Trustpower's Communications Manager, Graeme Purches, has in recent months publicly lambasted the Upland Landscape Protection Society for wasting ratepayers' money by meritless litigation.
Mr Purches' attacks were particularly intense following the society's failed application for Judicial Review on the consents for Project Hayes and Mahinerangi Wind Farm.
The society now faces liquidation, primarily on account of costs awarded by Justice Fogarty in the High Court to the councils and energy companies.
Whether the society is liquidated or not, Mr Purches' criticisms must be answered.
ULP's ambitious application for Judicial Review, directed at the Clutha District Council, Otago Regional Council and Central Otago District Council, argued that the councils had failed to ascertain appropriate visual representations of the windfarms during the consent process.
According to the society, the companies misled both the consent authorities and the public by neglecting to include roading and infrastructure in their visual representations, and failing to show the true scale of the turbines.
Rejecting the application, Justice Fogarty in obiter remarks judged it inconceivable that the consent process for both windfarms might be restarted, even in the hypothetical event of successful review.
This view was grounded in what his Honour called the notorious fact that there is an ongoing risk of the demand for electricity not being matched for supply.
As a matter of Government policy, giant wind was urgently needed to compensate for deficient South Island hydro, a claim that seems less certain in 2009 following massive spilling by Meridian and Contact due to overfull storage lakes.
So, policy triumphed over process.
In the Environment Court, TrustPower's envelope approach, putatively giving the company flexibility in a fragile environment, but which ULP argued granted unbridled privilege to the developers, was struck out by Judge Jeff Smith.
The corporation was obliged to submit the precise location of all features for Mahinerangi Wind Farm, such as turbine locations, roads, and transmission corridors before being granted full consent.
An Environment Court decision on Project Hayes is still pending.
Mr Purches has declared consistently that the society wasted ratepayer money in its litigation.
Yet, if only on the basis of Judge Smith rejecting the envelope approach, ULP's cross- examination evidently had some merit.
In the six months following the councils' decisions supporting both windfarms, regular middle-band-income New Zealanders were required to organise lawsuits which for Mahinerangi Wind Farm alone was likely to amount to $200,000.
After traumatised capitulation by the original guarantors for the suit, Ewan Carr represented ULP without evidence for the Mahinerangi Wind Farm hearing, and supplemented the evidence of other appellant parties for Project Hayes with evidence from entomologist Brian Patrick and professional photographer Mike Langford.
In the High Court, barrister Stephen Rennie represented the society, and prospective witnesses included Allan McDonald, of Architect Animation Studios (UK), and Queenstown-based Mr Langford.
It is to this failed application for Judicial Review that the oft-quoted $50,000 in costs specifically relates.
Mr Purches' argument as to meritless litigation is thus misleading.
Despite the straitened circumstances of members clashing with not only corporations, but also councils and the Government, ULP did in fact bring argument to bear in court.
The decision not to appeal was based on resource and finance limitations, and exhaustion.
The companies, of course, faced no such difficulties.
Indeed, the Commerce Commission has recently reported that the four largest generators alone overcharged New Zealanders by at minimum $4.3 billion in the past six years. TrustPower, the country's fifth largest generator, posted a net profit of $119 million during the past financial year, despite the global economy contracting for the first time in 70 years.
This profit was a 28% increase on the previous year.
In recent months, private settlements negotiated by Meridian and TrustPower with Doc, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and possibly other organisations have amounted to at least $500,000 for the windfarms alone.
NGOs became beetle-sized environmental backstops facing a government-oiled corporate steamroller.
As Aramoana and the Clyde dam have illustrated before, this insect-crushing is a time-honoured New Zealand tradition.
Mr Purches, who was recently elected national president of the Public Relations Institute of New Zealand, is a seasoned practitioner.
In the face of a compounding lahar of public scepticism as to the motives of the energy barons, he plucked out a convenient bug in the form of ULP.
Isolated scurrilous activists, Mr Purches emphasised, are wasting the ratepayers' hard-earned money.
TrustPower will fix that for you.
Otago-Southland, south of and not including the Waitaki, has 20% of the generation capacity of New Zealand, and this is set to increase when consented projects such as Mahinerangi and Kaiwera Downs Wind Farms are built.
There are plans afoot to dam the Clutha and the Nevis, build multibillion-dollar lignite and gas plants in Southland, and establish further windfarms in a number of locations in the South - fertile ground for developers, constituting a mere 7% of the country's population.
As new proposals arise, there will be more lawsuits, more liquidated NGOs, the wheels of corporate entrepreneurialism grinding down opposition wherever it arises.
If the present Minister for the Environment, Nick Smith, has his way, the Resource Management (Simplifying and Streamlining) Amendment Bill 2009 will progressively disenfranchise the public even of its right to squeal as the steamroller approaches.
Readers can draw their own verdict.
- Warrington-based poet and editor Richard Reeve is a former member of the ULP executive. He is now a full-time university student.
