Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Wednesday 17 October 2012 Update
First apologies for the formatting of the last few posts. It all looks nicely set out in paragraphs when I am composing them and then it squashes all together when I go to save them. Still trying to fix it.
Thank you for your feedback to this point. It was part of the reason I started this blog nearly three years ago. This whole current scenario was always going to come out into the open at some point and I wanted to be transparent in everything I did. I have nothing to hide.
I heard the bach-owners perspectives and was grateful they shared their stories and traditions of the beach. Giving the upmost respect, it was weird that a group of people were enjoying the area even if I wasn't. Like most things, there are always two sides to a story.
My Whanau never visited that beach when we were young. I always knew about the area but we never went there...for one reason...those baches ! They represented what was wrong in todays society as far as we were concerned. A culture of a past era where a minority thought it is fine to build on private land they do not own. We are certainly not the first to go through this however we are probably one of the last. Worse still is we have to use our own money to achieve it. I had no choice but to get involved because leaving it to the next generation would make the whole situation even more difficult to resolve.
Just a couple of comments about the feedback provided thus far. First, if you are a beneficiary of this land and want any financial information then contact myself directly and I am happy to provide it.
To all the other comments posted - Interesting viewpoints however read the Whanganui Chronicle in the next day or so...hopefully it clears up a few issues for you.
To conclude, my first post in January 2012 prophetically ended with the sentence "...There is a rumbling on the horizon and its been slowly biding its time. Watching and waiting"...Guess what?!
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It is a shame that this matter over the baches was not sorted out at the very beginning by the powers that be who handed the property to the Trust. They showed a lack of foresight and something should have been sorted before it was handed over. The Trust has inherited these people as part of the land and to call them squatters is derogatory, demeaning and despicable. They were all pretty much given permission to be there, rightly or wrongly, so they as individuals should not be blamed. On top of that they have shown good faith by paying the fee demanded by the Trust. Squatters do not do that.
ReplyDeletePut these payments on top of the $15,000 a year the Craig's have been paying the Trust to farm part of the land and that amounts to around $200,000 over all these years. Why does the Trust only have $40,000 in the bank? Where has the rest of this money been spent? It certainly hasn't been spent out there at the beach. With that sort of money the Trust could have built a number of baches that could have been allocated to whanau in some form to use free of charge with money paid by bache owners to help maintain the new baches for whanau.
But that did not happen and perhaps most of that money has ended up in the puku's of Trust administrators? What has this money been spent on Casey? Give us a list of all the wonderful things the Trust has done with this money to better the lives of the Trust whanau. No need to be secret about that, even if you don't want to make specific funds public.
I smell a dead seagull here! You want to be transparent... well now is your chance. Show me the money!!!
Your reasons for not spending time at Whangaehu beach seem rather strange Casey. Just because some Pakeha's had baches there that you considered had no right to be there?
ReplyDeletePerhaps these Pakeha have no right to be on any land in Aotearoa? Perhaps you won't be happy to live anywhere in Aotearoa until they have all gone back to where they came from? This certainly sounds like a very weak argument and even very racist to me. It sounds like your Pakeha heritage and attitudes are rising to the top and over-riding your Maori heritage here Casey. Where is the mana?
It didn't seem to stop two whanau having baches there and a lot of other whanau certainly spent time out there. This sounds more like jealousy and racism to me... your specific whanau did not have a bache, the other whanau did not want your whanau to use those baches so you are pissed off.
Is that going to change when you build your bach out there and 1100 whanau members who are beneficiaries want to use your bache? How are you going to decide who of the 1100 can use your bache or will there be permission for 1100 new baches to be built?
But even if you build your bache Casey then isn't there still going to be a problem with the Council re-rating the land? One of the main reasons you gave for wanting the Pakeha's to go?!
Or maybe you will only be happy to go out there when absolutely no-one has a bache there, including yourself? Where will you stay? Just day trips? But then will you loan your tent to whanau who can't afford their own tent? A Marae? Same problems.
None of this makes sense to me Casey, apart from insecure petty jealousies and racism. Those people out there love that place and have mostly looked after it very well. It is unfair to blame them for some rubbish being dumped. Probably someone from up the valley or more likely or from Ratana?
I know most of the people with baches out there and your comments about a bach being burned down over an argument are all in your mind. Be there baches there or not, whitebaiters and fishermen will still fight over "their" spot. That's what fishermen do and I don't believe any bach owner would tell someone to piss off.
I've heard stories of stroppy and threatening whanau telling an old couple who had just caught a snapper at the mouth of the river that it was 'their' fish caught in 'their' river. Well that is bullshit, it is not your river or their river and it is not their fish either and it is not your land they are standing on to catch those fish. Everyone has the right to go there and fish and these stroppy big Maori boys need to pull their heads in or someone bigger than them is going to put them in their place and this is not the sort of behaviour we want out there or anywhere for that matter.