Successful Campaigns

Kia ora friends, Some positive news - Toi Ohomai Tokoroa campus will be staying open for the next two years! While this is not the best news for long-term stability, we hope that our local and national leadership will take accountability and ensure the sustainability of this valued community asset. You can learn more about the decision here: https://www.waikatotimes.co.nz/nz-news/360815782/operation-phoenix-helps-rescue-tokoroas-polytech What next? Our local MP, Louise Upston, has stated: “In Tokoroa, I have tasked Project Phoenix [a local economic strategic working group] with leading a focused investigation into the education and training needs of the South Waikato District. “This includes understanding how local employers and learners are feeding into current Toi Ohomai programmes and identifying which courses will best serve our region’s future workforce. “The taskforce is now working with urgency to provide Toi Ohomai with clear, community-informed recommendations that reflect the district’s labour market needs and aspirations.” THANK YOU FOR SIGNING OUR PETITION! Your contribution has helped signal to leadership that our community will not accept an unmitigated closure. Your voice matters, so thank you for showing your support for our community, especially our youth. Keeping Toi Ohomai Tokoroa open is essential to ensuring opportunities for our local youth and providing options for our unemployed. South Waikato mayor Gary Petley says the fight to save courses, and staff, from the funding axe is not over yet - so keep an eye on this issue via the media because the next two years of research and planning by Project Pheonix and Toi Ohomai will be super important! Ngā mihi, Elvisa van der Leden

McCallum Bros are stopping all of their offshore sand dredging activities at Pakiri and Mangawhai. After + 80 years at Pakiri beach, they are out. In one of the biggest cases in NZ environmental history, we won. We did it! McCallum’s have withdrawn their appeal to the High Court, therefore enabling our earlier emphatic wins at both the Council Hearing and at the Environment Court, to stand. It has been a long, uninterrupted series of battles. From 2020 involving reports, appearances at Hearings, lawyers, experts, research and witnesses. Requiring huge amounts of time, funding and expertise, thousands of pages, thousands of hours, against an incumbent operator who didn’t cede an inch. We revealed that the dredgers had created and hidden, deep seabed trenches. We proved that onshore erosion was being caused. We revealed many operational misstatements, incorrect science and gravely concerning practices. In parallel, local iwi were united and strong and compelling in highlighting significant cultural harms. If we had lost, right now there would be two, parallel consents off Pakiri Mangawhai, of up to 300K m3 pa, for up to 30 years, generating hundreds of millions of dollars of income for the McCallum’s, at our expense. The stakes for the beach could not have been any higher. From today, there is no more dredging at Pakiri, Mangawhai. Which brings different emotions. Disbelief, contentedness, appreciation, pride. This win will resonate with generations of some families and entities. For many it has been a constant blight, without an apparent end in sight. That ends today. Significant thanks must be passed to the experts, lawyers, opposition principals, funders, activists and partners. Thanks to the thousands of you for signing our petition and helping us build credibility and awareness. A highlight has been the community banding together. Pakiri G, Taumata A&B, Ngati Manuhiri, Te Whanau O Pakiri working side by side with Friends of Pakiri Beach, Mangawhai Harbour Restoration Society. Others joined in; DOC, Forest and Bird, EDS. Some opposed in their own individual name. In aggregate, the combined opposition was an unstoppable force of nature. Pakiri and Mangawhai have paid a price for the uninterrupted sand dredging, particularly in recent years. Now, it may rest and gently try to heal. We will remain vigilant and ensure that offshore dredging never returns to Pakiri Mangawhai embayment again. Thank you for your support; others can take encouragement from what we did for their environmental battles elsewhere. We did it! Nga mihi, Damon Clapshaw Nick Williams Sir David Williams Friends of Pakiri Beach

May 2021 After months of campaigning we welcome the news that New Zealand will support temporarily relaxing patents on COVID 19 vaccines. New Zealand joins the vast majority of member states at the World Trade Organisation as supporters of a proposal that seeks to ramp up the production of vaccines and ease distribution in the Global South.

