Port Hills goes to Cow Rally

Over 200 demonstrators, with people from Port Hills amongst them, gave up their lunch hour to attend a meeting (affectionately dubbed the 'Cow Rally') in Victoria Square, Christchurch. There were many fine speakers including Labour's Brendon Burns, the Green Party’s Kennedy Graham and National’s Nicky Wagner with the event being presented by Glenn Livingstone.

The huge amount of support for ECAN was shown by people dressed up as cows, or in water gear with their canoes and many with signs saying how undemocratic it would be to stand down our elected ECAN councillors and replace them with government appointees such as Jenny Shipley.

A 'lighter' moment was had in a short play with an innocent looking young girl holding a sign “Democracy” being chased by a giant Nick Smith with a bloodied dagger. Interestingly, the giant Nick Smith head was made out of Cow dung!

The support was immense and the crowd was quite warmed up by the time that National’s Nicky Wagner took to the mic. She went on about how democracy was being upheld, how Canterbury should want more from their Water Management. That they National are trying to do the best for Canterbury and how she was from Canterbury so she knew what the crowd was feeling.

Of course no one in the audience bought it, and she was often interrupted with hecklers making calls about how this process is just a step towards privatisation of Canterbury’s water.  Ms Wagner was finally “booed” off at the end of her time.