By BRIAN RUDMAN
Nothing is quite as unedifying as the sight of once-powerful politicians scratching away in the side alleys in search of a victory.
A couple of weeks ago it was the turn of two of Auckland City's former top men, David Hay and Phil Raffills, to make twits of themselves.
Their victory? To champion a last-minute motion through the parks and recreation committee recommending the banning of a vegetable garden.
This was no ordinary vege garden. This was the Basque Park community gardens off inner-city Newton Rd, which has been something of a greenie beacon since it was established in June 1993.
During construction of the Aotea Centre, 40,000 cubic metres of spoil were dumped into the gully west of Exmouth St. Parishioners and clergy at nearby St Benedict's Church decided to create a community gardens "as a visible symbol of fruitfulness and hope."
The city council, which had plans to zone the area for housing, agreed to let them have part of the wasteland on a temporary basis.
At the same time, small businessman and park neighbour John Waide and his wife, Beverley, launched a campaign to rezone the land as parkland.
Mrs Waide dreamed of a nice restful English-style park at the bottom of her garden - certainly a leap of the imagination, considering the neighbourhood's rundown light-industrial ambience.
But together they have battled tirelessly, petition forms in hand, in support of this concept. "I've spent $8500 and the best years of my life," says Mr Waide.
He has no time for the gardeners of St Benedict's or their successors and their "pipedreams." "We've never been mates. It suited St Benedict's Urban Farm to ride on our coat-tails while we did all the work."
Diplomat he is not. In his submission to last month's parks committee meeting, he called the "ineptly practised" Basque Park experiment "an out-of-context excrescence on the landscape, turning a pristine inner-city park into a stinking tip site."
To me, he warns of the dangers of allowing "sandal-wearers" practising "subsistence farming in our parks." He doesn't believe in giving land "to people who already have nothing and who have no pride of ownership."
Red rags to this bull are the flower children "head" gardeners, Karla Brodie, a student of yoga and things spiritual, and her partner, Peter Wham.
Ms Brodie says they've tried to talk to their neighbour but found him "a very negative man."
The city council, which does not always consult as best it could in such matters, acted in this case in a textbook manner ... until Messrs Raffills and Hay blundered in.
An exhaustive consultation process has been going on for the past nine months, run by the Hobson Community Board. Community meetings have been well attended. An outside facilitator and designer have been retained to chair the meetings and come up with a popular park design.
In April, a mail survey found 58 per cent of respondents favoured incorporating community gardens into the new Basque Park. Last month at a public meeting, 80 per cent voted in favour.
In the face of such support for his enemies, Mr Waide says the council-organised survey was "the most undemocratic document I've ever seen" and the public meeting was badly timed. Thwarted in the consultation process, he then marched off to the parks committee with his three-page diatribe against the sandal- wearers. He and two others addressed the committee. The sandal-wearers say they were not allowed to speak. Four of the eight committee members were absent.
The proposed motion was a simple one, recommending the officer's progress report on the issue be accepted. Instead, Mr Raffills moved that the farm agreement be terminated and that "in the new development plan there be no provision for a community garden." It passed.
Councillor Maire Leadbeater is now proposing that this resolution be overturned at next Thursday's council meeting. And so it should be.
Mr Raffills' cheap little victory was at the expense of a consultative process which we should all be nurturing, regardless of whether we're worried about vege gardens in our public parks.
<i>Rudman's city:</i> Once-mighty men dig up a little win
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