A $760 million Northern Motorway extension to Warkworth has won Auckland Council support as a nationally important project rather than a "holiday highway" for Prime Minister John Key.
"This is not about Auckland and it is not about the holiday highway," former Rodney district mayor Penny Webster told fellow members of the council's regional development and operations committee yesterday.
The committee voted 16-4 to refer the project to a Government-appointed board of inquiry rather than deal with it locally under a process open to court appeals.
"This is about the umbilical cord to the north - if you don't support it you are condemning the north to many more years of deprivation.
"It's not just about some sort of highway that's going to allow the Prime Minster to get to his holiday place in Omaha."