The genesis of the GUARDIANS
A 50-year commemoration of the Save Manapouri campaign that gave impetus to New Zealand’s conservation movement will be marked by some key players in Te Anau on March 8. The message is now etched in stone – specifically a monumental rock in Manapouri, rep
The Save Manapouri campaign (1969-72) was New Zealand’s greatest environmental battle involving thousands of New Zealanders from all walks of life. The campaign saved Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau from being raised for the purpose of hydro-electric generation.
This monument is a tribute to the campaigners, their love and respect for natural beauty, their fortitude and tenacity triumphed over political and official interference.
A tribute is also paid to the Guardians of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau whose dedicated and vigilant work since 1973 has preserved the natural beauty and ecological values of the lakes.
Save Manapouri was a catchcry of a generation. It echoes still.
In wilderness is the preservation of the world.
NHenry David Thoreau
icely put. And it’s far from just a case of history being written by the victors.
Much as the nation continues to rejoice in the lakeshores successfully defended by the Save Manapouri campaign, the implications went beyond that.
Historians suggest the greatest national benefit was to the national consciousness – a willingness to stand up for natural values over the steely voices of commercial imperative – in which the voice of the people emphatically prevailed, by way of a massive petition signed by 264,907 New Zealanders. That’s about one in 10. Never before had a petition landed with such an almighty whump at Parliament – and the Labour Opposition’s support for the case was a key factor impelling it to election success in 1972.
For his part, a key figure in the campaign, Sir Alan Mark, prefers to lift his gaze beyond the battleground victory, to savour the rare thing that followed.
People from polarised positions came together for a functional, successful cooperation between Government appointed Guardians and industry representatives.
The upshot of which, he gently points out has also been commemorated, from the industry (now Meridian) perspective in a series of interpretive signs around key lake areas that proudly cite a world-first integration that enabled the production of a vast amount of electricity, for an important industrial resource, while at the same time operating major lakes within their natural state.
‘‘A fairly good outcome, really,’’ he says.
Truth to tell, the old campaigner still carries battlescarred memories of the conflicts too, and the hubris behind the engineering ambitions of the day.
Like the notorious approach taken from
Ministry of Works engineer in chief C W Turner, at the outset, that any thoughts Lake Manapouri would be devastated were erroneous. In fact, said he, when the lake level was raised it would be better controlled by the Electricity Department than by nature.
The audacity of the ‘‘improving on nature’’ agenda, particularly when there was sound science to say it was otherwise, still grates with Sir Alan.
In the 1972 election campaign, potent TV footage of Labour leader Norman Kirk’s August visit to the lakeside, which looked terrible with mud and slumping shorelines after being lowered nearly 0.6m below its recorded minimum, proved powerful proof that the eco-warnings hadn’t been fanciful.
Sir Alan delights in the account of Kirk, being shown part of the South Arm lakeshore that the Ministry of Works had quietly put some tidy-up work into, felling some trees and covering the stumps with sand – which the lake had unhelpfully washed clear, exposing them to the visitors.
They had clearly been cut, but the officials were adamant they had fallen naturally.
Kirk’s reported comment: these people think they’re so close to God that anything they do could be classed as natural.
There was nothing particularly new about visions to monetarise Fiordland’s water. Grand plans for an electro-industrial complex at Deep Cove in the 1920s and 1930s were never realised. In the 1940s a groundswell of public support for the establishment of electro-metallurgical industries developed into what historian Aaron Fox in his thesis on ManapouriTiwai called a ‘‘kilowatt cult’’, blind faith in a pseudo-religion offering economic salvation achievable only with the benefits of foreign industrial capital and technology.
In the course of establishing the Manapouri-Tiwai Point complex, policy officials advising the Government had done little to temper the ‘‘naive devotion’’ of successive administrations these principles.
In 1960 the Government and Consolidated Zinc (later known as Comalco) signed an agreement for the company to build both an aluminium smelter at Tiwai and a power station in Manapouri (rather violating the National Parks Act, so they changed the law to fix that up). By 1963 the company determined it couldn’t afford to build the power station so the Government took over, under a deal to sell the electricity to the company
Those who warned about the impact on the natural scenery of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau were seen as ‘‘latter-day Cassandras’’ whose wailings had prompted increasingly dogmatic and defensive responses from both politicians and officials.
The key to the success of the National Save Manapouri Campaign from 1969, Fox contends, was the increasingly widespread perception the campaigners, rather than the government, were the ones acting to protect the interests of future generations.
A couple of significant things happened. People power was key and in that respect a meeting in Invercargill, at the home of city councillor (later Invercargill MP) Norman Jones and his wife Marjory, on October 20, 1969, proved mightily significant. The group was united by an affinity with Fiordland and decided to form a Save Manapouri League, a title quickly tweaked later tweaked to be called a committee instead).
