Comalco To Be Asked Not To Raise Lake Levels

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29801, 18 April 1962, Page 14

Comalco To Be Asked Not To Raise Lake Levels

The New Zealand Scenery Preservation Society is to ask Comalco Proprietary, Ltd., not to make use of its power to raise the level of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau. This was decided on at the society's first annual meeting last .night. The request will be conveyed personally to the directors of the company in Melbourne by the society’s secretary (Mr A. J. Scott). “The only way we have any hope of saving these lakes is to get at the conscience of Comalco.” said the vice-chairman (Mr I. Clark), who was in the chair. ”We have to clutch at a straw, but we have got nowhere with Government.” The motion, passed unanimously by the attendance of 24. read: “This society resolves that, as many New Zealanders consider they have been betrayed by their Government into the sacrifice of priceless scenery, an approach be made

to Comalco Proprietary, Ltd., the beneficiary of this national generosity, in the hope that the company will decline to take advantage of that part of the concession authorising it to raise the levels of Lakes Manapouri and Te Anau, in view of the relatively small increase in power thereby gained.” A statement edited by the chairman of the society (Dr. P. Cook) describing events in connexion with the agreement between the Government and Comalco, was adopted by the meeting. Mr Clark said it was “an indictment of the New Zealand Government, not just of one party.” Mr Scott said the present Government had “no room to manoeuvre at all, because the whole thing has been given away and sold out.”

Mr M. G. Weston criticised the drafting of the agreement “I can say confidently that no New Zealand lawyer could have had any say in proposing amendments io the agreement before it was signed,” he said. “It was one

of many such ill-drafted secret agreements entered into by the last Government. The Nelson cotton mill agreement, an equally appalling piece of legal drafting, was found to be completely meaningless, and had to be revoked. “The Comalco company’s lawyers must have perused the agreement with glee,” said Mr Weston. Professor H. R. Gray, professor of law at the University of Canterbury, said the Crown Law Office had been responsible for the wording of the agreement, but it was not the law office’s job to put in protective clauses. The terms of the agreement were the outcome of “some very hard bargaining” by Comalco with Government representatives who were not lawyers anfi were "not in the same class as the rather tough gentlemen who represented Comalco.” The Crown Law Office lawyers had merely put into legal form an agreement which had been imposed on the Government negotiators.