Walkways just for affluent?

Press, 11 May 1979, Page 1

Walkways just for affluent?

The Walkways Commission is in danger of becoming an elitist group doing its damnedest to keep “the great unwashed” off walkways, according to the past president of Federated Farmers, Mr J. T. Kneebone.

Mr Kneebone told the seminar on New Zealand walkways at Lincoln College last evening that the commission could be heading for a moribund future, like many older institutions.

“1 have been very disappointed with the way the administrators of our reserves, national parks and local body land are more concerned with maintaining the appearance of the place than they are with encouraging people to get out and enjoy, the amenities,” he said. The commission had a responsibility to ensure that the “anti-social” element had the same access to public walkways as the more affluent members of society enjoyed. Mr Kneebone said he had come across such people after the Nambassa festival, held earlier this year: they had been tearing out benches and seats in a reserve.

“I came across several groups. When they had thawed out, I got talking to them. They were bigger and heavier than I was, and hadn’t had a wash for a while, not the sort of thing you would find in Aunt Mabel’s parlour.”

They had found that they were not welcome in family motor camps. Yet those people had just as much right to stay at a motor camp as other people, Mr Kneebone said. They were the sort of people to whom

the commission had a particular responsibility. He had also come across young people in Papatoetoe who lived two or three miles from the beach but had never seen it. “Their parents had never taken them to a beach: they had never thought of it,” he said. The parents were too involved in hotel life, in the T.A.8., or in bingo to know what their children might be interested in.

Another problem the commission would have to contend with was access to private land. Many city people bought “country retreats” quite close to the city but far enough away to get away from people. They were not likely to welcome hordes of people from the city walking over their property, he said. Much land was also owned by the well-to-do. “As a general rule, wealthy people are not generous people, otherwise they would not wealthy,” Mr Kneebone said. Again, they might not welcome people wandering over their land.

The commission must find out where people could walk, and then set about publicising these places, said Mr Kneebone. Maps were probably the simplest and most effective way of publicising walkways. The average person simply did not know where he was allowed to walk.