Who should hold the power of prosecution?
Released 11 Oct 2011
James Houghton is Federated Farmers Waikato provincial president
The Auditor-General might be worried about regional councillors' personal bias when the authority is deciding to undertake prosecutions, but I wonder if the staff can be totally fair either.
Following a recent recommendation by the Auditor-General, Waikato Regional Council is asking its staff to review the role our elected councillors take in deciding what prosecutions it should be pursuing.
At the moment the decision whether to initiate a prosecution or not is made by a regulatory committee of councillors. I guess the worry is they could be tempted to consider their re-election chances when weighing up the options whether or not to prosecute when a person has breached the law.
I would have thought councillors would have an eye to re-election in all aspects of their work and the best way to do so would be to constantly keep the wider benefits to the community in mind. Surely, as elected representatives they already have the best watchdog, the public, keeping them in line?
I don't understand why this has to be the subject of a review which will probably cost ratepayers money, or at least divert staff from doing something useful with their time.
I really don't mind who makes the Regional Council's prosecution decisions, as long as they are done on a fair and even handed basis. My question is, if the elected representatives could be seen to have a political bias when making these decisions, what would stop council staff also allowing their own prejudices getting in the way of a correct decision?
It is always good to have something to celebrate and Fonterra will be celebrating its tenth birthday on Monday, after the All Blacks after the Rugby World Cup win. In just a decade, this farmer owned cooperative has gone from being a disparate group of local collectives to a recognised world leader in dairy ingredients. It is amazing so many farmers agreed to something which has lasted this long, but it is difficult to imagine what this country today without Fonterra.
Love it or loath it, the dairy industry is underpinning much of the relative economic stability New Zealand is experiencing in the face of global financial turmoil.
To me, the Fonterra story epitomises the New Zealand ethos of working together and being able to punch well above our weight to achieve success out of all proportion to our size. Each year billions of dollars are paid out to farmers around the country which is then spent in their communities.
I should also note there were those who did not agree with the Fonterra way and have gone on to form a variety of independent processors, who are also doing very well.
There is plenty of room for everyone in the primary sector to do well over the next few decades. We are trusted as safe, premium food producers, by a burgeoning global population.
Every day, this population grows by 214,000 people. That adds up to about 1.5 million people a week or 70 million people a year. Some time in the next six months the world's population will surpass 7 billion. By contrast, the earth had a population of just over 2.5 billion people in 1950.
At the moment New Zealand feeds 40 million people around the world. We have the potential to feed 200 million, but to achieve this we need to look at how we use our land and our water better.
Unfortunately, the huge benefits of Fonterra, dairy farming and all the other agricultural sectors to this country are not well understood by many people in urban New Zealand. Every year the divide between town and country seems to grow a little deeper.
Federated Farmers has been running Farm Days around the country for the last three years, to encourage people to get out to a farm near them. While this has enabled thousands of people to get a snapshot view of what happens on modern farms, I am keen to hear from urban people about how they think the rural sector can keep in touch with them.
An environmental tragedy is playing out as oil and cargo from the Rena continues to wash ashore on the beaches of one of Waikato's favourite playgrounds, the Bay of Plenty.
While the length of time taken to initiate salvage of the ship and a clean up has been frustrating, I think the government was right to be cautious before jumping into uninformed actions.
This is a highly technical situation and, had the Rena been dragged off the reef, the environment may have suffered far worse indignities.
As farmers will know and sympathise with, when large machinery breaks down there are often hidden complications. So far the Rena has only released some of her potential environmental risk on the area. While there will be effects for a long time to come, hopefully the full effects can be minimised.
