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SocietyAugust 27, 2018

The bizarre true story of the gun club which invaded the Makarau Valley

Contributing writer
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Image: Facebook

Keep the Peace Makarau Valley says the controversial Auckland Shooting Club is filing resource consent applications that are incomplete and unrepresentative of the club’s real ambitions for expansion. 

A controversial Auckland gun club is pressing ahead with their plan to build Australasia’s ‘largest shooting facility’ in a sleepy rural valley – and the council is ‘screwing’ residents by taking the shooters at their word, a community group says.

Keep the Peace Makarau Valley spokesperson Chris Catchpole told The Spinoff his organisation believes that the Auckland Shooting Club is rushing through a resource consent application on erroneous grounds – one which totally omits the “private” gun range right next door, owned and operated by founding ASC member Raymond O’Brien.

The sites at 287 and 297 Tuhirangi Road together compromise around 110 hectares in the Makarau Valley, 60km north of Auckland’s CBD. Number 287 is owned by O’Brien and wife Victoria Pichler; 297 is owned by O’Brien alone. The Auckland Shooting Club leases a 38 hectare block at Number 287, on which the range is located. New Zealand Shooting Sports Centre Ltd, a company solely owned and directed by O’Brien and Pichler, is registered next door at 297.

Since Pichler and O’Brien took ownership of the properties, new internal roading linking the sites has been constructed, and New Zealand Shooting Sports Centre Ltd has commissioned substantial earthworks at both addresses. Yet despite this – as well as previously expressed council concerns club members would use the ranges at 297 ‘without resource consent’, photographic evidence of ASC members being ferried between the two properties on a competition day, and an ASC website promoting member access to the neighbouring property – Auckland Council has ruled the addresses be considered separate.

ASC-issued standing orders for 297 Tuhirangi Road.

The Spinoff is also in possession of Auckland Shooting Club-issued standing orders for a ‘Happy Valley Rifle Range’ at 297 Tuhirangi Road dated April, 2018. Locals report hearing gunfire from the area since around that time. “The applicants are members of the Club, but do not run and are not in charge of the Club,” Ian Dobson, Manager Resource Consents North West, Auckland Council, told The Spinoff.  

Victoria Pichler, Paula Bennett, ASC President Chris Gee and Raymond O’Brien. Photo: Facebook.

But media reports from the past two years variously refer to O’Brien and Pichler as owners, founders and spokespeople for the ASC. Pictures of the opening of the ASC show Pichler and O’Brien smiling alongside then deputy-prime minister Paula Bennett, who conducted the ceremony. New Zealand Shooting Sports Centre Ltd, the company they own and direct, appoints the president of the Auckland Shooting Club.

Club financial statements show that in the last year, ASC paid $163,537 in leasing fees for O’Brien and Pinchler’s property, exceeding total club revenue of $148,135. All of the club’s annual income and more was paid to either New Zealand Shooting Sports Centre Ltd or O’Brien and Pichler personally, as owners of the land. But in emails seen by The Spinoff, council principal planning specialist Dan Rodie says that “without conclusive evidence” to contradict his findings, Auckland Council has not pursued the need for further consents to be applied for Number 297 in relation to Number 287.

287 and 297 Tuhirangi Road.

The properties are seemingly constantly intertwined.

In November, 2017, Auckland Council issued an abatement notice on earthworks being conducted at 287. That same month, New Zealand Shooting Sports Centre Ltd commissioned earthworks at 297 Tuhirangi Rd. “We finally got council to issue an abatement on 287, and they moved next door to 297 and started building ranges there,” said Keep the Peace spokesperson Chris Catchpole.

Victoria Pichler and Raymond O’Brien, as well as Graham Everson and Everson Earthworks Limited, are under prosecution for alleged breaches of Unitary Plan rules in the construction of the rifle range at Number 297.

Number 287 Tuhirangi Road also remains under an abatement order, and the legitimacy of the Certificate of Compliance at the property is the subject of a case currently before the Court of Appeal.

“If 297 isn’t included, more neighbours aren’t affected, and that noise won’t be taken into consideration,” said Catchpole. “The ASC is arguing that Number 297 is only used for private shooting, but we have evidence of ASC members using those ranges commercially.”

“People drive to the ASC and when they want to shoot rifles and shotguns they go the adjoining property. We’ve photos of got ASC members in shirts shooting on 297. And still council say they won’t include it in resource consent.”

Club president Chris Gee confirmed members have been invited by O’Brien and Pichler to use the ranges at 297, but said there’s “more to it than that”.

