1947: The Waters of the Waitemata

July 5, 2019

By AHNZ

This time last year there was a large army of students and young foreign visitors swarming about. They were employed by the Green Party in the guise of their activist arm, Forest and Bird.

Usually they’re American or Irish backpackers, I surmise, who can’t get a work visa for construction jobs but are allowed a visa for soliciting money by scaremongering about environmentalist bullshit.

The topic on their minds had been our dirty rivers and harbours. Their handler probably thinks we’re so dumb that we’ll think all this July rain and dirty storm-water proves their point for them. Another time some Californian Yank was trying to tell me the optimal number for a fringe species like our Tasman Sea dolphin pods is supposed to be. “Not enough,” he said. Compared to what?

This month the Irish kid wants me to know that Auckland Harbour isn’t clean enough. Does he want some money to clean it with? No.

It’s to fund his continued going around telling more people it isn’t clean enough. That’s simply political lobbying and the means of production of the Victimhood Culture but it’s no good trying to tell him so.

Nor any use pointing out that dirty rivers and harbours are far from unusual. We’ve always had Go and No-Go zones as this Minhinnic cartoon (above) from 1947 shows. That’s 72 bloody years ago and part of having The State in charge. Irishman had been briefed on sales, not facts. That, and he was trying to opportunistically collect money for the stir that Auckland Council and the media have caused in the headlines.¹

“It is a thousand pities that, owing to a little sewage trouble, bathing is not recommended in such a beautiful and vast harbour such as Auckland possesses. However, the Aucklanders are a resourceful race and to cover up their little sewage worries they cover the waters of the Waitemata with yachts- hundreds of them of all types and sizes.”- Ref. From N to Z, C. Smith (1947)

Despite the rhetoric, Auckland’s waterways are cleaner now than in the past. Much credit for this must go to the United Independents, an Auckland municipal political party who saw to it that sewage was treated and not dumped into Auckland Harbour untreated.² These plucky outsiders took on the establishment and won. This photo shows Auckland’s 27 Mayors in 1986 absorbing some of the political capital from that success by standing on the pipeline.

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1 Phil Goff’s campaign for the Auckland Mayoralty involved promises to clean up the waterways. There was a bit of Residual Awareness created that he did not need after winning the election so these Forest/Bird/Green guys opportunistically helped themselves to it.

2 See future video clip about Dove-Myer Robinson’s and Kenneth Cumberland’s success with the United Independents and the resulting infrastructure Auckland now has for waste disposal.

Image ref. From N to Z, C. Smith (1947)

Image ref. Waitamaka/Auckland Harbour from North Head; Me, last week

Image ref. West Coast overflow; Stuff

Image ref. 27 Mayors of Auckland! One big push and they could have all been dunked in the drink! What an opportunity!; Beyond the Bombay Hills (1986); NZ on Screen

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