Brian Rudman: Hubbard finds it hard to hear noise of protest

Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard is a worry.

On Tuesday he was at the launch of the Government's Value of Urban Design report, proudly boasting to Environment Minister Marian Hobbs and sundry invited guests that "Auckland City is putting its money where its mouth is to create New Zealand's most liveable city".

But just two days later I picked up my Herald to read him denouncing legal aid for Western Springs speedway noise victims as "quite inappropriate", adding "this is not an environmental matter, in my opinion".

Lucky for him I was between spoonfuls of his finest oat bran muesli, otherwise he might have had the choking of a columnist on his conscience as well.

Since when has noise not been an environmental issue? It certainly still is as far as the city council's "Our Changing Environment" guidelines are concerned, meriting its own chapter alongside air quality, water resources, natural hazards and the like.

The document declares that "Auckland City has set maximum permitted noise levels for the city, which allow a reasonable range of land-use activities to occur ... "

It adds that "the council follows Ministry of Health guidelines and sets noise tolerance levels based on world health standards at 55 decibels for daytime activities and 45 decibels for night-time activities".

It advises people to "show consideration to your neighbours when using noisy appliances, machines or loud stereos".

That's the standards and the advice it expects you and I to obey. But there are different rules as far as the council-owned Western Springs is concerned.

Until 10 years ago, the speedway was allowed to emit a deafening 90 to 95 decibels into the surrounding urban neighbourhood. It was then, after consultation with the operators, that the city set an upper level of 85 decibels for speedway racket and wrote this into the district plan. But both operator and council then carried on as though nothing had changed.

It wasn't until last summer - 10 years and much local protest later - that the council finally got around to monitoring and enforcing these limits.

But when the operators said it was impossible and started weeping and wailing, the council buckled and is now before the Environment Court arguing hand-in-hand with the speedway operators against the city's own environmental protection regulations.

Leading the charge are Mayor Hubbard and his erstwhile rival petrol-head, Deputy Mayor Bruce Hucker.

Both now argue the speedway should be allowed an "existing use" right to make a racket up to the old, unacceptable, 95 decibels.

Now if this isn't an environmental issue, what is? And if the neighbours' fight against not only the speedway operators, but their own city council as well, isn't a suitable case for the Ministry of Environment's Environmental Legal Assistance Fund, I can't imagine what is. After all, when Marian Hobbs launched the environment legal aid scheme in 2000, she declared it was "to assist community groups to participate better in the resource management process and to remove barriers to public participation under the Resource Management Act".

Grants of up to $30,000 - in this case, $28,687 - are available for legal works associated with environment court proceedings.

Mr Hubbard might find this "quite inappropriate" as far as the Western Springs residents are concerned. Well, if that is inappropriate, what does he call the use of untold thousands of ratepayer dollars by his council to prop up the speedway operator's battle against the city's own district plan?

I hazard a guess that when Ms Hobbs and Green Party co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons came up with this package, they envisaged it helping to level the playing fields in struggles between little battlers and giant multi-national mining companies and the like, rather than something like the present case.

Then again, who would have thought a local authority would march off to court and take the side of the transgressor against a group of ratepayers whose only demand is that the terms of the district plan be honoured?

The criteria for obtaining funds from the ELA is that the case be of environmental public interest, be about the protection or enhancement of environmental qualities, affect the wide community of general public and that without assistance, there is likely to be an imbalance between the level or quality of evidence and case management because of lack of financial resources. On all four counts, the grant seems hugely appropriate.