“Minister’s office have okayed, and intention will be to put this in your name Roger”

As No Right Turn reports, the OIAs for CERAs arbitrary declaration that the Red Zone is a “politics free zone” are back, and the bits that haven’t been redacted are pretty damning. While the juiciest bits have been withheld, there are still some interesting things, such as when they email round one of my tweets, or that “Mojo and Eugenie are Facebooking!” They were obviously doing their very best to stifle first, justify second. 

May favourite bit, however, is this line which somehow escaped the black highlighter: “Minister’s office have okayed, and intention will be to put this in your name Roger”. This makes it clear that they’ve gone up to Gerry, got the go ahead, and then the press release has come back down for poor Roger Sutton to front. You have to feel sorry for the guy. We had so much hope for him when he came into the job. I doubt that when he left Orion, and took a pay cut to help out Christchurch he could dreamt that 18 months later, he wouldn’t even have any control over the things coming out of his mouth. Such a shame. He should get out now whilst people can still vaguely remember his pre-CERA career.

It also goes to show what a complete farce the Press Power List is. I don’t really think the thing is worth the paper it’s printed on. It’s part of the paper’s endless march to being a bunch of opinion pieces with ads tacked on the sides (the new “Mainland Live” section is meant to be light news, but was really just an excuse to convert a whole page of the front section of the paper to opinion pieces, and bad ones at that. Jane Bowron, take a bow.) Anyway, back to the Power List. It has Sutton in at number 6. This OIA shows just how much “power” he has. Any of the other rankings should be taken with an unhealthy amount of salt, especially the one which has John Key at the top of the list. The man in charge is clearly Gerry, his brutish fingers are said to be all over the CCDU plan; Key’s interest in Christchurch seems to be strictly limited to photoshoots at the openings of buildings, and even the rate of those seems to have slowed down. Maybe he’s finally realised that all these pictures of him on empty building sites might not be the best look when he goes into an election campaign trying to boast of the rebuild.

The thing is, no-one knows who’s in running Christchurch, apart maybe a few of those guys in the Beehive. CERA, CCDU, the council, ECAN – these are all less than transparent organisations, with silent, un-OIA-able actors who are making decisions about the city without fear of scrutiny. The Press Power List suggests that there is an easy to read list of the 50 people running the shop, and that’s the most worrying thing about it. 

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Cairn still standing

Came across some better pictures of the cairn – post quake. Given the policy announcements that the Government has been releasing in the last few weeks, water looks like it might be a big issue this election. Don’t forget about the cairn.

State of the Art

Charlie Gates’ article from last week’s Press is now up online here. It is not a complete survey of public art in town, but there are some notable ommissions. One that I am personally very concerned about is the Cairn, which was set up in the Square in protest against the scrapping of ECan last year. One the one hand, water seems like a triffling issue at this point in time; on the other, urban Christchurch has never been more acutely aware of how precious water can be, and how we have taken it for granted. The council had been trying to move the Cairn, citing reasons such as the Buskers Festival and the Rugby World Cup. Now neither of those are at all valid; however I would not be surprised if when we are allowed back into the Square, the Cairn has mysteriously disappeared.

There is plenty of evidence, photographic and video, to show that the Cairn survived the quake. This video clearly shows that it’s still there. I will try and find some photos as well.

The Cairn may have been erected in protest to a a different water issue and a different concern about democracy, but now it’s values of community, water conservation and democracy take on a new, more important meaning.