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Water Tower

Could you please tell me when they are going to do something with the Invercargill water tower? It is a beautiful building. It was great when we could go up and look at the view. G Duthie Invercargill Invercargill City Council water manager Alister Murray replied:

The council acknowledges that the public access into the water tower has been denied to members of the public for some years now.

Access was withdrawn amidst concerns over the structure’s strength as it has been identified as an earthquake-prone building.

As a direct consequence of the Canterbury earthquakes, Central Government has signalled its intent to review the Building Act and regulations .

The council has made the decision to await the translation of the Building Act review into legislation before committing to any works on the Water Tower structure.

Apparently this is to happen this July.

The council will then make its decision as to how to proceed with the water tower.

Realistically, even if public access is to be permitted in the future, it is unlikely that this will occur for at least another year.

Whitebait rules

Regarding the Whitebaiting Rules 1994 concerning 6 metre rule 6(2)(c) could DOC please advise whitebaiters how their nets can be set in relation to their stands and how nets can be attached to their stands legally (front and tail ropes etc) to give people time to set up for the coming season? N T Duthie Invercargill Department of Conservation operations manager, Murihiku, Tony Preston replied:

It is difficult to give a ‘‘one case fits all’’ instruction as to how whitebaiters set up their fishing gear whether using a stand or fishing from the bank.

The regulations are quite clear that whitebait fishing gear must not exceed 6 metres in length and this includes all gear such as nets, screens, ropes and poles.

This was reaffirmed following a recent court case in the Invercargill District Court.

The case also ruled that the use of pulley systems, used to place nets further into the river,would place persons in breach of the 6 metre rule with the pulley system being found to be part of the ‘‘fishing gear’’.

DOC staff will be speaking to a Whitebaiters Association meeting prior to the season, or individuals could approach their local DOC office to seek advice as to whether their fishing set-up is compliant with the whitebait fishing regulations.

Immigration

The Sunday programme on TV1 explored the increasing difficulties Kiwis face when living in Australia, but not why this state of affairs exists.

Those who can remember back to 2001 will recall that the Australian foreign minister came to New Zealand to discuss the increasing problem they were having with immigrants to NZ staying only long enough to enable them to travel to Australia. However Helen Clark told him in no uncertain terms that she would not allow him to control our immigration policy.

Very shortly thereafter therefore Australia brought in passports for Kiwis travelling to Australia. Their policy since has been to progressively make things harder for Kiwis in Australia.

We can obviously sheet the problem home to our increasingly liberal immigration policies which see the main source of our immigrants as Third World and I don’t think our Government even knows or cares how many then go off to Australia.

Just think, how would we like it if the situation was reversed and we had people pouring in from Australia without control. I think we should think ourselves fortunate that stricter controls haven’t been brought in.

To remedy the situation I feel that we need a much longer period before new immigrants can qualify to live in Australia and perhaps only NZ-born Kiwis qualify for the right to emigrate. Trevor Wilkes Invercargill