25 minute read
CHLÖE SWARBRICK: MP AUCKLAND CENTRAL
LOCAL NEWS CHLÖE SWARBRICK: AUCKLAND CENTRAL MP
It was a chilly Friday morning, but thankfully, OPEN café buzzed alive with locals, regulars, and contributors to Karangahape Road filling up on caffeine before filing into the Studio One Toi Tū carpark.
Ngati Whatua
Orakei offered karanga to the rising sun, leading a delegation to bless the opening of our Karangahape Road. Soft pink spilled across the sky as fingers weaved across our own rough and beautiful street furniture.
Gasps were audible as the new, permanent panels behind our rainbow bus-stops were unveiled, the overbridge armoured with tukutuku woven by artist Tessa Harris, her sons and students from Auckland Girls’ Grammar’s Kahurangi Unit. Joined by poignant placards from the Prostitutes Collective, reminding all that High Street herb planting ceremony with nothing is just until we’ve all young members of the local inner city got our rights and protections, we arrived at St Kevin’s Arcade. Speeches commenced. Frank words were exchanged about the pain of evolution, the importance of community and the timeliness of project completion. And just like that, there were no more roadworks (...on our road). last fortnight. While nothing can ever be taken for granted, and work on our collective, Karangahape Road Collective, mahi to drive coordinated and holistic resourcing and responses to anti-social behaviour continues and is hugely encouraging.
All of these things are connected: when we have pride of place, more people want to check out our place, and more people out and about increases potential for inclusion and safety. All of this is a recipe for strong community and good business.
It can’t be overstated just how hard everyone has worked to make this happen, because as my experiences across the city have shown, it’s not something to be taken for granted – even when it’s technically the same development impacting trade. Further downtown in Albert Street, in stark contrast to the conversations with businesses around the CRL Beresford Square/Pitt Street, there simply isn’t the same magic sauce alignment of goals in collaboration across Government agencies, landlords and small businesses.
Thanks to the tireless work of Michael, creativity and innovation in the face of new challenges, and the strong brands and communitybuilding around K’Rd, it is likely why so many of you choose to call it home. There’s also something really important to be said about the landlords who recognise the long-term value of our street, our potential and the relationships and flexibility that make that happen.
Talking to Michael at the KBA, it’s clear that foot-traffic is picking back up. Talking to our local Police, it’s also fascinating to learn that incidents of reported crime have decreased throughout the
Please get in touch if we can help you with local issues
As June slips away, we’re really looking forward to Te Karanga a Hape come 26 June. With the colour coding of KBA’s beautiful planner, we’re extremely proud of hosting the only explicitly whanau friendly event. Please do drop by the office (76 Karangahape Rd, next to Monster Valley!) with your little ones between 3pm and 6pm for a raucously wholesome time of painting and planting. You’ll meet my wonderful team, Amber and Alexis, who do huge amounts for constituents and our community, and you’ll be able to check out some of the awesome murals we’ve commissioned in the space from local artists Junt and Shelley de Bruyn. (CHLÖE SWARBRICK) PN
www.greens.org.nz/chloe_swarbrick
09 302 0166 chloe.swarbrick@parliament.govt.nz
Auckland Council - 09 301 0101 COVID-19 advice from Healthline - 0800 358 5453 Healthline: General health advice - 0800 611 116 Inland Revenue - 0800 257 777 Ministry of Social Development - 0800 559 009 Need to talk? Free counselling helpline - Phone or text 1737
Chlöe Swarbrick
MP for Auckland Central
ENHANCE MIND, BODY AND SOUL AT THE LIFE CENTRE
A sanctuary for multidimensional approaches to wellbeing.
Escape to the haven that is The Life Centre, a new multidimensional wellbeing centre offering a range of treatments for clients in beautiful surroundings and a calm, peaceful environment.
Refurbished with love, the tranquil sanctuary will provide a drop-in haven for clients seeking respite from everyday stressors. With a pyramid meditation room for quiet contemplation and green spaces filled with unique, exquisite crystals, clients will enter a new realm of peace, bliss and pure love.
Based on the ethos, ‘restore the spirit and the rest will follow’, 14 practitioners at the evolutionary centre will offer soul and life enhancing treatments ranging from massage, Reiki, energy balancing, counselling and more. Therapy rooms are themed around rare and beautiful crystals, alongside artworks featuring mandalas and sacred geometry.
