate and temperature, and rainfall, above the surface. Some species of insects and plants were uncovered that are similar to those that exist today in South America, New Caledonia and Queensland, indicating a climate unrecognisable compared with the harsh Middlemarch winters of modern times.
"It was probably completely frost-free for the forest growing around the lake," she said.
Preserved at the University's Department of Geology, the fossils were so abundant that anyone travelling to the site would be able to find one - but if they were not treated properly they would fall to pieces, Prof Lee said.
The current mining proposal for the site, from which Plaman Resources intends to take up to 500,000 tonnes of diatomite each year, has led to an upsurge in curiosity about the maar.

Taken from Foulden Maar. PHOTO: SUPPLIE

However, the lake's existence has been known since the 19th century. The first mention of the maar in a publication was as early as 1875, and nearly 100 years later, in the 1960s, a master's student wrote her thesis on the first fish to be found there.
Research work at the site intensified massively after 2009, after researchers from the University of Otago received two Marsden Grant grants to work on the site.
They drilled down as deep as they could, 183m into the lake, through 120m of sediment and into the volcanic debris beneath.
Layers of the core are preserved in fridges at the university, where they are used as reference points for the scientists who visit the site to see what they can uncover.
No birdlife had been discovered in the lake so far, but dead bird fossils had been found in maar lake and Unesco site the Messel Pit, in Germany, so it was probable there would be fossils of birds among the layers, Prof Lee said.
Maar lakes were not uncommon, she said, but this was the only maar of its age in the southern hemisphere, filled with diatomite, and providing such an amazingly detailed climate record.
Hopefully, the lake would be preserved in its entirety, so not only scientists interested in climate change but also schoolchildren could visit the site, and extract fossils under supervision, Prof Lee said.
"That would be an absolutely brilliant thing. This is a dream, and it would have to be funded from somewhere.
"[The maar] would be a wonderful educational site for students, and it is, we know, a site of international scientific importance," she said.
"It would be wonderful if it could be preserved in perpetuity, for the scientific community, and public education."

Hilary Calvert 27 June 2019 "Oxymorons and gibberish; plain English please"

Thursday, 27 June 2019

Finance Minister Grant Robertson with the 2019 Budget. Photo: Mark Mitchell

When politicians talk gibberish we should demand they tell us what is really going on. It should not be all about spin. It should be all about the substance. Worldwide, voters are increasingly disenchanted with politicians banging on using meaningless words.
For our part, in New Zealand, there is little excuse for lack of clarity from our politicians. We have a government that prides itself on transparency, is led by a prime minister with a degree in communication and is supported by the Green Party, who have more university qualifications between them than the rest of us have had hot dinners.
It should be easy to achieve accurate and direct communications between the Government, the Opposition and the people.
The stakes are high. Once politicians use words poorly or inappropriately, we lose trust in them. No proper debate is possible and views become increasingly polarised.
But the gibberish is increasing all the time.
Take the Wellbeing Budget released recently, watched around the world as a possible game-changer.
This oxymoron covers for something that we likely do support. It is intended to signify the importance of rating our society not totally on financial measures but also on social and health measures.

However, a budget is what we produce when we allocate a specific and restricted amount of funds to various activities. Wellbeing, on the other hand, is infinite. Wellbeing cannot be budgeted for. And money we spend does not have any necessary effect on wellbeing.
While there are various measures we can have of wellbeing, none can promise that an extra amount of money will produce extra wellbeing. The two words wellbeing and budget simply do not belong together.
The reason they are being put together is to give the voters an idea that somehow the Government is doing something different with the Budget.
Whether the Government is actually doing something about the parlous state of provision of health services is important. We are seriously falling behind other developed countries in mental health, dental health, cancer treatments, to name but a few. Using wellbeing beside budget is not likely to fool anyone nor to engender trust in the people of New Zealand.
We are now hearing that Kiwibuild is having a reset. Reset is the word we use for pushing a button hoping a moribund appliance will somehow spring back to life when all else fails.
Grown-ups who wanted to communicate reasonably with voters would say that it was not intended to pursue the concept of Kiwibuild and that a new approach was being taken. The Government does not need to say it was a shambles and a failure, but to be straight with voters it is unhelpful to say Kiwibuild is still happening, albeit with a ‘‘reset’’.
Councils throughout New Zealand are deciding that their areas are having a ‘‘climate emergency’’.
These words do not sit properly together. We know what an emergency is from a local government perspective. It involves civil defence, sand bags, communications about evacuations etc.
The councils who have voted for a climate emergency now have no idea what to do, apart from allocating money for it.
Nelson city has voted to employ a climate champion. Since when would the response to an emergency be a champion? Is this some new superhero, able to stop the tides in their tracks and cool the planet in a single large investment?
We really need to have discussion about how to tackle our health issues, which are reaching crisis proportions, for those who expect us to be a modern country with good, if not excellent, healthcare. We have serious issues about housing to confront. And we need coherent and effective climate change responses.
None of this will happen while we cannot use proper words and have proper conversations about the issues.
If we are banning some sorts of speech, we should start by banning politicians from using words intended to hide rather than elucidate.
Surely they should sell their ideas and plans to us, but truth in advertising should be paramount in telling us what they are up to.
One of the international wellness index measures relates to civic and democratic participation. A high rating requires an active electorate who trust their politicians and what they hear from the media.
We could be a world leader in having government and local government who actually use words to communicate clearly and accurately about what they are doing with our money, and prepared to hear arguments for and against their proposals.
That really would be a game-changer.
Now would be good, so we can practise our newly enabled democratic ideas on our candidates for local body elections coming up. — hcalvert@xtra.co.nz
Hilary Calvert is a former lawyer, politician and city councillor.