Today, NZ Newswire reported:
The government is poised to announce a plan to restore the Bay of Plenty coastline to the condition it was in before the Rena disaster.
[...]
Environment Minister Nick Smith will announce the plan at 11am on Tauranga's Waikari Marae.
He told NZ Newswire it was a comprehensive plan to co-ordinate all the agencies involved in the clean up.
"We've got a very large number of agencies already involved as well as three regional councils," he said.
"There are public health authorities as well, this is going to bring it all together to restore the Bay of Plenty to its pre-Rena condition."
Meanwhile the governments idea of a cleanup response for areas that aren't important to tourism is to drop off a couple of rubbish skips and let the locals fend for themselves.
Further down the Bay of Plenty coastline, where oil and debris litters the beaches, the mainly Maori inhabitants have been forgotten... and there has been no reporting by mainstream media about the continuing environmental disaster there.
Maritime NZ is even failing to report on the amount of oiled and dead birds that continue to wash up. Yesterday, they claimed:
There have been no oiled birds found by wildlife patrols over the past week.
This is simply untrue with some news services reporting that up to 50 dead Blue penguins (likely the same penguins released from Tauranga) have been found scattered along the far Eastern Bay, along with a lot of other dead wildlife.
This article by Sunlive even contradicts the MNZ report. So it is no wonder people want answers.
Today, Radio NZ reported:
Coastal iwi in Bay of Plenty want a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Rena disaster.
Te Moana A Toi iwi leaders group represents 16 iwi whose tribal waters and fisheries assets have been affected by tonnes of oil and debris spilled from the vessel that ran aground on a reef off Tauranga in October last year.
[...]
Mr Tawhiao says they're looking to ensure the same sort of disaster doesn't happen again anywhere to any iwi, and an assurance that if any systems in dealing with a marine disaster are deficient, they will be addressed.
At the moment, the main deficient system is the National led government.