This petition was delivered in July 2020: https://www.stuff.co.nz/pou-tiaki/122241314/30000strong-petition-to-make-matariki-a-public-holiday-moves-onto-next-stage. In September the Labour Party joined the Green and Māori parties in confirming they would make Matariki a public holiday if in government. Of course, it is not only this petition that led to Labour’s announcement. Many Māori over many years have been working for Matariki to be given the recognition it deserves. The first public holiday for Matariki will be 24 June 2022! https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-news/new-zealand/future-matariki-public-holiday-dates-revealed

December 17, 2020 was a very significant day for our tūpuna and whānau of Makaurau Marae, for the Ihumātao papakāinga and for the iwi and hapū who whakapapa to this whenua. The Crown announced it will acquire the contested land from Fletcher and activate a process to determine its future.

19 September: The annual refugee quota will lift from 1000 to 1500 by 2020, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced! https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/107203279/Refugee-quota-lifting-to-1500-by-2020

1 Feb 2021: The Local Government Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced she will introduce new legislation that will remove the ability to petition and block Māori wards on Councils who wish to have them. https://www.newsroom.co.nz/changes-to-fundamentally-unfair-process-to-make-way-for-mori-wards The legislation will be retrospective to allow the councils which have voted for Māori wards in the last few months to not have to face referendums. It will give other councils around Aotearoa until May to decide whether to introduce a Māori ward in time for the council elections in 2022. From next year our councils will have better Māori representation, make better decisions with better outcomes, and stronger connections to local hapū. Our hearts are with each and every person who has pulled it into reality.

March 2020: This week we achieved abortion law reform, largely because of the support you and the rest of the country have shown toward reproductive rights through polls, demonstrations, lobbying efforts, and petitions like this one.

15 May 2018: It's been announced this morning that funding has been restored for the 'Growing Up in NZ Study', the biggest longitudinal study about growing up in NZ. Katie Tuck is a parent of one of the children on the study who led a community campaign on OurActionStation to restore the funding. She says: "This is fantastic news as this means that all study families will have the chance to participate, we will get to hear the voices of all the study children and the cohort is maintained. Thank you all for your support." https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/103901353/budget-2018-2m-for-nzs-biggest-longtitudinal-study-about-growing-up-in-nz

June 2019 - We’ve just heard that the plan by a company to build a water pipeline from Mt Aspiring National Park through a Kiwi sanctuary has stalled - the sanctuary is safe! You were one of many thousands of people who came together to preserve the home of the Haast Tokeka Kiwi. Together we protected their home and stopped a new bottled water business selling precious spring water overseas. The company, Okuru Enterprises Ltd, had permission (first given 25 years ago) to take and export 800 million litres of spring water each month from a catchment high in the mountains - right through a sanctuary for the Haast Tokoeka Kiwi. However the company's permission ran out last week and the Department of Conservation stopped considering their new application because of insufficient information. As a result of our combined people power there was constant pressure on the project, and on the politicians with the power to make decisions on the project. Okuru Enterprises still have permits from the District and Regional Councils for the water take, land use and coastal use. While there is nothing stopping the company trying to restart the project they will need to reapply for permission from the Department of Conservation all over again, and face public scrutiny each step of the way. For now the kiwi sanctuary and surrounding forest is saved! Here’s how our community made it happen it happen: 🌏 When news first broke in April 2017 we launched into action, launching a petition calling for the end of the project and save the Haast Tokoeka. 🌏 18,534 of us came together to support the call. 🌏 The petition showed public support which helped power media stories keeping attention focused on the issue. 🌏 We consulted with allies and conservation experts. 🌏 We targeted Maggie Barry, the then-Minister of Conservation to put pressure on her decisions on the project. 🌏 In August we went to Parliament to deliver it to MP Eugenie Sage - who a couple of months later became the new Minister for Conservation. ActionStation members chipped in to make it a positive, visual event. Volunteers dressed as kiwis and students from Tuia te Matangi, a bilingual Maori-English school from Nelson, stepped up to give the kaupapa awesome support. 🌏 We presented our crowdsourced submission to the politicians considering the issue sharing personal stories on why we need to save the Haast Kiwi. It included expert opinion from conservationists to the Environment Select Committee.[2] After our coordinated collective actions, it’s a win for the Haast Tokoeka Kiwi!