Planning system ‘inadequate’

Press, 9 July 1983, Page 17

Planning system ‘inadequate’

The cement works case is a clear indication of how New Zealand’s planning system is inadequate, says Councillor Helen Stead, of Oamaru.

“It should be planning from the bottom up, not from the top down, which is what we’ve got at the moment,” says Cr Stead. “We tend to look at objectives as if we’re planning on the end of a pin. We worry about the loads on the roads, dust emissions, etc., etc., when we haven’t even asked the first question: ‘Should the development go ahead?’ ” Cr Stead says that about one third of the cost of the $l5O million project will be paid by the taxpayers, in regional development aid and subsidies.

Any regional development aid to North Otago should go into many labour-intensive investments, not one big, capital-intensive industry, she adds. It could go into such things as tourism and the diversification of agriculture, providing more jobs, and a better rate of return on the investment. irrigation the lower Waitaki the internal rate of return is such that within six years the

Government gets back in taxes — because of the increased production — what it has invested, she says. In 1980, when a town-planning hearing regarding the proposed cement works was scheduled, Helen Stead wrote a report which upset the Oamaru Borough Council.

“I was concerned that there was no forum for the national interest to be discussed — and I was told (by other councillors) that it had nothing to do with the planning hearing,” she says. “Now, strictly speaking, that is true.” Cr Stead wanted the council to discuss the wider implications. The council refused even to receive her report. Helen Stead is studying through Massey University for a B.A. in regional planning and English. She has completed all the necessary stage three papers for regional planning, but is so keen on the subject that she is doing an extra paper this year. “The national planning situation is all very difficult in that we have a Minister of ♦deal Government and a Minister for the Environment but they don’t have any kind

of planning organisation to support them,” she says. “We have a Ministry of Works which has planning and construction wings of government and they are the dominant agency in Treasury and the National Water and Soil Organisation. So, essentially, any planning that is done is works and development planning, and that seems to override everything else.”

Cr Stead is worried that North Otago is producing raw materials in the form of agricultural products, hardly processed at all, and “exporting” power — and people. This is happening despite a stated national policy of the Planning Council and other groups such as the Institute of Economic Research which say that New Zealand should be processing the raw materials, giving them added value, and making them lighter and less costly to export. The N.Z. Cement proposal worries Cr Stead for many reasons. There has been no forum to discuss the $5O million in subsidies to be paid for by the tax&yer, markets for the cement are uncertain; it is costing about $1 million for each

job created; and if the electricity is not available from the national grid, the power board may reconsider plans to build a power plant on the beautiful Ahuriri River.

Cr Stead says that she has been accused of being anti-North Otago and anti-progress “and that hurts very much.” She insists that she has consistently supported development at the local level.

She says she sees the advantages to the region if the cement project goes ahead. “Obviously I shouldn’t overlook $5 million a year coming into this town for the next 20 or 30 years; that’s why I feel very, very torn in that I’m being disloyal to my area in criticising the New Zealand Cement development, but I don’t see how you can split the local, regional interest from the national interest. They should be one and the same, because we are an integrated economy.” Making her feel even worse, she says, is the fact that it is the only think-big project the South Island has left.

Like all the other people Itfjpoke to in Oamaru, Cr Stead believes that the Government will overrule

the Ports Authority decision, because the Government has been in favour of the project all along, and because such a decision is likely to win votes for the member of Parliament for Waitaki, Mr Jonathan Elworthy. . “And that,” says Helen Stead, “is ** not planning at all.”