POLICY RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Dump the RMA Excrement

"This Act has nationalised land in this country, and ruined many hard working New Zealanders. It is time to recognise it as the excrement that it is, and dump it," says Libertarianz Environment Deregulation Spokesman Peter Cresswell in today's policy announcement.

The RMA upholds the toxic collectivism of kaitiakitanga - or stewardship - while completely ignoring property rights; it upholds the nonsense of 'intrinsic values' while destroying distinctively human values; it touts 'effects-based planning' while regulating and prohibiting human activities; it has empowered an enormous army of consultants to interpret and manage it - an army set to increase under the proposed amendments in both number and cost.

It protects trees, rocks and mud puddles while providing no protection for human life; it protects future generations while making it virtually impossible to build the infrastructure these generations will need. It fails to even mention property rights in its 455 pages, while harbouring a savage penalties regime of fines up to $200,000, and up to two years in jail!

It is supported by EVERY party in this current parliament, yet it has seen an Auckland businessman ruined because the RMA allowed Council to dump raw sewage on a site next door to him; it has seen iwi charging $80 an hour to ward off evil spirits; it has seen a Wairarapa farmer given 6 months Periodic Detention and a fine of $26,000 for excavating a small part of his Wairarapa property in preparation for a paua pond; it has seen beachfront property owners prohibited from building new dwellings, and prohibited from preventing their existing houses from falling into the sea; it is routinely used by businesses to stymie their competitors, and by iwi to practice extortion on their neighbours. It is often defended - despite its evil - as providing environmental protection, yet it has seen consents issued to a developer to dump sewage effluent directly into an ocean outfall at Akaroa, to a Pulp and Paper Mill to dump toxic waste into the Tarawera River, to a Meremere landfill to dump toxic leachate into the Waikato River, This Act has, in short, been a disaster both for the environment and for property owners.

"If anyone thinks there is an easier way," waffles pretentious poseur Simon Upton - who has overseen this excrement, "then I suspect their view of the issue is simplistic and their imagined solution inadequate." Such is the ignorance of this Minister of Mud Puddles that he ignores completely the eight hundred years of common law history that arose precisely to manage just such situations.

It is time to drive a stake through the heart of the Resource Management Act. It is time to replace it with common law protection of private property rights.

No other party is even remotely close to saying this. Only Libertarianz will dump it.

ENDS

For more information contact:

Peter Cresswell

LIBERTARIANZ ENVIRONMNENT DEREGULATION SPOKESMAN

Contact: Libertarianz Media Coordinator on (025) 861 927, e-mail: organon@ihug.co.nz

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www.libertarianz.org.nz www.freeradical.co.nz

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