Great Park requires great thinking

Campaigners for a Great Park of about 400ha on the North Shore say the city council sidelined their proposal as too costly without considering possible solutions.

Torbay resident Harry Duncan yesterday attacked the council's handling of the Great Park bid in his submission to the commissioners who are hearing plans for housing development on land at Long Bay.

Adding the 200ha or more to the 152ha regional park was supported by a petition signed by 58,000 people, and 10,900 repeated the call in submissions to the commissioners.

Mr Duncan said he had checked the council's 1998 questionnaire survey regarding the land and believed the results were manipulated to hide that the majority were in favour of a Great Park.

Planners had introduced vital early decisions on the proposal and councillors allowed themselves to be bulldozed by the experts' advice, he said.

But most councillors supported the park in principle when the Great Park Society carried out the survey in 1998.

Mr Duncan said the council had used the threat of higher rates in the survey as its standard rebuttal for a Great Park option.

He said it was the council's responsibility to consider possible solutions, such as swapping some of its land assets for park land.

North Shore Mayor George Wood and councillor Callum Blair represent the council on the panel.

Park society convenor David Gatward said Mr Wood and Mr Blair had said they supported a Great Park, provided they did not have to pay for it from rates.

But rates could contribute significantly to repayment of loans that might be required if land for the Great Park was designated alongside the regional park.