The Life Centre is also an educational facility with rooms for hire for workshops such as meditation, yoga and breathwork. A particular focus for education will be the work of renowned scientists of the recent past in the area of quantum physics, including Max Planck and David Bohm. Director Adonia Wylie says The Life Centre mission is, with compassion and expertise to empower clients to embrace a vision of whole health and wellbeing.
“We see clients as conscious intelligent fields of energy rather than merely physical bodies. We look for first causes of ‘dis-ease/dis-order’, only considering symptoms as indicators of their deeper cause,” she says.
“The Life Centre recognises that consciousness is the all-pervasive nature of reality and that we are all multi-dimensional beings. We are each a vibrational spectrum of soul, mind, emotions and physical body and all play a part in ‘wholistic’ health and wellbeing. Addressing all aspects of our being then becomes a natural evolutionary process.”
A Charitable Trust funded through a legacy left by businessman and philanthropist Ashton Wylie, The Life Centre offers the following treatments for clients:
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Clairvoyant Intuitive Energy Sessions Electromagnetic Field Balancing Emotion Code Fascial Release Therapy Herbal Remedies Harmonyum Healing Holistic Life Coaching Homeopathy Hypnotherapy Inner Child Therapy Kinesiology Massage (including Ayurvedic and Chakra Balancing) Naturopathy Toxin Screening Past Life Regression Positive Psychology Reiki Ren Xue Spiritual and Grief Counselling Theraphi - Plasma Light Technology
LOCAL NEWS JOHN ELLIOTT: CONES NOT ONLY PROBLEM ON AUCKLAND ROADS
Those of us who still drive around the inner city have to negotiate umpteen red cones all over almost every street. It’s certainly a pain. However, I want to report another problem which falls into AT’s lap.
I have been told by several friends that many streets do not have signage at the end of their road. I had noticed this too, so, I ventured out with pen and paper, and several maps to investigate.
It is a problem. I’ll just cite a couple of examples. Driving along Williamson Avenue, from Ponsonby Road, I found four streets on the left not named - Pollen, Scanlan, Sussex, and Ariki–that’s a quarter of the twelve streets which run between Williamson and Crummer.
I’ve noticed that sometimes a street is named across the road, making it hard or impossible to see from driving on the left, aiming to go left when your chosen street has arrived. Sometimes the street you want to go up to Crummer on may already be a continuation of a street on the other side of Williamson. Scanlan and Sussex do fall into that category, but Pollen and Ariki do not. However, driving is such a hazardous activity that the drivers don’t need to have to look right as well as left to see if they have reached the street they are looking to travel on.
Some street signs are obscured by trees. One example is the sign indicating Meola Road from Pt Chevalier Road. Coming from Pt Chevalier along Pt Chev Road to turn left into Meola Road is difficult enough to judge without the only sign across on the other side of Pt Chev Road almost impossible to see for shrubbery. A couple of signs on Pt Chev Road both north and south of Meola would do the trick. It could say, “Meola Road and Herne Bay right 100 metres”, with the other saying “left 100 metres”.
AT spend so much money on cycle tracks and other unasked for inner city street modifications, they would do well to ensure their streets are adequately named.
And one more gripe. I don’t go out much at night, but have confirmed what I’ve been told about the lack of street lighting. Particularly for women alone at night, well lit streets are an important safety feature. On some of our streets several lights have been out for days, and as one local said to me, “these streets are more dangerous than the chance of an old pine tree in the Western Springs Forest falling on you.”
I know from the old joke that it takes a few people to change a light bulb, especially if it’s on a tall lamp post - a ladder, some safety cones, a person to climb the ladder, a lookout person on the ground, a truck driver, and perhaps a fourth person to hold the ladder.
The good news is that AT are using LED lights which last longer, but they may be economising by using lower wattage lights - or is it lumens?
Anyhow AT, stick to your knitting, and ensure our streets are properly signed and well lit at night. (JOHN ELLIOTT) PN
@ THE PONSONBY COMMUNITY CENTRE
The Ponsonby Community Centre, with support from the Waitematā Local Board is going to be running activities for both kids and adults from the Freemans Bay Community Hall from Term 3 of 2021!