The existence of the range at 297 Tuhirangi Road also worries residents concerned about environmental creep.

Two kilometres as the crow flies from the front gate of 297 Tuhirangi Road is the front gate of another, older Makarau Valley institution – the Dhamma Medini Vipassana Meditation Centre. A silent retreat built over 30 years on volunteer donations, the centre regularly hosts students with severe PTSD and other difficulties, who attend 10 day retreats amongst the serene native bush. 

Vipassana meditation is the method taught by the Buddha to come out of suffering. Students wake at four, and spend ten hours a day watching their breath and learning to observe the mind. The course is free and teachers receive no remuneration. Everything from the kitchen to the dim, warm meditation hall was built on donations.

The centre sits in a small valley, with sweeping lawns and gravel tracks to small waterfalls. There are birds in the area, and gurgling streams run down out of the treeline. When the wind is right, and there’s water in the air, mist pours down over the trees and covers the centre in dew. It’s an atmosphere conducive to deep thought.

“Shots can now be clearly heard within the mediation hall, and have been disturbing our students for over a year,” said trustee Kirsty McKay.

The centre has strongly opposed the existence of the club since it was mooted in 2016. At the time, Raymond O’Brien told community and council that distance would make gunfire all but inaudible. Once the range was in operation, residents of the Makarau Valley told The Spinoff otherwise.

“On a good day it’s like having a nailgun [in a] building next door,” Lesley Rountree, a resident of 20 years, told me last year. “On a bad day it’s very, very loud.”

Chris Catchpole, who once considered the Makarau Valley his forever home, called it a “disaster”, and “ridiculous”. ASC club president Chris Gee said he “wished everyone could just get along.”

“What is being done is perfectly legal. If you can’t shoot a gun in an area zoned for it, where can you?”

Earthworks at 287 Tuhirangi Road.

Local hapū Ngāti Rango are also concerned, with kaumatua William Kapea saying in an email that the Auckland Shooting Club are “carrying out an activity that contravenes Ngāti Rongo cultural values”.

“Hapū members have reacted accordingly and despite these protests, council still chooses to ignore its obligations,” he said. “Tuhirangi [maunga] is of significant cultural value to the uri o Ngāti Rongo and it would not be wise for Auckland Council to ignore that.”

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    Keep the Peace say they have been told to expect a decision on resource consent notification to be made in the next ten days, but questions remain over whether or not the council is following best practice. “The council is about to bend the rules in the favour of the Auckland Shooting Club and screw the community in the process,” said Catchpole. “They’re about to make a decision that facilities the shooting clubs expansion in spite of everything the community has been trying to achieve get a fair hearing.”

    “We have provided conclusive evidence. They’ve created an illusion.”

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    Photo: Getty Images
    Photo: Getty Images

    SocietyAugust 26, 2018

    Yes, law firm culture is fucked. And nothing is going to change anytime soon

    Guest writer
    Photo: Getty Images
    Photo: Getty Images

    Anton Smith worked at big law firms for years, and welcomes signs the profession wants to change their workplace culture. But, he warns, without a massive industry shift any plans for improvement are doomed to fail.

    While I wholeheartedly support Sarah Mitchell’s recent advice to young lawyers in The Spinoff, better coping strategies won’t fix the underlying issue. And big law firms will not transform into good places to work without a sea change in attitudes.

    I am a Pākeha male who was lucky enough to get a great education and go to law school. I have a lot of privilege, and privilege attracts power. I worked for fantastic lawyers who gave me a profound appreciation for what it means to act in the best interests of my clients. And yet, even that privilege and power did not shield me from the sting of poor industry culture.

    I have worked literally 21 hours straight. I have had a colleague slide their (unwanted and unexpected) hand up my back under my shirt as I was bending over to refill the printer. I have been told by a senior lawyer not to ‘get [my wife] pregnant’ as I was about to leave for a holiday.

    This is not rare. It is the norm, and those with less privilege and less power are far more susceptible to this kind of behaviour (and, as we have learned, far worse).

    You might be thinking that someone who has experienced what I have, and and who has heard about a lot more, would have been tripping over himself to apply for a spot on the cultural change taskforce the New Zealand Law Society is setting up.

    I wasn’t and I didn’t.

    The New Zealand Law Society finally wants to drive change and is taking steps to try. It is admirable. However, it is doomed to fall well short of what is needed unless it gets the sway and the tools to address the root causes of the workplace culture everyone is talking about.