It was by no means the ignition of protective protest – more the culmination of a decade of lobbying, chiefly focused through Forest and Bird and the New Zealand Scenery Preservation Society. This new body would prove rather more stroppy, and effective. For one thing, they were communicators..
From their ranks emerged a remarkable leader, Ron McLean, a Kennington farmer, Nuffield scholar, and former Federated Farmers Southland division president.
Joined by his daughter Jill, just coming out of secondary school, he went on a speaking tour around the country, energising communities as he went..
Aaron Fox would discourage us from picturing a collection of archetypical bearded hippy protesters. Save Manapouri’s protagonists were middleaged farmers,doctors, local body politicians, civil engineers and housewives.
Sir Alan pays tribute to McLean’s leadership in what proved a well-handled, well-managed campaign, in which 19 regional Save Manapouri committees were formed.
The campaign champions were legion but nowhere moreso than in the south itself. Fiordland tourism pioneer Les Hutchins and Wilson Campbell stood among them. Sir Jack Harris, Dr Ian Prior, John Salmon and Jim McFarlane all presented political, scientific and technical arguments challenging Government reassurances. Don Matheson, a Lumsden motor mechanic, perhaps typified the spade work done by ardent newspaper letter writers.
(Some like Te Anau’s Ray Willett and Lumsden’s Chris Henderson remain ardent commentators on public issues to this day.)
In November 1971, when Prime Minister Keith Holyoake flew in for the opening of the Tiwai smelter, he was met by an Invercargill airport protest including a sign: ‘‘Who Owns This Country – the NZ People or Comalco?’’. Later a crowd of 1000 assembled outside the Kelvin Hotel, and Holyoake took a loudhailer to answer that airport sign; Without equivocation, he declared, the answer was the people of New Zealand.
He was met with wry cheers and jeers.
Meanwhile, albeit rather late in the piece, the Electricity Department decided that it had better get the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research to report on the environmental effect on the Manapouri lakeside from raising the lake beyond the natural variations.
But the DSIR wasn’t keen and the task was passed on to Otago University scientists instead.
Because? Sir Alan enjoys this bit. It would have been a bit of a long drive . . . the university was closer.
So the job fell to Otago, specifically himself and honours student Peter Johnson, who found far-reaching, unforeseen consequences beyond anything the Ministry had suggested.
Sir Alan believes, Manapouri and Te Anau probably would have been raised had the task remained with Government scientists.
They were ‘‘absolutely constrained in what they could say publicly under their conditions of employment – particularly in areas of their own expertise’’.
Not so with university scientists and even when he was being roundly criticised by engineers ‘‘the university was right behind me the whole time’’.
To his eternal credit, one Government scientist, Sir Charles Fleming, did step up. ‘‘He had the status to buck the system.’’
The campaign wasn’t just about Manapouri. The good people of Te Anau were angered and dismayed to find their lake levels would also be manipulated in site of claims to the contrary.
Recalls John Moore: ‘‘For two years we struggled to get the country aware that Te Anau was also under threat . . . it was also pretty soul destroying listening to the political falsehoods and platitudes. There was little support from those whose job was to defend the lakes and park.
One or two rangers did break ranks, though, including a ‘‘brave’’ John Gardiner. Moore recalls a pre-election visit by Prime Minister Jack Marshall, met at the wharf by a crowd of townsfolk with placards and advice for the PM.
‘‘My heart almost burst with pride.’’
The resistance the Save Manapouri campaign faced became increasingly shambolic. Faced by a petition signed by a quarter of a million New Zealanders, Minister of Works and Electricity Percy Allen tried to discredit it.
He claimed up to 180,000 – that would be two-thirds – of the signatories were children too young to know what they were signing.
A few days later he downsized his claim to a mere 100,000. Challenged, in Parliament, he later admitted the figure was, not to put too fine a point on it, his guesstimate. In fact, he hadn’t actually perused the petition.
But the National government wasn’t about to tell all those people to run along. A parliamentary select committee recommended the lake be maintained at its natural level, and the government should renegotiate with Comalco.
But Labour, seen as the more emphatic defenders of the natural values involved, swept to power. Norman Kirk kept his election promise and instructed the NZED that the lakes would remain at their natural levels. Next year Kirk also delivered on his promise to create the Guardians of Lake Manapouri, Monowai and Te Anau, to oversee the management of lake levels.
Sir Alan believes this was the more courageous call – the original guardians were all prominent leaders of the Save Manapouri campaign. The creme of the agitators. For his part, Sir Alan served as their chairman for the next 26 years.
A 50-year celebration of the campaign will be held in Te Anau on March 8, with speakers including Sir Alan, John Moore, Peter Johnson and DOC director general Lou Sanson.