The first activity is a continuation of our very popular free Pre-schoolers Multisport Programme with the folks from Ready Steady Go Kids. Each class runs for a 45 minute duration, and they cover ten sports on a rotational basis. The classes are designed to focus on a specific gross motor, hand-eye/foot-eye and/or balance activity to complement the sport component and the programme structure is repeated each week so that participants become familiar and comfortable with the routine. Ready Steady Go Kids invites and encourages parental participation in the classes; parents love the classes as much as the kids!
To register for this free programme, email info@ponsonbycommunity.org.nz. Places are limited so registration is essential. If you have already attended this programme in the past please allow others a chance to be involved – we will be prioritising registrations from new participants each term. The Term 3 sessions begin on Friday 6 August at 9:30am and run every Friday for nine weeks. PN
www.ponsonbycommunity.org.nz
Registrations are essential as places are limited.
Preschoolers MultiSport Programme! FREE!!
Classes are held at the Freemans Bay Community Hall
Term 3: 6 August - 1 October @ 9:30am
LETTERS & EMAILS continued from p6
AN OPEN LETTER TO AUCKLAND COUNCIL CEO, JIM STABBACK Dear Mr Stabback, I’m writing to you about my concerns regarding the Western Springs Forest.
A quick background. I was involved in the return of the dawn chorus on Tiritiri Matangi Island. I served briefly on the committee, and planted a few trees towards the end of the project.
Tiri is a brilliant success.
Since discussions began re Western Springs, I have been concerned to secure an Inner City Urban Sanctuary, exercising predator control, possibly some predator fencing, and with plenty of volunteer support.
I accepted the Council’s assurance that the pines had ALL reached a senescent, dangerous stage, and needed to be felled. I made a submission supporting the resource consent, SUBJECT to certain conditions. I called for careful removal of the pine logs so that the maturing understorey of natives was not demolished. I requested the cost of helicoptering out some logs. I urged that a huge wide road not be cut into the forest.
It is those conditions which concern me now.
The forest has been protected 24/7 as if it is an important military installation, fenced, security, police. Today I hear that Council is proposing a six feet high fence between the top of the forest and the neighbours on West View Road. These long suffering people have lost their beautiful pine canopy, much of the growing understorey is smashed, and the forest is full of mountains of chip. I don’t know where the proposed native seedlings will be planted, starting late July.
Is this fence being erected as retribution for the opposition of some Westview residents. I sincerely hope not. If the council has nothing to hide inside that sealed off bush, access should be granted for entry to inspect by selected, if not all comers.
I presented at Public Forum last Tuesday at Waitemata Local Board, and asked portfolio holder Adriana Christie for permission to inspect the forest as it is now so I can offer suggestions going forward. Rumours abound, and will only proliferate if Council remains secretive and denies access.
I would point out to you that the Waitemata Local Board gave me a Lifetime Good Citizens Award last year, and the Western Bays Community Board gave me an earlier one for service to our local community.
I am not a cynical person by nature, but remain highly sceptical of some Council actions around the pine tree demolition. Could you please facilitate my entry into the forest for an inspection ASAP.
I remain, John Elliott, Founding Editor, Ponsonby News.
continued p30
@ LEYS LITTLE LIBRARY
Kia ora Ponsonby. Well, it seems like winter has well and truly arrived. Here at the Little Leys Library we’ve got the doors closed to keep out the chill and the heaters going full blast. Come for a visit – you won’t want to leave.
Weather aside, there’s plenty to look forward to this season. School holidays are coming up in July and we’ll be running our popular dance organ activity once again. Kids (and caregivers) are welcome to come along to All Saints Church on Ponsonby Road on 13 or 14 July at 2.30pm to spend two hours dancing around on a giant organ to make music!
We ran this activity in the last holidays and heard several masterpieces, including Chopsticks, the theme from Jaws, and even a snippet of Für Elise. Come and have a go - all ages welcome - dance organ kindly provided by Auckland Organ Association.
Along with the Dorothy Butler Children’s Bookshop, we’ll also be welcoming the Inspirational Kiwis Roadshow, i.e., Dreydon Sobanja. Sobanja’s books – like, Ed Climbs a Big Hill, and Jean Dreams of Flying – present the stories of inspirational Kiwis in a fun, easy-toread format for kids of all ages. Pop by the bookshop at 10am on Saturday 17 July to pick up a signed copy!
