A further explanation regarding High Court costs case

Some explanations are necessary about the outcome of my High Court ‘costs’ case reported in the last Observer dated 20 January.

The amount of $379,126 in costs indicated in the article was indeed only a calculation of ‘scale costs’ or an uplift on ‘scale costs’ made by my lawyers based on the invoices paid as part of the second High Court proceedings – and all this due to the time and money wasted because the independent hearing panel and the council didn’t disclose relevant documents proving the unlawfulness of the process. My request was in reality for the full costs of the proceedings of well over a million dollars.

It is important to understand that in those ‘not disclosed’ documents there was a clear indication that the “split panel” of three members, known as the North Panel and who heard the submitters and their comprehensive professional evidence, deliberated in favour of all those submitters opposing high rises in the Promenade area of Takapuna, and this was in line with the respect of the objectives and policies of the Regional Policy Statement (RPS) that the panel was supposed to comply with.

But in the final recommendations the three storeys became seven and this without any reason provided by the panel to justify the disregard of the RPS and to explain why the North Panel had been overruled. The assumption of the judge was that “some” of the other members of the panel, without engaging with the submissions and the relevant expert evidence, overruled the North Panel and this based on a stated overall strategy of intensification, which would prevail even on the result of the consultation process.

When challenged in the courts the panel had a duty of candour to explain the correctness of their process, but it remained silent, therefore the only explanation available to the court was this “general” intensification strategy, that could have justified any sort of arbitrary and wrongful recommendation. It is hard to believe that this was not an intention to mislead.

It is interesting to note that, in both areas of my case, the only submitters supporting the high rises didn’t present any evidence and didn’t attend the hearing to explain how to manage or mitigate the negative effects caused by the heights of the developments and specifically how to protect the quality of the environment. And still they have been preferred against hundreds of other submitters who had the real interest of the community in their mind.

Franco Belgiorno-Nettis

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Should Takapuna Beach be groomed after big storms?

We asked for your views about upkeep of the city’s premier beach before floods struck

YES: I think the beach should be groomed frequently, especially in the summertime. The smell and the flies are dreadful on such a beautiful beach.

Why do they have to take machinery onto the beach when it could be a job for a student to clean up with rake and bag to put the seaweed in?

It then could either go to make compost or be sold in bags to gardeners – which could help pay wages to a student.

Council is just dodging the responsibility to ratepayers to keep our beaches clean.

Trinda Jackson

NO: Firstly, and most simply, no, Takapuna Beach should not be groomed.

I think there is an interesting irony in the fact that man-made climate change is producing more extreme weather events and our reaction to this seems to be to deny that and find it unacceptable to us as a culture. Our belief that we somehow stand separate from nature and can manage and extract endlessly from our world is the real problem, not the unpredictable, beautiful, ‘mess’ that nature/ reality actually is.

The question about managing, cleaning up or fixing up nature is laughable. The message seems to be simple, but I think unacceptable to us – it’s nature, leave it alone, we don’t control nature!

We seem to have adopted an attitude of being so entitled and so superior to the reality of this messy sacred, natural world that we live in that we actually now threaten the survival of human beings as a species on this planet. This ridiculous proposal to further try and ‘manage it’ needs to be seen for the folly it is. I have grown up on the North Shore and seen this beach-cleaning idea debated over my 63 years, with weed coming and going, sand coming and going and I am saddened to see that we have become none the wiser over the years.

Matthew Williamson