Road link critics anger Coast leaders

Press, 27 July 1989, Page 3

Road link critics anger Coast leaders

By

PAT TAYLOR

and BRENDON BURNS

West Coast leaders are angry at criticism of a plan for a South WestlandMilford road link. The member of Parliament for West Coast, Mr Kerry Burke, and the chairwoman of the West Coast United Council, Mrs Margaret Moir, say the road could open up the area for tourism.

The Opposition’s spokesman on tourism and member of Parliament for Central Otago, Mr Warren Cooper, says the idea promoted by the Minister of Tourism, Mr Hunt, is a “cruel hoax and a Ministerial escapade.” Mr Cooper said yesterday there were higher priorities. “We witness the ridiculous spectacle of contemplating unnecessary and extravagant public works while overseas promotion and marketing of New Zealand as a destination lacks vigour and commitment,” he said. Mr Burke said he was “very disappointed” that Mr Cooper “as a person with a considerable knowledge about the tourist industry should take a negative, narrow and, at

some times, petty atittude towards the feasibility study being conducted.

“Decisions have been made to preserve from other economic activity huge areas of the southwest of the South Island. It has the potential to be a tourist bonanza. The feasibility study is designed to see whether a road link would be economic. That is all. If it is, then it should be built.” The road would benefit not just the West Coast, but Southland and Otago also. “Queenstown, Mr Cooper’s home ■ town, would be a considerable beneficiary in my view,” said Mr Burke. He took issue with Mr Cooper’s description of the feasibility study as an “unnecessary and extravagant public work.” Mr Burke said there was no reason why the conservation and development values could not be harmonised to boost tourism. “The feasibility study would be the test of that and interest groups ought perhaps to reserve their comments until it is completed,” he said. Mrs Moir said “for a

change” she stood in the same corner as Mr Burke. “I am disappointed at the drivel doming from Mr Cooper. He certainly has not done much to boost the tourism possibilities of the West Coast.”

The feasibility study was being done as part of the “quid pro quo” for locking up more than 300,000 ha of land in new reserves.

Development and heritage status could go hand in hand and the proposal was a “brilliant concept to market,” she said.

Mrs Moir said the noted conservationist, Dr David Bellamy, had backed the concept of the road. She was “very disappointed” at the attitude of Mr Cooper. “If he is the Opposition spokesman on tourism, we certainly haven’t seen much of him on the West Coast.” Mr Cooper had said that „Mr Hunt hadn’t “a bolter’s show of either getting the money or being in a position to implement the development.”

“He is enthusiastically promoting a classic red herring in an effort to camouflage the declining state of the tourism industry.”