By Michael Coote
Just weeks remain before submissions on the proposed Auckland unitary plan close on Friday, February 28, 2014. After that, those who have failed to get their word in edgeways and asked for the right to speak at subsequent Resource Management Act (RMA) hearings will be shut out of direct input into the process.
The deadline is salient not least because Auckland Council under mayor Len Brown is attempting to use the unitary plan to foist a race-based constitution upon Auckland that will permanently elevate its part-Maori inhabitants to legal and public policy supremacy over all other residents and ratepayers.
The only way to stop or at least stall the neo-apartheid juggernaut set in motion by the Brown council is to lodge opposing submissions.
Even in its revised version of the unitary plan, the council still concedes it’s going way beyond the letter and even the spirit of the RMA to create new and changed relationships with Maori tribes.