Gordon Copeland

Thursday, 26th June 2008

Double standard on 1080?

Independent MP and Kiwi Party candidate Gordon Copeland today contrasted the total evacuation of the 18 storey Pastoral House in Wellington, because of a 1080 scare, with the continued indiscriminate dropping of 1080 from the air over thousands of hectares of the New Zealand countryside.

"When a package of 1080 is discovered in the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry's mail room on the 4th floor of Pastoral House, the Fire Service is called in and the entire building is evacuated," said Mr Copeland.

"However, the Government continues to drop this deadly poison from the air, over hundreds of thousands of hectares of the New Zealand countryside each year."

"Is that because the lives of bureaucrats in Wellington are more valuable than those living in rural areas, or evidence of a massive double standard in relation to this issue?"

Mr Copeland made it clear that it is Kiwi Party policy to bring to an end the aerial application of 1080 poison in New Zealand.

ENDS

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