By NAOMI LARKIN
The Prime Minister says she may be forced to leave her home of 19 years after a photograph identifying the house, and a map pinpointing its location, were published yesterday.
A furious Helen Clark told the Herald that the disclosure was an "absolute" invasion of her privacy and had created a "serious security concern."
"What [the Sunday Star-Times] did was make it so easy: there's the map, here's what the house looks like - go to it.
"I try to live a normal, modest life in my own home, in an ordinary suburb, and they are making it impossible for me."
The Prime Minister's anger was triggered by a Star-Times item reporting her objections to the expansion of a boarding house around the corner from her home.
The item said she feared the boarding house would attract undesirables who might "downgrade the neighbourhood" and "transients" who might not be properly supervised.
When her submission was made last September, Helen Clark was in Opposition, campaigning for community-based mental health services.
But yesterday she said the facts had been "seriously distorted."
The proposed building was not a home for the needy. It was a commercial proposition, by absentee landlords, for the existing 27-room historic boarding house to be expanded to 88 rooms with a separate three-storey block.
The development received the go-ahead at an Auckland City Council resource consent hearing last month.
Helen Clark said that if she now decided to remain in her Mt Eden villa, it would need to be fortified and have expensive security installed.
With her husband, Dr Peter Davis, based in Christchurch, she was often home alone and security was vital.
When she was living at Premier House, her official residence in Wellington, she was under constant police protection, she said, but this was not the case at her home in Auckland.
Detective Inspector Tom Stenhouse, head of the diplomatic protection squad, which is responsible for the Prime Minister's safety, said yesterday that he would not discuss her security arrangements.
The written submission from Helen Clark at the centre of the furore was one of 91 opposing the Eden Park Lodge development.
The one resident who supported it unchanged was Mary Prebble, mother of Act leader Richard Prebble. Mrs Prebble, whose house is just a few doors from the boarding house, said yesterday that she and her husband, Kenneth, had lived in their Onslow Rd bungalow for 20 years and had never had any problems with the boarding house.
But Megan Layne, whose home is opposite the building, said privacy was an issue. She had already been followed home from the bus stop by male residents living in the house and was afraid that such behaviour would increase.
'Transients' bad neighbours complains PM
They're driving me out complains furious PM
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