Wynyard Quarter being favoured as part of the next America's Cup base raises more questions than answers. Photo / Greg Bowker
Wynyard Quarter being favoured as part of the next America's Cup base raises more questions than answers. Photo / Greg Bowker
Did anyone else notice Auckland Council voting down Team New Zealand's plans to extend a wharf out into the harbour at the same time they discussed plans to, er, extend a wharf out into the harbour?
The headlines shone a bright light on the council's dismissal of Team NZ's favoured option of extending Halsey Wharf for the America's Cup. There was very little illumination of the fact the council is also considering a $10 million "dolphin" at Queens Wharf.
A dolphin effectively extends the length of a wharf. It is a walkway which means hulking great cruise ships too vast to tie up at a wharf can dock without having to place their octogenarian passengers into a small boat to ferry them downtown where they can buy plastic Maori dolls or a Pineapple Lump key ring (yes, it's true) and wonder aloud why all those cars are parked on that nice wharf.
The dolphin stems from the original proposal that outraged Aucklanders into a land and sea protest in 2015 to "save our harbour" from further reclamation — designed to extend Bledisloe Wharf 100m, allowing bigger cruise liners to dock.
The proposal was considered by the council at the same meeting it sank Team NZ's hopes of a $190m extension to Halsey Wharf — into which protest groups sank their teeth with almost the same fervour as the Bledisloe idea.
So you hope the political decision — because that's what it was — hasn't cost Auckland an America's Cup facility which doubles as something of which the city can be proud, long after the Cup is over and gone.
That's where the Viaduct came from. There's even an argument to say the Wynyard Quarter sprang from the same seed, attached as it is to the Viaduct.
The council decision is short-sighted, timid, and vague; not for the first time you wonder whether leaving Auckland's future in the hands of politicians is like asking Edward Scissorhands to rustle up a few balloon animals. As Churchill once said, democracy is the worst political system ever invented by man — except for all the others.
Mayor Phil Goff was one of those who figuratively harpooned the dolphin idea when first elected; he strode around town, trumpeting wrongs that needed righting.
He asked for an "inner dolphin" to be built but that was found to be too unsafe. So we are back to a dolphin stretching out into the harbour by 85m. Funny how that's okay now but Halsey Wharf isn't although the carefully-chosen language of the critics talked about the extension covering three hectares when the reality was it didn't jut into the harbour past existing barriers such as Princes Wharf and Tank Farm.
Auckland Mayor Phil Goff. Photo / Photosport
Talking of strange decisions, here's another: Team NZ's chairman, Sir Stephen Tindall, was one of those who signed his name to the 2015 protest. He was also one of the Team NZ people who attended the council meeting this week.
Not surprisingly, one of the first questions he was asked was how he reconciled his protest with the team's preference to extend Halsey Wharf. Fair question but a strange decision to have at that meeting the one person in Team NZ politically compromised over harbour extensions.
To be fair to Tindall, the political die was almost certainly cast before he walked into the room.
But it seems odd that, with a stage set for impassioned advocacy for the legacy option, Tindall's reply to the above question was reported as: "Halsey does encroach on the harbour and I think that's why we're prepared to be flexible and to look at the new cluster model."
Goff may be walking a tightrope between public opinion, central government and Team NZ but the dolphin and the decision to go with one of the "dispersed" options for the Cup (translation: no permanent facility which could be transformed into an Auckland showpiece) shows there's one rule for some and another for others.
Let's not even get into the debate about how much cruise brings into Auckland v the America's Cup although cruise brings some problems of its own. Anyone who has ever been to San Francisco's waterfront when the cruise liners are docking and the passengers are blocking (the footpath, the shops, everything) knows what I mean.
That's the trouble with political decisions. They often seem fair and compromise allows everyone the opportunity to be seen as good blokes; Team NZ were patted on the head like good little boys and told to run along.
The reality is things such as the dolphin are a temporary fix; some other council somewhere down the line could decide (when the political time is right to strike) to encroach into the harbour permanently.
Even worse, compromise in the name of frugality is often flawed. Halsey Wharf supposedly costs about $50m more than the compromise options. But if there's a problem or three, leading to cost blowouts, what we will end up with is something that costs almost as much (or even more) than the Halsey option, meaning nobody gets what they want.
