Brian Rudman: Local environment matters to mainstream NZ

All decked out in his spiffing new racing blue romper suit, born-again petrolhead Don Brash looked the very image of a politician striving to be mainstream down at Western Springs speedway on Monday.

Pity no one trusted him to do more than fiddle with the knobs while he posed in the driver's seat. It would have been a blast to see the aspirant prime minister, 250 horse-power engine throbbing beneath him, careering off into the distance. In a car with no clutch and and the right rear wheel larger than the other, so it naturally veers to the left, it would have been an interesting struggle of matter over mind.

While the photo opportunity was all smiles, Dr Brash's message was not. He painted a gloomy picture of a return to a Muldoonian past where "national interest" prevailed over community concerns in resource management, and where the Prime Minister tinkered with small print.

He said he was launching his party's Resource Management Act reforms at the speedway "because the fiasco here illustrates how Labour's failing resource management policies are impacting on ordinary New Zealanders". He said the fact that the speedway faced closure "is just one of hundreds of examples where the Resource Management Act is going wrong".

But despite all Dr Brash's bluster, the battle over noise at Western Springs is not about the rights and wrongs of the RMA. It's about a group of residents demanding Auckland City enforce noise restrictions the speedway operator and the council signed 10 years ago.

Hanging on this weak peg, Dr Brash said he would bring the speedway back to the Springs by summer by introducing in Parliament this week an amendment to the RMA to reverse the normal process of changing district plans.

Traditionally, when a council notifies a change to a district plan, the old and the new plans become law. Then follows a period of public submissions and hearings and a new plan is eventually arrived at.

During the consultation, the more restrictive of the two plans prevail. In this case, the existing noise restrictions. What Dr Brash is proposing is that Auckland City, which is pro-noise, can introduce a plan change permitting a 10-decibel increase in the maximum noise allowed by the district plan, and that this proposal will automatically become the legal permitted level.

"Objectors will [then] have the chance to argue their case and ultimately determine the issue of the appropriate noise level in the Environment Court."

Dr Brash referred to "objectors". What he meant, of course, was people defending the status quo. To me, it's like reversing the time-honoured presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a criminal trial.

Lawyer Martin Williams, who is acting for the objecting speedway neighbours, can't believe National would promote such a selective piece of legislation. He said it was "of similar ilk" to the law passed in the 1860s to lock up Te Kooti.

Parliament couldn't legislate to ban the cricket team going to Zimbabwe because it would set a precedent, he said, but Dr Brash wants to legislate to provide for one recreational activity in one city and turn the presumptions about how the RMA works on notification of a district plan on its head.

National is also promising to abolish the Environmental Legal Assistance Fund, which has, since 2001, given grants of over $3 million to help community groups participate in the RMA process.

Dr Brash said "mainstream New Zealanders are sick and tired of Labour backing minority groups at the public's expense".

This outburst came as something of a surprise to National voter Carol-Lesley Cotter, chairwoman of the Waiuku Windfarm Information Group, whose organisation got $33,750 from the fund to help its "well in excess of $100,000" Environment Court fight against a windfarm proposed by Genesis for the area. Good, true-blue mainstream New Zealanders these, though Ms Cotter said the New Zealand First candidate was also popular.

"I'm a National supporter but it doesn't mean I support all National's policies."

She's a fan of the ELA fund. "It gives people who don't have the ability to defend things somewhere to go other than just relying on donations."

Abolishing it would be "taking something away from communities." Mainstream communities that vote National as well as Labour I would guess, flicking through the list of grateful recipients.