Shore campers stand their ground

Takapuna resident Jan Gopperth is right behind keeping the Takapuna Holiday Park for campers. Photo / Greg Bowker

The campaign to turn Takapuna’s caravan park into a marina has more outrageous plot twists than a soap opera. Steve Braunias finds out why so many residents say they don’t want it.

Every journalist lives in fear of being swamped with emails from a single-issue protest group. Once they start, they never stop; the inbox becomes terrorised with new variations on their constant bleating. And so it was with Save Takapuna Holiday Park.

More than 30 emails were fired off in the past fortnight by Jan Gopperth, all worthy, some obsessive, most lengthy.

Her campaign worked. A meeting was arranged. It seemed reasonable to expect some kind of well-meaning and slovenly leftie, shrill and earthy, operating from a villa with dog hair scattered on op-shop cushions.

In fact, she was a gracious National Party stalwart, with immaculate hair and tasteful jewellery, and she lived in a gated townhouse with a pretentious clock and a solitary white orchid in a vase.

They do things differently in expensive, beachy Takapuna. They have more money than you and I, and they approach their local issues with beautifully calibrated levels of stealth and ingenuity, as well as sheer outright loathing. The fate of the holiday park - one of Auckland's most enduring and appealing icons, with its cheap and cheerful rows of caravans on a strip of grass right beside Takapuna beach - illuminates strange forces at work inside the weird, seething fiefdom of Takapuna.

Generations of Aucklanders walking the lovely coastal path from Takapuna to Milford have strolled past the caravan park, with its splendid views of Rangitoto and the harbour. It's attracted holidaymakers from around the world, and all over New Zealand. The very fact that it looks wildly out of place in modern Takapuna may or may not be part of its charm. But in 2011, a reserve draft management plan abruptly notified locals that the park's days were numbered - and the only options for the land were open reserve, or a yachting facility. Outraged locals have fought to save the park. It hasn't divided the community; if anything, the holiday park has unified it, with overwhelming public support.

But where it gets weird and strange and seething, and suggests a flavour unique to Takapuna, is that the public support means nothing to a lobby group that is in cahoots with the Devonport-Takapuna Local Board. The Harbour Access Trust, or HAT, is a self-appointed group of influential businessmen and various solid burghers. It has bags of money - including $3 million from Sport New Zealand - to pursue its dreams of creating an $8.3 million marine hub on the caravan park land. It has the passionate backing of Yachting New Zealand and its supporters include North Shore MP Maggie Barry, and Devonport-Takapuna board chairman, Joe Bergin. They want the park gone. They want the hub in. They know best, apparently.

What about the public? "Well, the public has a say, certainly," said HAT chairman Peter Wall, who came to our interview armed with a very professional and vaguely literate 16-page brochure. He dismissed the results of a recent poll which was heavily in favour of retaining the holiday park. Voting forms were prepared by the local board. HAT and Save Takapuna Holiday Park campaigned to win hearts and minds. End result: about 80 per cent of 7725 respondents voted to keep the campground. Wall said, "The public who were encouraged to vote for the camping ground didn't understand what the alternatives were. They were misled. They didn't get the full picture when they asked to tick a box to save the campground."

Joesph Bergin.

Odd that he should mention the public were misled, because HAT were guilty of exactly that when they posted 15,000 copies of their 16-page brochure - together with voting forms - to Takapuna households. The forms included Auckland Council logos, which gave the impression that the brochure had been endorsed by council. Wall's lobbyists were forced to tear out the offending flyer. At any rate, the wretched HAT only attracted about 8 per cent of the vote in support of the marine hub. "Well, that's the numbers, yes, but no, hang on," said board chairman and marine hub advocate Joe Bergin. "It wasn't a vote." What? "It wasn't a vote." But it was a vote, as conducted in a survey, or a poll. "Well," he said, "what do you call a poll or a survey?"

Bergin is only 22. He hasn't quite mastered the art of political double-talk. He raved, "My experience with a poll or a survey is that you take a cross-section of the community, and you sort of ask them a series of questions, it's done in a very scientific way, and this wasn't. It was sort of thrown out there. We didn't have the level of control in it and assurances to make sure the information was correct for me say it was a proper survey or a poll. It was a feedback exercise, absolutely, and the comments that were included in the votes - well, I don't know if you can even really call them votes. They were ticks ... "

THE PEOPLE have spoken, and voted, and ticked, in the October 2013 local body elections, when Takapuna residents sent a clear message to backers of the marine hub. Pro-hub board members Dave Donaldson and Auden Bennett were voted off; as board member and caravan park supporter Jan O'Connor had warned, "If you don't support the holiday camp, then you may as well hang yourselves from a tree in Hurstmere Rd, because you're not going to be voted back in."