No little ones at home? You can still get involved with your library this winter. From July through September, the Leys Institute will be running a series of community talks and workshops at All Saints Church. Sessions will run every second Thursday afternoon from 2.30pm3.30pm, and the topics covered will include everything from arts and heritage, to smarter recycling.
Our first workshop, titled “DIY Cleaning Products” will run on Thursday 8 July and will involve making your own home cleaning products. Waste advisors from Auckland Council’s WasteWise team will instruct participants on how to make cleaning products from a few simple, natural ingredients that are less harmful to both people and the environment.
Come along and meet some new people living in your local area – all welcome! Sessions will be followed by mixing and mingling over tea and coffee. Keep an eye on our Facebook page for more updates.
If none of that sounds like your cup of tea, not to worry. We can always recommend snuggling up with a good book instead to fend off the winter blues. My favourites for this time of year include the extra sun-drenched, A Room with a View by E. M. Forster and feelgood read, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society. Or why not dip into someone else’s life with a lively memoir? Two of the toprequested volumes at Leys right now are Charlotte Grimshaw’s The Mirror Book, and Barack Obama’s A Promised Land. But I can also wholeheartedly recommend Claire Tomalin’s A Life of My Own and Alan Davies’ Just Ignore Him.
Alternatively, pop into any of Auckland’s 55 libraries, tell us what sort of things you like to read, and we’ll recommend something just for you.
Keep warm! PN
THE LEYS INSTITUTE LITTLE LIBRARY, 14 Jervois Road, T: 09 377 0209, www.aucklandlibraries.govt.nz
Green MP Hon Julie Anne Genter
JOHN ELLIOTT: PUBLIC TRANSPORT NEEDS STIFFENING UP IN CENTRAL CITY
I have long supported the need for as many people as possible to get out of their cars and walk, cycle, or catch a train or bus.
Pippa Coom and others will be pleased to hear that I’ve got one last warrant of fitness for my car, and at nearly 83, I hope to give up driving by years’ end, but not if public transport doesn’t improve before then.
Let me explain. I rode a bike to secondary school for five years, but that was 65-70 years ago. My GP said if I was contemplating an e-bike, she would expect me to need a motorcycle escort around town, for my and others safety.
I can walk so far - not far enough my partner will tell you. But there are places around the innercity where I do go which are too far from home to walk to, and where no buses venture. I’ve asked why we don’t have small buses, maybe 10 or 12 seaters, crisscrossing town where current buses are completely absent. Our councillor Pippa Coom, a fervent cycle advocate, told me the most expensive cost in running a bus is the driver’s salary, whether the bus is 10 seater or a double decker.
I’ll give you a couple of examples where bus services don’t help me. I go to Grey Lynn shops regularly. I get my hair trimmed, buy some meat, visit the chemist, sometimes have a beer. Grey Lynn Butchery, Gopals Pharmacy, Grey Lynn Tavern, and Grey Lynn Tyreworx, who have shod my cars for years, are all out of reach. Slightly closer to home, but still quite a stretch to walk, are my Doctor’s and the Grey Lynn RSC where I am a life member. With Leys Institute closed for renovations, I also visit Grey Lynn library from time to time.
Just last week I was considerably heartened when I received an invitation to sign a Green Party petition calling for public ownership of buses to be allowed, so councils could buy and run their own fleet. I had not known that councils are not granted subsidies for the privately owned bus services that they contract to. For example, Auckland is mainly served by NZ Bus, owned by Australian private equity firm Next Capital. Their major concern is to return a profit to their shareholders. Routes travelled and driver pay, become problematic for Auckland citizens, as do fare costs.
As Green MP Hon Julie Anne Genter told me, “Public transport is a public good. It’s time to treat it that way.” Genter went on to tell me, “Greater public ownership of public transport is critical. The experiment of fragmenting bus and ferry services with competitive for-profit objectives has not been effective at delivering a public transport network that works for people.”
The Greens have a petition to change the law to allow public ownership of bus services, especially strategic assets like bus depots and vehicles.
Julie Anne Genter told Ponsonby News that, “public ownership will prevent firms like Next Capital from running bus services into the ground, eroding wages and conditions for drivers. It will also help as we look to transfer our bus fleets to zero emissions.”
