Auckland Council votes down plea to stop future housing land

Auckland Mayor Len Brown. Photo / Jason Oxenham

Auckland Council has voted 12-5 against revoking its support for an Auckland Special Housing Area (SHA) at a Mangere site, which includes ancestral burial caves.

More than 100 residents came by buses to the Town Hall when leaders of Save Our Unique Landscape (Soul) presented a petition signed by 4000 calling on the council to revoke the SHA status of the land.

It is privately owned and borders the Otuataua Stonefield Historic Reserve in a rural part of Mangere called Ihumatao.

Soul spokeswoman Waimarie McFarland told councillors they needed to review their last year's decision on the SHA on the basis that they did so without sufficient information about the Ihumatao site.

Fletcher Residential has applied to the council to rezone most of the 32.7 ha Ihumatao site to build up to 480 homes.

However, Ms McFarland said the council should put the resource consent process on hold.

The development would continue to squeeze out people of the Mangere Ward from "their birthright- their whenua."

They rented family homes and would not be able to afford the new homes to be developed.

The council also heard from Te Warena Taua, who chairs the Makaurau Marae Maori Trust and Te Kawerau Iwi Authority.

He said that a hard-fought 2011 court case could not stop housing and he negotiated with Fletcher Residential aiming to get something back for the Ihumatao village.

He was satisfied that key concerns of cultural, heritage, environmental and social imperatives would be looked after in the development.

Fletcher agreed to make a financial contribution to Makaurau Marae Maori Trust.

It would also give an 80m buffer strip from the fenceline of Ihumatao Village and to give part of the ancestral maunga (volcanic cone) on the land which the council did not already own.

"It is a watershed for our people," said Mr Taua.

"It will be the first time since the 1860s [Maori land] confiscations that such significant land will be returned in ownership to the descendants of the traditional owners - not via the crown or council intervention - but through a privately negotiated settlement."

Councillor Cathy Casey who moved that the SHA be revoked, said the Ihumatao SHA was one of 88 areas that councillors had considered at a workshop - without knowing it was precious land to be desecrated.

"It's not a gesture. It's putting something right."

Councillor Mike Lee said the council should be listening to the "wishes of ordinary people" and revoke its consent and tell Housing Minister Nick Smith that a decision had been made in haste and the area was too special to be destroyed.

However, Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse said urbanisation of this piece of land would proceed.

She could not support the revocation unless it was accompanied by an equal proposal to budget for the amount of money required to purchase the land.

"Otherwise, I think it is an unfair gesture."

Chief executive Stephen Town said that putting the resource consent on hold was out of order.

The council could not resolve to do that because as a regulator it had a statutory obligation to process.

Only the Housing Minister (Nick Smith) could recommend revoking a SHA and he had advised the council there was no grounds to revoke the Order in Council declaring the site an SHA.

Mayor Len Brown said he would continue discussions with Ihumatao residents, Mr Taua and Soul at Makaurau Marae next month.