Last week Wharetana Bay residents woke to bulldozers on their Te Whau bay’s foreshore, the first notice they had of a precedent-setting boatshed and visitor accommodation to be built there. Gulf News editor Liz Waters asked Mike Lee, Waiheke’s representative on the Auckland Council, for comment on ongoing council resource consents that judge the impact of non-complying developments as negligible.

Council planning officers have stretched the phrase  ‘effects no more than minor’ to absurd lengths, according to Mike Lee.

He says the Resource Management Act has been suborned and skewed to make it a charter purely for business applicants and developers.

The Waitemata and Gulf ward councillor and former long-time Auckland Regional Council chairman says the checks and balances of ‘people and communities’ enshrined in the purposes and principles of the RMA have effectively been deleted.  

He says as Te Whau residents face the prospect of a precedent-setting foreshore development that effectively ignores coastal and foreshore yard protections.

Officials are also totally focused on their “ever changing” Auckland Council District Plan – ignoring the requirements of the Regional Policy Statement, the Regional Coastal Plan, the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement and the key sections 7 and 8 of the Hauraki Gulf Marine Park Act.  

“From my inquiries planners barely look at these documents – if at all – before making their decisions to non-notify environmentally significant applications,” says Mr Lee. 

A staggering ninety-nine percent of applications in Auckland are now non-notified, he says.

“I am aware that the legacy Auckland City Council Planning Department placed great store on the principle of ‘property rights’ in its decision making process – but this appeared to be too often directed to the interests of the applicant (almost always a new property owner) – to the detriment of neighbouring existing property owners and their property rights,” he says. 

”At any rate the emphasis on the applicant’s property rights to the detriment of community property rights seems to be at odds with the RMA and its cornerstone Section 5. 

“In this Act, ‘sustainable management’ means managing the use, development and protection of natural and physical resources in a way or at a rate which enables people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural wellbeing and for their health and safety’.

“The (former) Auckland City Council seemed to deal with many resource consent applications by replacing the phrase ‘people and communities’ with the word ‘the applicant’, says Mr Lee.

“This management practice, contrary to the intentions of the Act, has worked to undermine community wellbeing in Auckland and this has contributed to a significant degree to public disenchantment with local government.

“It was, I believe, one of the principal reasons why there has been nearly 20 years of political instability in Auckland City with a revolving door of mayors and constantly changing councils,” he says.

The further amalgamations of the whole region into the new Auckland Council had been brought into being, in large part, in an attempt to deal with this political instability and public alienation in Auckland, he says. 

However, “we continue to see a number of examples of this legacy practice which have reflected badly on the Auckland Council and its reputation”.

Turua Street, Orakei Point and Paget Street have attracted high levels of public criticism, as have hotly opposed proposals for a Quest Hotel in the intensified resident Beaumont Quarter where more than 500 residents campaigned successfully – with the support of Cr Lee – to have the resource consent publicly notified. 

This would “enable them to defend their rights as they see them”, says Mr Lee, who says that beside the issues of natural justice in a democratic society, there are other important issues at stake.

“Given the work on the Auckland Spatial Plan and especially at this stage in the development of Auckland it is absolutely imperative that the quality of life and the public reputation of city living is not tarnished by more expedient, ad hoc, bad planning solely designed to benefit individual applicants.” • Liz Waters