Brian Rudman: Sprung! MPs spot council's dodge

Parliamentarians have reacted angrily to Auckland City Council's attempt to hoodwink them into believing the hijacking of 1117sq m of Albert Park Reserve land for the art gallery expansion project was "uncontroversial".

"We were concerned at being placed in the position of having to effectively rubber-stamp and condone what we believe to be an inappropriate process," says the report of the primary production committee which was considering the Reserves and Other Lands Disposal Bill, in which the city council had tried to cover up its land grab.

The ROLD bill is a time-honoured device of Government housekeeping, used to make minor changes to the titles and status of reserve land without going through the long-winded process of special legislation.

But under standing orders, the changes have to be "non-controversial" and "have the consent of all parties involved".

The Albert Park sleight-of-hand was neither, but Auckland City, with the help of the minister then in charge of the bill, Dr Richard Worth, a former legal adviser to the city, tried it regardless.

The committee, siding with gallery expansion opponents, said, "We were not impressed with the ACC's attitude to the parliamentary process and we do not expect local government to employ similar approaches to developing reserve land in future."

In a signal that the issue is not yet dead, the report says "some of us believe the clauses relating to the art gallery should be deleted from the bill, and we all believe that the matter should have been dealt with separately through a different parliamentary process".

Committee chairman Shane Ardern elaborated yesterday that although there was no breach of any law, "it was at the very least a very cunning approach to getting what is clearly a very controversial land change through Parliament. So we wanted to send a very clear signal to any other organisation that might try to take that path, that another select committee or Parliament might take a very dim view of it."

The Auckland council should have organised a local bill, "with much more vigorous public consultation", before coming to Wellington, he said.

The committee had given strong consideration to turning the request down, but that would have left future councils with the unnecessary costs of sorting out the mess.

The legislation is retrospective, "so unless you were going to ask them to pull it down, and there were some on the committee of a mind to do that", the committee could do little but "to indicate ... don't try it again".

One committee member who will oppose the legislation when it returns to the House is Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton, who calls the council's actions an outrage.

"If a private person did this, built a wall, took land with a bulldozer with no consent, the local authority would be perfectly entitled, and they do from time to time, to tell them to pull it down."

Mr Anderton, a former Aucklander, has also been spurred by another so-called "uncontroversial" clause in the same bill to begin work on a private member's bill "providing permanent protection" for Auckland's unique field of volcanic cones.

Like Auckland City, the Department of Conservation had tried to slip into the bill a "non-controversial" amendment to the famous 1915 act protecting Auckland's volcanoes.

For nearly 100 years, to gain an exemption from the act's prohibition on cutting into the slopes of Auckland's cones needed the "express authorisation" of the Governor in Council.

DoC wanted this power to devolve to itself. Given its gutless track record in battles such as the fight to save Mt Roskill from the motorway builders, this was certainly controversial, and potentially bad news for the cones. The indefatigable warriors from the Volcanic Cones Society pointed this out to the committee, which agreed.

The committee, while conceding the current decision-making process is not completely satisfactory, said "it is preferable to vesting the sole decision-making power for the cones in the Minister of Conservation, or DoC officials".

It recommends retaining the status quo until the situation had been reviewed.

With two such eminently sensible decisions in a row, maybe we should appoint the primary production committee to run Auckland, and save us from ourselves.