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Newsroom
City Council Obstructs Anti-Metrowater Campaign
 Thursday, 1 April 1999, 3:22 p.m.
 Press Release:

Release From Water Pressure Group

MEDIA STATEMENT

1 April 1999

Two recent actions by senior Auckland City Council officials got an indignant and angry response from close to 70 people attending a public meeting in Avondale, organised by the Water Pressure Group, last Monday, March 29th. The undemocratic exercise of unwarranted official power to censor and obstruct the Water Pressure Group's campaign to abolish Metrowater was resoundingly rejected.

In February, a Water Pressure Group supporter was ordered by Council Enforcement Officers to remove an anti-Metrowater hoarding from his Herne Bay garden, under threat of confiscation and payment to recover it.
The bylaw wielded then was not only size restriction, but also that the sign was  'political'. That political sign can now be seen by the Meola Rd / Garnet Rd roundabout: Water Pressure Group supporters are everywhere.

Now, the Water Pressure Group has been refused permission to display their petition in public libraries
throughout the city. Water Pressure Group member Rose Hollins - a past Auckland City Council library worker - said today: "We have contacted two officials responsible: the City Librarian, Barbara Birkbeck, and City Director, John Brockies, of the Customer Services Division. Barbara Birkbeck claimed that our anti-Metrowater pro-forma petition was banned because 'it is inappropriate for Council-funded facilities to be used to argue against Council policies'.
"A vital library service, one of the longstanding democratic functions of Auckland City libraries, is being high-handedly eliminated. This unacceptable political censorship, if consistently applied, would mean a library threatened with closure, for instance, could not be a venue for collection of signatures in
its defence by its own users - nor could any part of the Council's vaunted 'consultation' processes take place there, " she said. "Public libraries are our local communication / information / cultural centers,
funded by residents and ratepayers as a service for us all. They are not owned by the Council, and the commercialising agenda of some Council officials and Councillors and consequent urge to stifle dissent has no place in them.
 

Changing Council policy on corporatised water is a pressing community concern: the local library is where it belongs," Rose Hollins said. Media spokesman Jim Gladwin said today, "We are being confronted by numerous challenges. First it was Councillors reneging on their election promises,next a High Court injunction action, now these attempts designed to keep our message from supporters.
 The Water Pressure Group remains determined that Metrowater must go. Every setback doubles our resolve, and our membership numbers. We now have more than five hundred members in the Water Pressure Group." he concluded.
 

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