Editorial: Stop squabbling

Environment Canterbury councillors are doing themselves and the region a disservice, writes The Press in an editorial.

The dissension in the ranks, which last week reached a peak when a vote of no confidence was initiated against the chairman, Sir Kerry Burke, disables the organisation at the top, and further lowers its reputation. That is serious, because of the vital role ECan performs.

Its day-to-day functions will still be carried out, but policy formation will be hobbled and effective leadership drained away from the elected representatives to the executive.

The rebels challenging Sir Kerry probably feel this vacuum is inconsequential because it will be short that they will soon have their candidate as chairman and able to reassert control.

But that scenario is flawed. If the incumbent is removed, his replacement will preside over a bitterly and closely divided council. She or he will probably not be able to build the consensus around the table that local bodies need if they are to be effective.

The old divisions will be continued, worsened by fresh wounds. Time will be wasted on personal clashes and policy-making and governance slowed by bad blood.

This might be justified if the rebel councillors had substantial criticisms of Sir Kerry's performance. But the bill of indictment brought against him is vague or generalised the sort of thing that can be mounted against almost anyone presiding over a large and complicated organisation. It certainly does not contain anything that has suddenly come to light and that warrants the immediate removal of the chairman.

This emphasises the murky feeling that emanates from the affair. Only a naive observer would think that the row is entirely a matter of principled objections to specific and documented failings of Sir Kerry, or based on clear policy differences.

On the contrary, the dispute seems saturated in personality clashes, private agendas, ambition and spite.

That would not matter were the participants not heading an organisation whose policies impact on everyone in the central South Island and whose decisions shape the area's environment.

Moreover, ECan faces pressing challenges particularly in the formation of water policy that need concentrated and productive attention. It is also being criticised for its performance in one of its major areas South Canterbury and the Waitaki and in the slowness with which it handles consents.

Those challenges cannot be met with premium responses if the councillors remain at loggerheads.

Burke, as chairman, must shoulder a fair measure of the responsibility for this situation, but that does not mean his removal would put matters to rights.

What is needed is a truce between the camps that rests on two main provisions: a halt to the attempts to undermine and remove the chairman, and a pact to work together in good faith.

The local body elections will occur in 13 months. They will provide the stage for ECan's political and personality issues to be put before the voters in the hope that the new councillors can form a co-operative administration, united enough to get things done.

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