Let’s hope it would also mean more flexible routes, sometimes in small buses, including circular routes across town from Herne Bay to West Lynn and Grey Lynn. These services need to be regular and reliable. The surest way to stop car drivers switching to public transport is if the buses are always late, or even sometimes late. As a friend of mine opined, “if my doctor’s appointment is for 10.30am, it’s no good being 10 minutes late or you’ve missed your slot. However, as I asked him, “how often is your doctor right on time?” He laughed and saw my point, but he replied, “if I drive I know I’ll be smack right on time.”
Privately owned companies will be looking for the best bang for their buck, and that may be fair private enterprise, but it won’t take enough cars off the roads. I hope Julie Anne Genter can garner enough petition signatures to persuade government to change the law, allowing councils to run their own show. (JOHN ELLIOTT) PN
LIFE HACKS OF TRIBAL ELDERS: PART 3
Disengage between your work life and your home life; protect each from the other.
Let me introduce you to this month’s featured tribal elders, a couple of happy city dwelling retirees with enough experience between them to give wise advice in both the manufacturing and education sectors.
Lyn and Neil Laurenson have both had quite different challenging professional careers and remarkable life experiences in very different fields of work. Neil had a distinguished career in the education sector here in New Zealand and overseas. He was a teacher, manager and leader for 25 years in the field of Catholic education, playing a significant and influential role through a challenging period of philosophical, cultural and political change. For most of her working life Lyn was an executive assistant to a variety of general managers and managing directors in various industries, and witnessed many changes particularly in the demanding and innovative sphere of local carpet manufacturing in New Zealand.
Sipping coffee and nibbling home-made biscuits with Neil and Lyn on their sun-drenched balcony overlooking the city, it is clear that this couple are a world away from that hectic professional stage of their lives. I was interested to know how they had managed work/ life balance throughout their busy careers and I wondered if they had some ‘life hack’ wisdom to share with the younger generation of salaried and freelance workers.
Both Lyn and Neil agree that keeping work and home life separate has been a very important strategy. Both had to commute to work and Neil recalled how he specifically used that time to create a distinct bubble of free space for letting go, for transitioning. He enjoyed listening to music on the radio or on CDs and audio books as well. Lyn remembers a similar strategy of leaving all the workplace hassles, set-backs and dramas at work. She never talked about office or industry matters at home, except for sharing occasional humorous anecdotes. It was a rule of thumb that worked for this couple, to protect their private life together.
In today’s post pandemic world of remote working from home offices, their wise advice is more relevant than ever. We should try to maintain clear boundaries between work activity and home/family life; find a way to disengage between work time and personal time. In today’s world, that may require a different strategy of separation, but the principle is still important. Work is only one domain of our lives and our family, our home, is more important anyway.
Nowadays, Lyn and Neil make the most of everything on offer in the city; the range of entertainment and educational options, the happenings in Aotea Square, events on the waterfront and most of all, the superb range of restaurants and casual eateries available across the city, Ponsonby and Grey Lynn.
They have grown to appreciate living in the mixed-use environment that is Auckland city, and they value the diversity of neighbours that come with the territory. They enjoy greeting and chatting with all their fellow apartment dwellers and local shop keepers alike. Although there are no opportunities for a chinwag over the garden fence, there is still a real community in and around our inner-city buildings.
Currently, Neil is vice president of the Probus Club of Ponsonby and Lyn is editor of the monthly news bulletin. They extend a warm welcome to anyone interested in joining this group of active retirees and ‘tribal elders’ who gather monthly to hear interesting speakers, socialise and go on some fun outings from time to time. (ALEXA LAWRENCE) PN If you think you would enjoy getting together with other like-minded retirees for new experiences and friendships, contact Rosie Armstrong on T: 09 486 5181, or E: rosiearm@xtra.co.nz
LOCAL NEWS PONSONBY U3A: JUNE 2021
Themes, obsessions, and ideas in architecture.
When you think about it, houses and buildings are a miracle. Not only do they provide us with the basic human need of shelter, at their best, they delight our senses. Ponsonby U3A members were treated to many such delightful experiences when well-known architect and artist, Pete Bossley welcomed by President Philippa Tait, canvassed his life and times doing the work that feeds his senses, be it drawing, painting or architecture.
