Concerns raised about Cave Rock cross lights
Concerns have been raised by some residents about the schedule, frequency, brightness and configuration of the Tuawera Cave Rock lights. Photo: Christchurch City Council
Consultation has opened on Sumner's Cave Rock cross lights after residents raised concerns about their brightness, configuration and frequency.
The Waihoro Spreydon-Cashmere-Heathcote Community Board is now seeking public feedback on the issues created by the lights, which were installed on the former Christchurch signal station mast in December 2021.
The board wants the community to tell it how the daily lighting hours should be managed and how frequently they should be lit.
The lights are currently turned on between dusk and 11pm each day, except during Matariki or when a request is made for them to be switched off temporarily.
The mast was lit for the first time to mark the coronation of King George VI in May 1937. More than 500 bulbs were lit, including those along the foreshore and pier. Photo: Supplied via Christchurch City Council
The mast was erected in 1864 to signal the state of the bar to coastal ships entering or leaving the Ihutai Avon Heathcote Estuary. Black, ball-shaped markers were used to indicate the conditions.
It was lit for the first time in May 1937 to mark the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth in 1953, and later as a community tradition for Easter, Anzac Day, Christmas and other significant national events such as VE Day.
In 1961 the Sumner Lifeboat Institute took over the signal station as a lifeboat control tower and operated the lights intermittently for more than 30 years.
After the signal house was damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes and repaired in 2016, a new deed was established in 2020 with Breakfree Foundation, allowing them to install, own and operate the lights. Funds were raised by the community and the solar powered lights were installed in 2021.
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If so, the MAI rollback proviso gives an excellent rationale – because it amounts to a promise to the world that we will do so. Footnote Two: In the late 2000s, I also recall arguing with then-ACT leader Rodney Hide about the Colorado precedents that Hide was seeking to implement here – like, for example, his attempt to try and impose a sinking lid on local government spending. This legal stratagem would have involved imposing a spending cap on local councils, largely based on their previous year's expenditure, and with any excess revenue having to be returned to ratepayers as an annual rebate. This Colorado-style spending cap-and-rebate scheme that ACT tried – and failed – to get accepted into law here 20 years ago would have essentially stopped councils from addressing extra social needs, fixing core infrastructure or diverting more than 1% of their annual revenue to meet emergencies. This isn't (entirely) ancient history. It forms a key part of the whakapapa of the same political party pushing the Regulatory Standards Bill, and is entirely consistent with it. Famously, these Colorado libertarian experiments in fiscal self-starvation came to a climax in the deeply conservative city of Colorado Springs, which the Politico website wrote about in 2017, in an article called 'The Short Unhappy Life of a Libertarian Paradise.' In that case, the city's local government spending was cut back so harshly that citizens eventually had to club together to adopt and fund the street lights in their neighbourhoods, were forced to cut the grass in public parks themselves, and had to go out and hire sufficient police and firefighters. After three years of this, Colorado Springs saw the errors of its libertarian ways, and the public voted to increase taxes. 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Meaning: under this Bill, 'commercial sensitivity' seems to be a one way street by which aggrieved investors who have the ear of the Regulations Ministry can hope to gain access to information relevant to their commercial activities. Hopefully, the select committee hearings will clarify the terms of disclosure for the commercially valuable information that liable state agencies will -apparently – be legally required to hand over to Seymour's Ministry. If we're very lucky, the select committee hearings will also clarify whether the Regulatory Standards reports will be enforceable. Or will it be possible for Parliament to blithely ignore them, just as Parliament does when it ignores reports on the incompatibility of some of its laws with the Bill of Rights. (Denying prisoners the right to vote breaches their human rights. So what? Parliament says.) Currently, that's the main muddled message being conveyed by the Regulatory Standards Bill. If it is enforceable, the Bill poses a serious threat to democracy. If it isn't, and is mere virtue signalling by the ACT Party to its corporate masters, then it is an expensive and redundant waste of taxpayer time and money. What sort of beast is it? Retrospective, Much? Finally, the Bill isn't supposed to be a retrospective piece of legislation. Yet plainly it is. Part 3 (2c) (i) empowers the Regulatory Standards Board to: …Inquire into whether existing [my emphasis] legislation is consistent with the principles of responsible regulation; Likewise, Part 2 (b) (ii) provides for — the review of the consistency of proposed and existing legislation with the principles of responsible regulation; and (ii) the disclosure of the reasons for any identified inconsistencies; What to do? On the evidence to date, the Regulatory Standards Bill should be rejected outright. Fat chance. National seems committed to this Bill, unlike its prior stance on the Treaty Principles Bill. It is also probably too much to hope that the fish-hooks in this dangerous piece of ideological dogma will be remedied at select committee. It would be an uphill fight. In the name of a bogus ' equality' before the law, the coalition government continues to act as if Māori have no special rights as indigenous people, and that the Crown has no special duties towards them. The Treaty, and customary law, say otherwise. Even the Regulations Ministry itself (at clause seven in its heavily-redacted impact report on the Bill) baulks at this glaring omission: Of significance is that the proposals do not include a principle related to the Treaty/te Tiriti and its role as part of good law-making, meaning that the Bill is effectively silent about how the Crown will meet its duties under the Treaty/te Tiriti in this space. While this does not prohibit the Crown from complying with the Bill in a manner consistent with the Treaty/te Tiriti, we anticipate that the absence of this explicit reference may be seen as politically significant for Māori and could be perceived as an attempt by the Crown to limit the established role of the Treaty/te Tiriti as part of law-making.
