Brian Rudman: Yes Minister - more big plans and empty pockets

Before we get in a lather about the merits of a waterfront stadium, wouldn't it be smart to check the record of the promoter of this madcap scheme.

Could this be the same Trevor Mallard, Sports Minister extraordinaire, who three years ago was touting another foreshore "major project," the ship-in-the-bottle memorial to murdered sailor Sir Peter Blake? So where is it? Sunk, it seems, for want of cash from Mr Mallard or anyone else. Not that I'm complaining - what was planned was totally over the top.

But it's a reminder that where the Wellingtonian minister and his love affair with our waterfront are concerned, it pays to check his pockets for the readies before taking these flights of fancy seriously.

The Government's only commitment to financing a "world-class stadium" for the 2011 Rugby Wold Cup is a promise of a miserly $20 million. Which is somewhat short of the $320 million the Eden Park trust board is talking about.

When he said this week that Government officials were investigating a waterfront stadium site as an alternative to redeveloping Eden Park, Mr Mallard conceded "there was an expectation that the Government would assist with raising the funding necessary, on top of the $20 million commitment".

But he gave no hint whether that expectation was justified. The Government would receive a comparative study of the two proposals by mid-October, and any decisions on extra money would be made after that.

I suggest that until then, we Aucklanders lie back and think of something else.

Of course it would have been nice of Mr Mallard to have consulted us before he became fixated on a waterfront alternative to Eden Park.

We might have pointed out that just because Wellington has a dinky little downtown stadium, it's not necessarily the solution for Auckland.

It might have been 20 years ago, when hectares of railways land became available. But that opportunity has long gone. And the favoured Bledisloe Wharf site is a vital part of Ports of Auckland operations, handling a third of the 686,000 containers passing through the port each year.

I suspect this trade is worth more to the economy than the odd game of international rugby.

But even if this is not so, is the Sports Minister planning to vote himself authority to march on to port company land and turf the owner out? That should win the hearts and minds of all Aucklanders.

Even if the space were vacant, it's too precious to waste on a monstrous concrete-walled oval, upwards of 50m high, to which people would flock to look inwards, not out. There's been an uproar over the intrusiveness of the view-blocking apartments north of Anzac Ave. They will be match-sticks compared to a Bledisloe Wharf stadium, which would block views to North Head and up the harbour from much of downtown Auckland. For this reason alone, it's unthinkable.

Mr Mallard seems to be working on the latest theory that the best place for a stadium is downtown, close to transport, hotels, and bars. But not, surely, at the cost of everything in its way?

There's also the question of need. Auckland already has an excess of failed or inadequate stadiums. Planning yet another solves nothing, particularly when there's no hint of where the $350 million to $550 million needed to pay for it will come from.

Manukau mayoral hopeful Len Brown wants a World Cup organising committee to mastermind the 2011 event. That would be a good start. But we urgently need a regional stadium policy as well, which looks at possible alternatives to Eden Park such at Mt Smart and North Harbour.

Mt Smart, for example, has a lot going for it. It is in an industrial area, so doesn't have houses around it. It's near motorway and rail links, and is surrounded by hectares of car-parking space. It is publicly owned.

Perhaps its redevelopment could be financed by the sale of Eden Park for housing?

Instead of leaping to support Minister Mallard's latest brainwave, these are the questions we should be asking. That, of course, and the all-important one. How much is the Government going to pay to honour it's pledge to the International Rugby Board, to deliver a world class, 60,000-seat stadium in Auckland by 2011? Until that happens, it's all pipe dreams.