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Ashburton
FIRST PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 27, 1879
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Thursday, May 16, 2013
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Firms fight heli-hunting ban Battle lines drawn over DOC access By Mark Price Mt Hutt Helicopters is one of six companies fighting a Department of Conservation move likely to stop heli-hunting on DOC land. The public heli-hunting season ends in late July and it is quite likely to be the last. By the start of next season, in February, Associate Conservation Minister Peter Dunne hopes to have new legislation in place to prohibit the practice on public lands, although not on private land. Progress towards the prohibition has been held up by a High Court case taken against the Minister of Conservation by six companies - Mount Hutt Helicopters, Back Country Helicopters, Alpine Deer Group, Alpine Hunting Adventures, New Zealand Mountain Hunting and South Pacific Safaris. The case being considered by Justice Stephen Kos this week was over the length of heli-hunting concessions. The six companies have been operating under twoyear DOC concessions – which run out in February – but have been arguing for 10-year concessions. Their application for a judicial review was dismissed by Justice Kos this week, and Mr Dunne’s office said he was determined to push ahead with legislation that would end the practice on the conservation estate. The spokesman said the issue over heli-hunting was not about animal welfare but about fairness to other hunters who stalked on foot animals like tahr and chamois. “Where Peter’s coming from is the fairness issue. The average recreational hunter goes into the hills and stalks an animal by means of
fair chase. And heli-hunting is not fair chase. “These guys are able to do an activity that impinges on other people’s right to enjoy the hills, whether that’s a recreational hunter or a tramper or a climber.” President of the Deerstalkers’ Association Tim McCarthy has congratulated Mr Dunne on his court victory. In his decision, Justice Kos said heli-hunting was mostly carried out by hunters from the United States who hired guides and helicopter operators to take them into remote areas of the South Island. “Some are impossible to reach on foot,” Justice Kos said. Justice Kos noted three areas of controversy over heli-hunting - hazing, aerial shooting and herding. Hazing was where a helicopter chased a game animal; however, he noted the practice was banned both under the industry code of practice and their DOC concessions. Aerial shooting was prohibited under concessions and the industry’s code of practice, except where a wounded animal needs to be dispatched humanely. Using the herding practice, operators locate the trophy from the helicopter, which then backs off and hovers about 30 to 50m above, and 15m behind, the trophy animal – driving it toward the client, already positioned on the ground. In his judgement, Justice Kos recognised the “trenchant” views on both sides but found no illegality by Mr Dunne or that his trenchant views made his decision biased. He considered Mr Dunne had approached the question of concessions with an open mind. - APNZ Heli-hunting on public land is likely to cease at the end of next month.
It will be a red letter day Allenton retailers say, when the last work truck drives out of their shopping centre. Today will be crunch day at the centre when chip sealing is carried out. It will also be a place best avoided on Tuesday and Wednesday next week when asphalt is laid. And by the end of next week, ACL chief executive Gary Casey said, his trucks should be out of the centre as the project that has taken weeks longer than anticipated wraps up. “Once it’s done, you won’t see us back for 20 years.” He suggests motorists try to take alternative routes into town today and next week when asphalt is being laid. People shopping at the
Photo Kirsty Clay 150513-KC-015
LEFT: It’s been a long, long wait, but upgrading work on the Allenton Shopping Centre is nearing completion.
More Budget money ‘won’t make better parents’ By Sue Newman
Photo supplied
Allenton centre revamp nearly at an end By Sue Newman
centre should plan to park and walk, he said. For several months customers have been dodging trucks and broken footpaths as the shopping centre is upgraded, but now they’re counting the cost of that work in lost takings, butcher Paddy Kennedy says. “I reckon we’ve had more than a 50 per cent drop in business from foot traffic. The last couple of weeks have been the worst and if we’d had just retail business we’d have been looking at having to do something like opening for shorter hours. The people are just not around, they’re avoiding the centre like the plague.” And it’s not just the retailers who’re fed up. Mr Kennedy said customers are now also starting to vent their frustrations after they’ve battled muddy, broken roads. “The footpaths have been dug up, they’ve been packed down and they’ve been dug up again. I’ve had about five different end dates. People have been really good, our customers have been great and it
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will be very good when it’s finished, but we’re all over it. It’s hard.” While the work was long overdue, and the end result would be great, the time the work had taken had pushed most people’s endurance to the limit, he said. “We dream of waking up and finding it’s all been done, that this is just a bad dream, a nightmare.” It will also be a red letter day for the Ashburton District Council when the job’s done, said roading services manager Brian Fauth. The work was originally scheduled to wrap up by April 30 but was delayed because Chorus staff were needed on-site to lay fibre optic cable before the pavement could be sealed. Chorus had scheduled its work for early next year, but to avoid a double dig on the pavement, Mr Fauth said the council asked it to bring its work forward. This meant a delay while resources were redirected to Allenton. The end of the project was now in sight, he said.
Receiving more money in today’s Budget will not create better parents, an Ashburton social worker says. Educating parents to make better decisions about their family budgets, rather than cash handouts, will go a long way towards helping reduce child poverty, says the Salvation Army’s Judith Lilley. The food bank manager says she’s praying the budget will contain some practical measures and cash injections that will help improve the lot of vulnerable children. “There has always been poverty in Ashburton and for our size, compared to Auckland we’re about the same, per capita. Some parents are managing amazingly well on very little money but others need educating so they can understand how to manage their money.” By educating parents to make better decisions about money, about prioritising their spending, their children would ultimately benefit and the cycle of intergenerational budgeting problems was more likely to be broken, she said. Today’s Budget will contain practical measures that have come out of the ministerial committee on poverty and it’s on those practical measures that Mrs Lilley is hanging her hat. There have been hints that the Budget could include a boost for the food in schools programme. Mrs Lilley said she applauded the Fonterra milk in schools scheme and said she would welcome its arrival here. Like any support programme, food and milk in schools had to be monitored to ensure parents did not off-load their responsibility for feeding their children onto schools, she said. There are also indications the budget will extend its income-related rental subsidies to community-owned housing projects and that will create opportunities in Ashburton, Mrs Lilley said. “Housing has always been my big bugbear and while we don’t have housing units in Ashburton, emergency housing is always the biggest call on my budget.” If income-related rent subsidies are applied to community owned housing it could open up new opportunities for Presbyterian Support in Ashburton says local manager Jackie Girvan. The organisation is not currently involved in housing in Ashburton but there is an urgent need in the community for affordable housing, she said. “We would love to be involved in a project and we’ve looked at it in the past.” Mrs Girvan believes there are many elderly people who are slipping through the housing cracks in Ashburton. “We have retirement villages coming on stream but there is a whole group in the community that can’t afford those but who have too much money to qualify for a council flat.” That gap in the market could be bridged if subsidies were available for community housing, she said. Rental subsidies are currently available to state house tenants that see some pay only 25 per cent of their net income in rent. Typically tenants in community owned housing pay 75 to 80 per cent of market rents. Even with a work and income subsidy this would see tenants paying almost three times as much as they would pay in a state house.
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