Surprise, surprise – we find the NPDC belongs to an International Organisation – this one for how they will engage with the New Plymouth Community.

Two very important legal documents are out for consultation at the moment – and surprise, surprise – we find the NPDC belongs to an International Organisation – this one for how they will engage with the New Plymouth Community.

This one is called The International Association of Public Participation framework.

The open consultations at the moment are for the Significance and Engagement policies for the Council and for the Water Company (CCO). These documents are the legal rules of how you will be engaged with – so you can “participate” in what the Council and the CCO will do on your behalf.

What is in these documents sets the rules of when either the Water Company, or the NPDC, has to let you know significant decisions are being made and when they have to ask for your feedback about those decisions.

The NPDC belongs to the Australasian branch of the International Association of Public Participation framework. This is a link to what they do:

https://engagementinstitute.org.au/resources/iap2-public-participation-spectrum/

This link has a video on one of this site’s pages of how a council can select a method of engagement – the example that comes up with is called “Deliberative Engagement”:

https://engagementinstitute.org.au/engagement-methods-tool/

We are sending a full submission to both the NPDC and the Water CCO for all sections of these two consultations. Below is what we wrote about belonging to The International Association of Public Participation framework, in that section of our NPDC submission:

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Appendix 1 – Community Engagement Guide – Page 9

We would like to raise a concern with wording about halfway down this page. Under the table is wording describing Councils approach to carrying out engagement, “which is based on the International Association of Public Participation framework”.

We have strong feedback from Ratepayer Alliance Supporters that the reason that the general community has given up on engaging with the NPDC is because they do NOT get to choose what options they want, they are fed versions of options they do not want, and they can’t say no to what they don’t want. 

Many, many people in New Plymouth have given up on giving feedback to the NPDC as their opinion does not fit the preferred direction put forward by the NPDC.

This international organisation specially states on its homepage NOT to share what their spectrum is. A video on methods that can be used comes out with - Deliberative Engagement - as a tool example – which translates to - starting out with a deliberate result in mind, with a selected group of people.

The Ratepayers Alliance strongly believes in engagement with the same approach being available to all of the community, asking direct open questions, explaining issues, and giving respondents the opportunity to answer in their own words, with their own choices.

We do not support International Organisations influencing how the people of New Plymouth get to make decisions in forums set up to guide opinions or outcomes. We do not support NPDC staff being trained in “international” viewpoints of how best to manipulate results through small public forums.

We would ask the NPDC elected officials to understand more about the International Association of Public Participation, and we would ask whatever fees are paid to belong to this association are saved, by exiting this group, and concentrating on engaging directly with the people in New Plymouth who want to engage, and who want to use their own words and make their own choices.”

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• Both of these Significance and Engagement consultations close on Wednesday 30^th September, at 11.59pm.

Our next two blogs have some bullet points you may want to use, and the consultation link if you would like to send a submission to either organisation.

One blog is about the NPDC consultation, and

The other blog is about the Water CCO Consultation.