National candidates have divided views over highway

The eastern highway is dividing the National Party, with transport spokesman Maurice Williamson promising to build it within 10 years and Epsom MP Richard Worth calling it a dead duck.

Only days after Mr Williamson promised to revive the controversial highway across Hobson Bay, Mr Worth assured voters in his newsletter that he opposed the idea.

Mr Worth said he agreed with former Auckland City Mayor John Banks that reviving the highway across Hobson Bay would be as pointless as "bouncing dead cats". The former National Party Cabinet minister blamed his mayoral loss on the highway.

Mr Williamson told the Herald last week that the highway remained a crucial link in Auckland's roading network and National would require Transit from day one to take over the scheme as a fully state-funded highway, and expected it would use a streamlined Resource Management Act to overcome local opposition.

"Anybody who has built or bought in that corridor for the last 50 years has known that's what the land was designated for and if we let the not-in-my-backyard syndrome prevail, Auckland will never build any more motorways," said Mr Williamson.

Mr Worth said in his newsletter and reiterated yesterday that National's "committed position" was to complete the strategic roading network in Auckland. The eastern highway was not "strategic".

He said the eastern highway had been abandoned by the Auckland City Council after last year's local body elections, and other authorities, including Transit.

The focus had shifted to local roading solutions further down the eastern corridor towards Mt Wellington.

"The link I have got a political interest in is Glen Innes to the CBD and that is where it is dead," said Mr Worth.

Allan Peachey, the National candidate in the neighbouring Tamaki electorate, which the eastern highway would also go through, said it was "not an issue that has featured in all the contact I have had through the area".

"People are much more interested in law and order, education standards and that sort of thing. [The eastern highway] just doesn't seem to be featuring in people's thinking," he said.

Act leader Rodney Hide, who is standing in Epsom, said Auckland needed new roads but it would appear the eastern highway was not a goer.

Labour's Epsom candidate, Stuart Nash, said the highway was not on the agenda at all.

Big plans

* The eastern highway would go through Epsom across the environmentally sensitive Orakei Basin and Hobson Bay in full view of property-owners in Parnell and Remuera's northern slopes.
* The scheme, championed by former Auckland Mayor John Banks and his Manukau counterpart Sir Barry Curtis, threatened to balloon to $3.9 billion before they pared it back.