Moth spraying debates takes strange twist

Waikato Times reveals claims that a woman planted the Asian Gypsey Moth found recently in the Hamilton region. What does this mean for the impending spray campaign?

My jaw almost droppped out in the dairy today (quite embarrassing I can tell you). There on the front page of the Waikato Times was a photo of a grinning California governorship candidate Arnold Shwartzerthingy and the headline: "I planted it!". On closer examination it turned out it was not Arnie who was claiming to have planted the lone Asian Gypsey Moth but a local woman who apparently fell in love with a US man over the internet. After taking her on a whirlwind holiday he gave her the moth parts and instructed her to plant them around Hamilton.

Coming hot on the heels of a huge MAF (the government's Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries) propoganda campaign over the spray plan, the story reads like something from the Truth (ie more accurately referred to as The Ripping Yarn), but no the venerable Waikato Times put it on the front page.

Anti-spray campaigners in both Hamilton and Auckland have put up with all sorts of dirty tricks from the local and national establishment. As have the Auckland Water Pressure Group, Wellington's anti-bypass Campaign for a Better City group and even the Dioxin Investigation Network in Paritutu, Taranaki. Funnily enough Native Forest Action had similiar problems with the campaign against logging of native trees on the west coast of Te Wai Pounamu, as documented by Nicky Hagar in his book "Secrets and Lies". See the pattern forming here?

Huge amounts of public funds are being diverted into huge projects. Spurious benefits are blown up large and community concerns downplayed. Campaigning groups are painted as either ignorant whingers, vested interest groups or eco-terrorist troublemakers. Worst of all, nobody is tracing the amounts of money being spent and who is ending up with it! Who are the real vested interests?

First Metrowater - who is making money out of the partial privatization of Auckland's water? Who is making money out of managing the opposition to it? Who ends up profiting if the asset is sold? Who gets contracts for maintainance services once funded by rates and carried out by local government?

Then the Bypass, who gets the contract the build the bypass? Who gets the money spent on planning and feasibility studies? Who gets the security contracts to keep people out of the empty, neglected heritage buildings? Who gets the contact to manage those that are still tenantable? Ultimately, who gets the greatest benefit from an increase in road use?

Taranaki, who is making money out of the toxin dumping and who is making money out of covering it up? Who made money from selling the former dump land to residential developers? Who made money building and marketing the properties?

Beech forest, well NFA stopped the scheme, the good guys won right? Wrong. The Beech scheme was never realistic and was never intended to go ahead. It was a red herring designed to distract forest campaigners and the public from the extraction of Rimu that carried on right through the whole furore until the expiration of the 1996 West Coast Accord.

So what of our friend the Gypsy Moth? Who makes money from selling Foray4B, the highly toxic pesticide that is used to target the moth in its caterpillar stage? Who makes money from flying the spray planes? Who makes money from the WW2-style "Fight the Moth" ads on the Edge and in the daily paper?

I have a simple piece of advice to anyone who is opposing environmentally and socially destruction activities like these. Spend a bit of your research time finding out who is deriving financial benefit from the activity you are opposing. Once you know who you are up against you might stand some chance of putting up an effective resistence.