Back then, O'Connor described the issue as "the hottest topic I've ever been involved in". And now? "Same. And the thing is that the ball is just in one court. People want the camping ground. They don't want a bar of HAT and the marine hub."

Bergin kept his place on the board because Chris Darby was promoted to full council; his vacant seat was filled by Bergin, as the unsuccessful candidate with the most votes. The highest-polling failure, to put it another way. "I wouldn't categorise it like that," he said. Remarkably for someone who only made it on to the board as the highest-polling failure, Bergin now serves as chairman. An affidavit of no-confidence against him was presented by Jan Gopperth at a chaotic board meeting earlier this month. Bergin attempted to terminate the holiday park lease. His plan was rejected, and Gopperth won loud applause when she described Bergin as hopelessly compromised because of his support for the marine hub.

She clearly loathes her opponent. "Bergin has dictator written across his forehead," she wrote in one of her many emails. "The board is dysfunctional with him at the helm, and the Auckland Council is being bought into disrepute."

Gopperth brought along caravan park supporter John Maitland to the interview at her townhouse. With his foghorn voice and his flair for the dramatic statement, Maitland somewhat dominated proceedings. He has form: Maitland campaigned to save TVNZ7. "I applied marketing principles to a public good issue," he roared. "I see this stuff as an extension of that. We've had the ability to package our campaign, and brand it ... We believe we have the upper hand. We have popular support. But we know what we're up against. They're well-funded, they're well-connected.

"This whole thing - it's like a movie about a small town in the American South, where you've got the sheriff, and the wealthy businessman, and the mayor all working to build the supermarket in the middle of the playground!"

Gopperth pointed to an email obtained under the Official Information Act, sent by Yachting New Zealand CEO David Abercrombie to his counterpart at Sport New Zealand in 2013. Referring to the Takapuna board, Abercrombie wrote, "Any pressure from high up will need to be delicately delivered."

HAT, Sport New Zealand, Yachting New Zealand, National Party identities, the chairman of the local board ... Maitland's evocation of Takapuna as some kind of wealthy redneck kingdom was entertaining, and possibly accurate. But just as opposition to the marine hub is led by National Party loyalist Gopperth, many in the Save Takapuna Holiday Park support group are National members. Where are the shrill lefties in all this? The most visible was Maitland, who described himself as "Greens, Labour, that sort of thing". He shouted, "I'm really surprised that the likes of Winston Peters and some of the other parties haven't said, 'Hey, look, the National Party is imploding on the North Shore. Let's get in and support the holiday park'."

The chances of Peters making angry noises to the cameras as he stands in front of a caravan in Takapuna are unlikely. It's an Auckland issue. Will it ever be resolved? HAT are ploughing on, having already spent $600,000 of their Sport New Zealand loot on the proposal. They have applied to Auckland Council for resource consent to build the hub. Caravan park supporters took hope from this month's fractious local board meeting, when it was voted to commission a detailed report outlining the costs of upgrading the camping ground. If that came to pass, and the caravan park stayed, would Bergin regard it as a defeat? "Yep," he said. "We've got an opportunity here, and I wouldn't want to see it wasted."

The solution, according to former HAT trustee Ralph Roberts, is obvious. Build the hub at the site where it was originally intended - underground, beneath the nearby Strand carpark. That idea was abandoned when the possibility of seizing the caravan park land was presented. What was his advice to Peter Wall at HAT?

"The public has spoken," said Roberts. "If the poll revealed a 55-45 split, you'd have an argument. But at 80 per cent in favour of retaining the caravan park, against 8 per cent for a marine hub, then it's not even an argument. It's dead. Dead in the water.

"Any politician worth their salt wouldn't be trying to promote it. George Wood, the former mayor of North Shore, when he heard they switched it from the Strand to the camping ground, he said, 'You will rue the day. All you will do is waste five years.'

"And how long has it been now? Nearly five years. Five wasted years. HAT should withdraw their resource consent application. A new trust should be formed," said Roberts, a former Olympic yachtsman, "so we can just get on with it. End of story."