'Low-lifes' insult irks Otahuhu

Teresa Koloi says she enjoys the friendliness of Otahuhu. Picture / Greg Bowker

Rich they ain't, but the people of Otahuhu have no desire to give up their multicultural diversity for the sterile concrete of an inner-city apartment block.

They are not impressed by apartment salesman Martin Dunn, quoted in the latest issue of Metro magazine as condemning cheap new apartment blocks for bringing "low-lifes" into the city - from their suburb.

"They'll be on the dole," he said. "They'll be people who should live in Otahuhu and never be allowed out of Otahuhu."

Otahuhu town manager Graham Mullins was annoyed at Mr Dunn's comments yesterday.

"This is getting very close to a human rights issue," he said.

Tongan-born Teresa Koloi, 25, who wheels one-year-old son Nikolai up the Great South Rd most days, said she and her husband, a welder, wouldn't want to live in an inner-city apartment anyway.

"The 'low-life' in South Auckland have big families and wouldn't want to live in an apartment," she said.

"I just came last year from Palmerston North and I've got to really enjoy Otahuhu. It's more like a community. It's nice and friendly, the little town area.

"I don't like the city, I'm not into business - it's nice to visit but not to live there."

Blue Hennessy, 65, runs a firewood business in Otahuhu, exporting charcoal to China.

"I live in Otahuhu but that doesn't mean to say I'm a low-life," he said. "Nobody has the right to say those sorts of things."

His wife, Seruwaia, 44, says prices are cheaper in Otahuhu and she would not want to live in the city.

"It wouldn't be very adequate for five children," she said. "There's no place to play. The only game you'd have for them is PlayStation, you'd be filling them with machine games."

Business consultant Bill Smith, 46, moved from Remuera to buy a waterfront property on the Tamaki Estuary for "the best price in Auckland", and said Mr Dunn "doesn't know what he's talking about".

"I work all round Auckland but I choose to live in Otahuhu because it's fantastic," he said.

"Real people live in Otahuhu. They are not plastic, it's like a real slice of life - and you can still get a decent cup of coffee."

Ponsonby public relations consultant Anamika Vasil was so excited by visiting Otahuhu soon after she moved to Auckland in 1999 that she registered a website, otahuhu.com, and proposed a promotion programme to the Main Street Association. Although the project lapsed, she still loves the place.

"I guess I was new to Auckland and I was just intrigued by how multicultural it is. It was like getting a taste of all the different ethnicities.

"I stumbled into that main shopping strip which is full of Indian shops, South Pacific shops, different eating places, and there was that food court - I couldn't believe that. And I actually saw David Lange sitting there one day and I thought, 'My God, this is the real Auckland."'

Mr Dunn, who grew up in Remuera and now lives in Milford, admitted yesterday that he did not spend much time in Otahuhu.

"I speed through areas like that."

He said he had been selling inner-city apartments since 1991 and objected to small flats which threatened to turn downtown Auckland into another "Brixton".

"The city has been expensive. We have been lucky because the tenancy market has been reasonably sophisticated," he said.

"I don't want to have a whole lot of apartments with bedrooms that you can hardly get a bed into. Who is going to be living in them? It is going to bring a subculture into the city and I am certainly not welcoming that. I resent it.

"If we have a whole lot of sickness beneficiaries and dole bludgers in the city, that is definitely going to change the culture of the CBD."

Housing New Zealand central Auckland manager Graham Bodman confirmed that he had leased 178 flats in the central business district in the past four or five years, on top of the 182 state housing units in Greys Ave and Symonds St built in the 1940s.

He said Mr Dunn's comments were quite irresponsible. "Housing NZ's view is that poorer people have a right to live in the city near employment, schools, social services that they require."