Brian Rudman: It’s slow work restoring our parklands’ virginity

The Oxford Dictionary defines perpetuity, as "the state or quality of lasting forever."

This may well come as a surprise to the politicians of this far-flung outpost of the mother tongue. For they've come to believe that perpetuity lasts as long as they says it lasts.

Unless, that is, the Governor-General can be persuaded to sign an order-in-council restoring it.

Confused? Well I certainly was as I tried to work out how the once protected-in-perpetuity Waitakere Ranges have suddenly become common old freehold land, held at the whim of our regional councillors.

Let me hasten to add, the councillors have no intention of selling off Auckland's priceless western lungs to raise some quick cash and avoid another rates hike.

Just the opposite in fact. It is they who have been pleading with the Government, for two years, to restore the perpetual protection the ranges suddenly lost on July 1, 2003, the day the revised Local Government Act came into effect.

So far the pleas have fallen on deaf ears. It's as though the bureaucrats and politicians behind the balls-up are hoping the problem will go away if they keep their heads down.

The result is a nightmare, that Auckland ratepayers seem doomed to have to pay to have rectified.

Auckland's regional parks network comprises 38,000ha in 22 parks, built up over 40 years.

The original jewel in this collection is the Waitakere parkland, created in 1941 as the Auckland Centennial Memorial Park. The 1941 Act setting this up introduced the concept of the land being held in perpetuity.

In the early 1990s, when the then Government floated the idea of privatising the parks as part of the local government reform mania, public opposition was so vigorous that public ownership in perpetuity of Auckland's expanded regional park networks was specially consolidated and protected in the 1992 amendments to the Local Government Act.

Ten years on and another major revision of this act and somehow out went the baby with the bath water.

Not only did the Auckland Centennial Memorial Park Act 1941, with all it statutory protections go west, but so did the protection in perpetuity for Auckland's regional parks contained in the previous version of the Local Government Act.

The result was, if Aucklanders wanted the perpetual protection restored, it was up to the regional council to apply to the Government for an order-in-council (OIC) to return what had been unilaterally taken away.

To me, seeking to have your perpetuity restored sounds a bit like asking for your virginity back. But crazy as it sounds, the ARC had no option but to begin the process.

That's when they found nothing is simple, particularly if the Government doesn't want it to be.

Buried in their dusty warrens, the Local Government bureaucrats had weaved into the act the added complication that only some of Auckland's regional parkland could have its virginity - sorry, perpetuity - restored. The rest had to rely on the old protections provided by the Reserves Act.

This Reserve Act category land is made up of blocks of bush - many in the Waitakeres - which the ARC inherited or had bequeathed at various times, or were part funded by Government grants, all of which were given conditional on the land remaining subject to the Reserves Act.

The 2003 Local Government Act says the regional council cannot seek an order-in-council to have this category of land restored to the status of perpetual parkland.

Of course protection under the Reserves Act is not to be sneezed at. That said, we all know land protected under this act can be alienated for certain purposes. Think Mt Roskill and state highways for example.

A bigger immediate problem for the ARC, though, is the very costly practical problem of accurately identifying and separating, after 40 to 60 years of combined administration, the different category of parklands, so that the OIC process can begin.

No one is certain yet, but there are worries that before that can happen, widespread resurveying might have to be undertaken to accurately identify which is which.
For two years now, the ARC has been pleading with the Government to make a simple amendment to the act, making it possible for all Auckland regional parkland to be subject to the OIC process.

This would be an inexpensive way of restoring the status quo and protecting all Auckland's regional parkland in perpetuity.

What's the delay?