P.M. says Rolleston will be built

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33563, 18 June 1974, Page 18

P.M. says Rolleston will be built

(From Our Otrn Reporter) WELLINGTON, June 17.

The new city of Rolleston would go ahead as planned, and it would be the first new city planned as such in the South Island, said the Prime Minister (Mr Kirk) today.

"I understand that one statement to the contrary was a slip of the tongue." Mr Kirk said. "But whatever

it was. the fact is that [Rolleston will go ahead, because it must. Rolleston will [be built. It will be planned as a city, with all the facilities and requirements taken care of.” . Asked later where the second new city would be, Mr Kirk reflected for a (moment. I "By the way Christchurch (is expanding, it would not surprise me if the next city were in the upper Teddington area, at the top of the harbour,” he said. Mr Kirk said there was an urgent need for Rolleston.

The need was for the new city to be built as an entity. “It will not be built as a work-force filing cabinet, as Porirua was," Mr Kirk said. “We do not believe in filing cabinets, which are places where people go home to be out of the way after working in a nearby city. “They go to their filingcabinet homes, go down to the filing-cabinet tavern on Saturdays, having filingcabinet hangovers on Sundays. We don't want development as it has occurred at Porirua.” ROLLS-ROYCE TOWN

Mr Kirk said that he had seen the development he visualised at East Kilbride, built around the Rolls-Royce complex.

The worst thing to do was to build in bits and pieces, pushing over the other person's property when you get big enough.

"Because of this sort of development, Christchurch has a surgical scar right across its belly,” Mr Kirk said. "There is always trouble and suffering in that sort of thing. In one Christchurch area where the properties were bought up a few years ago, people got as much as $l4OO less for their properties than they were worth. "This sort of thing just is not satisfactory, as they found in Auckland, where they knocked down 700 houses for a motorway they decided not to build.” The Prime Minister expressed admiration for the "old lady in Molesworth Street,” who has a housi surrounded by brewerproperties, and who will nc release her property.