Pete is the director of Bossley Architects based in Ponsonby, a firm which has received over 40 architectural awards including the New Zealand Architects Gold Medal for services to architecture. The long list of buildings he has designed includes The Museum of Te Papa Tongarewa, the Sir Peter Blake extension to the New Zealand National Maritime Museum, the Plant and Food Research Headquarters in Mount Albert, and many well-known houses and resorts around the country. More recently, the firm has completed the Park Hyatt Hotel in the Viaduct Basin.
Pete also paints and sketches compulsively. In 2019 he published a book called One Year Drawn about his travels through Europe in 1982, and last year, he had an exhibition of almost 200 sketches called 40 Years Drawn and a painting exhibition.
For Pete, good buildings, be they large or small, need a red-blooded idea; for without the idea, the personality of the building cannot shine through. Pete took his Ponsonby U3A audience beneath the surface to give a riveting account of the themes consistently generated in his work, from acknowledging the perils of geology, given New Zealand’s ‘shaky ‘and rugged landforms, to the importance of natural light sometimes reflecting in buildings our beautiful sky and seascapes. Precedent, intuition, and narratives inform Pete’s ideas to connect the observer to, for example buildings reminiscent of the Kiwi bach and the red sheds that still dot this country’s rural landscape.
Liz Buchanan, a member of Ponsonby U3A provided new insights into the Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, giving an impassioned reminder that it belongs to us, the people of Auckland. A retired dietitian, Liz is an experienced volunteer at the museum and a strong advocate for what it has to offer. Opened in 1929, this, the oldest museum in New Zealand, was built to commemorate the over 7000 who signed up in the Auckland province for WW1 and did not return. Of neo-classical design, it won New Zealand’s Institute of Architects‘ Award at the time. A surprising snippet of information is that there must be no obstruction of the view from the harbour to the museum. It is an official navigational aid. Liz gave a fascinating account of the various tours on offer from the Secret Museum to the Heritage, to the Rooftop Tour.
Every month on the second Friday, Ponsonby U3A showcases guest speakers covering diverse topics, and a member gives a short presentation on their lives and interests, enabling other members to learn more about the talented and creative individuals in their midst. Members are encouraged to join special interest groups offering about 30 different topics. Usually held in small groups in people’s homes, this is where the learning and the friendships are made. If people are new to the area, in need of a stimulus or a bit lonely, there is always a welcome to be found at Ponsonby U3A.
Guests are invited to attend monthly meetings but are asked to first telephone President Philippa Tait on M: 027 452 3108. Guest speaker for July meeting is distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley, the ‘New’ New Zealand-2030. (CHRISTINE HART) PN
NEXT MEETING: 9.30am Friday 9 July at Herne Bay Petanque Club, Salisbury Street, Herne Bay.
ENQUIRIES: Philippa Tait, President, Ponsonby U3A, M: 027 452 3108, www.u3a.nz
Pete Bossley and Philippa Tait
LETTERS & EMAILS continued from p26
FASTBOOK POST FROM PIPPA COOM I have just read a recent post by Councillor Pippa Coom from her Facebook page.
It warrants repeating in this letter. It reads and I quote: “Now we’ve had the official blessing for the Karangahape Road enhancement project I’m calling it. The cycleway is actually a ‘cruise lane.’ The design best suits every type of micro mobility at a slow pace. Speedy riders please use the vehicle lane.”
Say what! The cyclists have had their dreams come true and had every other rates and taxpayer fund a network of cycle lanes especially for them, and they are now being exhorted to avoid using those very lanes. That being the case – why didn’t they just stick to the normal roads that already existed and have NZTA and Council paint a single white line down the middle of the footpaths to allow pedestrians on one side and slow moving “micro mobility” users on the other side.
This madness is a classic example of why central city Aucklanders are turning away from the efforts of Bike Auckland, the various zealots and the politicians who are abusing their electorates by advocating for cycleways that are not economically or environmentally justified and that negatively impact on the other 99.5% of Aucklanders who do not wish to ride their bikes to work through the rain, wind, cold and hilly terrain – five days a week.
Ms Coom has finally revealed the full extent of her disdain for the majority and as a result we can all now look forward to the next local body election. Roger Hawkins, Ponsonby
