Mahurangi Matters, 10 April 2023 – Off the Record

Early bird gets the win
It’s barely April and already we have an entry for our Quote of the Year Award that we really can’t see being beaten. It comes from Jenny Bartlett of Snells Beach, who has been shaving her head and tattooing her scalp to raise funds for Leukaemia & Blood Cancer NZ for the past 10 years. On hearing that her head was now completely covered in inked images of native birds and flowers, Mahurangi Matters naturally asked if she would be tattooing anywhere south of her skull in future? “No,” came the resounding reply. “Two birds on the head are NOT going to lead to one in the bush!”

Driven to drink

One of the many perils for city folk venturing out of the CBD and taking SH1 to Warkworth were revealed during a recent planning hearing at the Town Hall. After the panel chair had called for a swift 10-minute break on the first morning, barrister Jeremy Brabant made a heartfelt plea for an extra five minutes, although it wasn’t to consult his client or check his briefs. “The traffic was so bad I didn’t have time to get a coffee before we started,” he admitted. His wish was not only granted, but panel chair Karyn Sinclair made sure all was well on the second day, as well. “Have you had a coffee this morning, Mr Brabant?” she inquired, before ending the first session.

Sniff test lesson

Some of the legalese being used by counsel in the Dome landfill case in the Environment Court has most ordinary people’s eyes glazing over. But it got even more baffling when one of the judges said that what was really needed to test odour levels was someone with a “calibrated nose”. Apparently, odour sensitivity declines with age so there is a test that is done to make sure the ‘calibrated nose’ is within the 20-90 ppb detection threshold for n-butanol, and can be relied upon to represent an ‘ordinary, reasonable person’ for the purposes of odour management. Who’d have thought!

Religious conversion?

There was the merest hint of rueful irony in the air at the Environment Court recently, in the wake of Ngāti Manuhiri Settlement Trust’s recent switch from fighting to supporting a regional landfill. When DOC’s planner, Andrew Riddell, was asked by Waste Management NZ barrister Bal Matheson if he had read the new evidence from trust chair Mook Hohneck, Riddell replied that he had, but added, “I’m not sure they’re singing from the same hymn sheet.” After the briefest of pauses, Matheson commented that he wasn’t certain they were even in the same church.