KEY POINTS:
There's a cargo cult nuttiness about Waitakere City's reluctance to abandon plans to rewrite the District Plan so that Whenuapai Air Force Base can be redeveloped as a commercial airport. It's as though Mayor Bob Harvey and his allies believe that if they write: "Here be a commercial
airport," on the city's grand plan, hey presto, jumbo jets will start descending from the skies, packed with millionaire tourists eager to share their wealth with the friendly
natives.
I've always regarded the idea of a second commercial airport for Auckland as misguided, for all sorts of reasons. But until local MP John Key was elected Prime Minister nearly three months ago, proponents could justifiably argue that making provision for their dream in the district plan was a prudent move. And good publicity.
However, Mr Key made it clear in the election campaign - and before and after - that a Key Government would abandon Labour's planned centralisation of the Air Force in the Manawatu. Just a week before the election, Mr Key told Newstalk ZB, "If we become the Government we are not moving Whenuapai down to Ohakea, because a huge amount of what the Air Force do is correlated to the big bulk of population that lives north of Taupo, and that is search and rescue and the like, so they're staying."
That effectively put an end to the Labour Government's plans to relocate 1300 Auckland-based Air Force staff, their families and their flying machines down country. Just last weekend Mr Key reiterated the message, emphasising that Whenuapai would continue as a defence facility. North Shore MP and Defence Minister Wayne Mapp echoed this a few days later saying "the Air Force is not going to move".
The message is clear, over the next few years in excess of $140 million is to be spent upgrading both Ohakea and Whenuapai as Air Force bases. The six-year-long debate about what to do with "a soon-to-be-vacant Whenuapai" has been overtaken by events. The base is no longer up for grabs.
Local councillors should be jubilant. The commercial airport concept only emerged seriously in 2002 when the city was scratching around for a substitute industry after the Air Force announced plans to take 1300 staff and their families - and their jobs - south to the Manawatu. It would have been a big blow to the local economy. The arguments about a substitute commercial airport shortening the trip to the airport for North Shore and West Auckland travellers only came later.
With the jobs now secure, and the site no longer on the market, it's hard to fathom what, apart from pride, is stopping Waitakere City from abandoning the planning hearings scheduled to begin in 10 days time.
Russell Stewart, a leading opponent says the council has already spent $200,000 of ratepayers' money pursuing the commercial airport dream and to continue with a hearing that is now largely irrelevant is "reckless regard" of ratepayers money.
Who could disagree?
Lined up to oppose the plan change before a panel of three independent commissioners are heavyweight organisations like the Defence Force, Auckland Regional Council, North Shore City, Auckland Regional Health Board, NZ Transport Agency and many others. Many are public bodies, represented, no doubt, by expensive glass tower lawyers. All participating in a meaningless charade. Then there'll be the inevitable appeals.
Yet deputy mayor Penny Hulse can talk about proceeding "sensibly" in the same breath as saying the council will consider postponing the hearings. What is there to consider? The game is over, the Air Force is staying put. The only sensible move is to celebrate the retention of the jobs and personnel, and abandon the hearings for good.
Even if the Government hadn't put the kibosh on the project, the hearings should be stopped in recognition of the impending reorganisation of local government to be announced in March. Creating a second Auckland airport at Whenuapai was a strictly parochial response to a local issue.
It goes against decades of regional planning which determined that Auckland would have one airport at Mangere, surrounded by noise buffer zones and fed by planned transport links. If there's to be any change to this it should be determined by the region as a whole, not by one of it's seven parts - one which might well be abolished before the commissioners can report back to it.