    Getty Images

    After leaving law firms and shifting into a great corporate environment, I have been lucky enough to undergo high performance culture training with an exceptional ‘corporate anthropologist’. There are so many lessons for law firms in anthropology and understanding the true value of organisational culture, and I encourage anyone interested in driving change in the industry to start by looking to anthropology. Unfortunately, from what I have learned and seen in action, plans to change law firm culture are going nowhere. Why?

    1. A culture forms in any group of people and starts with that group’s beliefs. For example, if a group of people who work together believe that making money and being the best are the only goals, their behaviour will be geared towards making the most money and being the best – creating a culture where those things take almost always take priority. It’s a culture often characterised by winning at all costs, fear, blame and denial – even in firms where there are some great senior lawyers who fight tooth and nail to prevent that. Culture is what the group as a whole cares about, so a law firm needs to completely re-think what each person cares about in order to drive a culture of support, trust and fun.

    2. The tasks required of lawyers – perhaps best characterised as a healthy level of cynicism or scepticism, directed to achieve their clients’ best interests – too often seep into the way lawyers interact at work. We might get paid to be cynical, but that doesn’t mean that we can or should approach our colleagues or the workplace in that way.

    3. Culture change requires courage, right at the top and across the board. Where’s the impetus for that courage? The Russell McVeagh scandal certainly hasn’t been enough and, frankly, Dame Margaret Bazley’s report is proof of that.

    Sure, these are generalisations. Perhaps culture sounds like ‘soft and fluffy’ stuff. I challenge that. This is about human interaction, plain and simple. Even if our organisations only cared about the bottom line, those organisations will never grow without cultures that are stable as a minimum. This is especially true for an industry that literally deals in human time.

    And let’s call a spade a spade. Right now, law firm cultures are dysfunctional or dying.

    What would actually move the needle? Let me suggest some first steps in this sea change I am calling for. They are simple and take cues from other industries.

    1. Agree, and strictly enforce, a 8-hour work day.

    2. If a junior lawyer’s employment contract requires them to do extra work ‘as and when required outside of contracted hours’ (and most do), pay them over-time.

    3. Adopt a business structure with distinct management, governance and ownership; the usual separation of powers.

    4. Strictly enforce pay equity.

    5. Empower law firm HR teams to take decisive steps against bullying and harassment, including giving a partner/owner ‘the boot’.

    6. Offer flexible working for everyone.

    7. Require all partners/owners to undergo at least one year’s part-time intensive management training. They might know the law but they often do not know how to manage people safely and elevate culture.

    8. Change the expectation that lawyers in #biglaw work all night or on weekends (or, if you do and you are a client, be prepared to pay #bigbucks for that sacrifice). Senior lawyers must set the example that a life outside the office is healthy, normal and necessary to career success.

    9. Listen to and promote lawyers and former lawyers calling for change in Aotearoa, like Zoë Lawton, Catriona MacLennan, Khylee Quince and Olivia Wensley.

    10. Change regulation to support new ways of working, like freelancing, to allow experienced lawyers to set up shop outside of big firms if that is what they want to do.

    This must be the starting point for our decision-makers and those who will seek to influence them, like the Law Society.

    Photo: Getty Images

    Are you someone with power in the law or in other industries who can actually drive change? Did you feel when you were a young lawyer or professional that something needed to change, but could do nothing about it at the time? Now you can. This is what is urgently required and it is time to step up.

    My detractors will argue the legal industry is different. That what is required to shift the needle is unrealistic. That young law graduates know what they are getting themselves into, or that this is the best and fastest way for them to learn.

    If that is true, big law firms will slowly start to fail.

    If that were true, my peers and I would not be receiving a constant stream of emails, LinkedIn messages and phone calls from legal recruiters seeking junior lawyers for the growing avalanche of vacancies. Turnover in the legal industry is only going to continue getting worse if we do not shift the needle.

    Considering human time remains the core input of a legal service, if any other industry was dealing with its suppliers like law firms do – literally harassing and stretching them to breaking point – we would call that industry dead and move on. Why should law firms be immune?

    A cynic might suggest these changes to shift the needle are worth pushing for if only to make sure #biglaw can keep making the #bigbucks. An optimist might say shifting the needle would allow the legal industry to thrive, innovate and add far more value to Aotearoa than it currently does.

    Let’s get a grip and be honest about what is wrong with the legal industry and what it would take to fix it. Do not accuse us of mincing words. Young lawyers in firms know what they need from those in power in order to continue working there.

    The question is who will take up the call to action junior lawyers are silently screaming for?

     

    *The views expressed in this article are entirely those of the author and do not represent the views of the author’s employers.

    Anton Smith is an in-house lawyer and co-founder of legal marketplace consensus.nz.

    Society