War veteran to council: Harden up

War veteran Chas Wood was part of the waterfront protest. Photo / Dean Purcell

Chas Wood, a 91-year-old war veteran, moved slowly but surely with the aid of a walker along the 1.4km protest route.

Past the Admiralty Steps, where he boarded a ship to go to war in 1942, and to the bottom of Queen St, where his ancestors arrived on the Louisa Campbell in 1842.

Mr Wood is the last surviving foundation member of the Te Atatu Boat Club, and had a message for Ports of Auckland and Auckland Council about the wharf extensions.

"The port company are the servant of the council and the council are the servant of the people and neither are doing that. The Auckland Council haven't got the internal fortitude to do what the people of Auckland want of them," said Mr Wood, who served in the Royal Navy.

This was no rent-a-mob protest.

It was, said planner and former Auckland regional councillor Dr Joel Cayford, an intellectual protest like no other. It included left and right-wing politicians, business leaders, architects and a legal mind or two, including Sir John "Hugh" Williams, a retired High Court judge, and Queen's Counsel Stephen Mills.

"My position is the port cannot continue to push out into the harbour," Mr Mills said. "Alternatives have to be found. And the kind of rigour of analysis that requires quite clearly has not been done.

"It is incredibly disappointing that there has been such a lack of leadership. It is the council's responsibility to put the bigger picture over the port's activities and that isn't being done in a way that is acceptable."