Brendon Burns

18 August 2010 (St Albans News September issue)
 

ECAN and the city council should accept Cranford Basin needs to be converted from rural to urban land and abandon fresh appeals against this happening, believes Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns. He says the current ‘donut’ of rural land on either side of upper Cranford St is a nonsense.

ECAN is the lead agency for a number of parties, including Christchurch City Council,  who are  appealing against recommendations by independent commissioners after recent hearings into the Regional Policy Statement. The RPS incorporates earlier findings in  the Christchurch Urban Development Strategy.

The independent hearings commissioners were appointed by Ecan in the first place, after some submitters sought review in the High Court, pleading that Ecan councillors had predetermined the outcome of the process and were consequently disqualified from conducting the hearings themselves.

In a memorandum to the Environment Court dated June this year, ECAN now signals it will seek to use appeals to challenge the findings of its own commissioners  who recommended that currently rural land on either side of Cranford St should be designated urban.

 Brendon Burns says the issue has been going on for years at great cost to all involved, including ratepayers.

 “Here we have our councils trying to maintain a donut hole of designated rural land only a couple of kilometres from the four avenues and surrounded by housing.”

Brendon Burns says he has every sympathy for the Case family who own much of the land involved and who’ve been trying to farm the land for many years. They are now resorting to further legal action and declining to comment.

“Their farm has effectively become a stormwater pond for all the surrounding urban development. The area is most appropriately called the Cranford Basin – but proper drainage could sort this out.”

Brendon Burns says the two councils continued to support designating the land as rural  because it’s cheaper than putting in sufficient storm water disposal systems.

A breakthrough came late last year when the independent hearings panel said it was “quite wrong” for the councils to continue holding up Cranford Basin from being developed for urban use.

 “But ECAN’s government appointed commissioners are now supporting legal efforts to frustrate that change, along with Christchurch City Council and New Zealand Transport Agency – our national roadbuilder.”

Apart from providing a convenient dumping ground for floodwater, the Cases’ farm also sits either side of the proposed Northern Arterial motorway route.

“So it is no surprise that at the same time that attempts to frustrate re-zoning are underway, much of the area is being designated as land for the new motorway route.”

 Brendon Burns says the ECAN commissioners should accept the advice to elected councillors last December that Cranford Basin logically should be zoned urban.

“This would be an opportunity for the government appointed Commissioners to show their commitment to a fair and democratic outcome.

 “If both councils and NZTA want the farmland for motorway, then fine, let them make a suitable offer and buy it. But it is wrong to leave someone with flooded and inappropriately zoned rural land that sticks out like a sore thumb,” said Brendon Burns.

18 August 2010  (The Mairehau September issue)                
 
Residents of the East Ellington Drive sub-division off Innes Road have suffered a serious breach of natural justice, says the local MP and a community board member.
 
Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns and Shirley Papanui community board member Pauline  Cotter say the proposal for a by-pass connecting QE2 Drive with Hills Rd has major ramifications for residents of Mairehau, Shirley and St Albans.
 
They both attended a meeting of 30 residents this month, called to discuss proposals for a major by-pass through the quiet sub-division.
 
Brendon Burns says while he had already met some East Ellington Drive area residents, it was disturbing to learn at the recent meeting that even people who’ve only built in the suburb this year did so unaware of a major roading plan.
 
“The guys hosting the meeting have only just moved into their home. They bought their section last October and were not alerted to council’s proposals for a by-pass which would see 10,000 vehicles a day diverted past their front door.”
 
The MP says while council has now agreed to investigate the by-pass proposal and give a definitive “yes” or ‘no’ next year to whether it would proceed, residents deserve to know now why they were not alerted to the roading plan when they purchased their sections.
 
“A proposal like this deserves to be flagged on the Land Information Memorandum, LIM report and city plans. There was nothing there to tell people that the quiet sub-division they were buying into was in fact proposed as a major by-pass route.”
 
Pauline Cotter, who is standing for council as well as being on Shirley Papanui community board, says she is determined to get to the bottom of the issue.
 
“No indication was given by council about this project, other than a document called the Northern Roading Option Scoping Study, which was not widely available. A copy of this NROSS report was on the council website but “dropped off” about a year ago. Council has to do better than this to alert residents to major projects when they are building homes.”

“Residents are extremely concerned that their quiet, safe sub-division may become a major vehicle thoroughfare.”
 
Pauline Cotter says the East Ellington Drive developers also bear responsibility..
 
“They knew about the by-pass proposal but people buying a section weren’t told.  Residents thought they were buying into a quiet area and deserved to be alerted.”

 
Brendon Burns and Pauline Cotter have agreed to work to assist East Ellington Drive residents to get a fair outcome.
 
The MP says everyone accepts the need for roading improvements but the by-pass proposal may not be the best option.
 
“Apart from funnelling thousands of cars through a quiet suburban area, it also pushes them past Mairehau High School and across already busy Innes Road where we have two primary schools. Residents of Mairehau, Shirley and St Albans all deserve to know about this proposal and what it might mean for traffic flows in their area.”
 
Pauline Cotter says the council’s investigation provides an opportunity to assess all the options.
 
“We need to make sure that this time, council does so in an open and transparent way which takes all the factors into account. I will be working to ensure council delivers a just outcome. I think that’s the very least residents in and around East Ellington Drive are owed after the failure to alert them appropriately to date.”

Column for Richmond News, December 2009

After clinching a deal with the Maori Party 18 minutes before its announcement, the National Government has pushed through under urgency emissions trading laws that will over the years ahead cost Christchurch families the thick end of $100,000.

That’s not Labour’s figure but Treasury’s estimate. Part of the cost is the horse-trading done by the Maori Party which hits Maori and Pakeha families alike.

My colleague Shane Jones summarised it well as “pork bone politics.”

It does virtually nothing to end the emissions of carbon which threaten our very planet’s future. Instead, the big emitters are given tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, paid for by us as taxpayers for a generation and more. The National/Maori Party deal provides no real incentive to polluters to stop harmful emissions entering out atmosphere. As the recent film on climate change would attest, it is The Wage of Stupid.

That’s agreed by Labour, Green, Progressive and even ACT’s deflowered Perkbuster Rodney Hide.

Little wonder The Press branded the government’s bill as “Farcical” as have many commentators. Former National Party’s chief of staff Richard Long described the bill as a ‘dog.”

Unfortunately it is a dog which bites Richmond households and families at the very time when they are struggling. It’s been a year of nil wage rounds and ongoing price increases; of rising unemployment and soaring costs such as ACC levies; of paying more and getting less.

One can only hope the dog will somehow be put down and that an age of sense rather than stupidity prevails.

The School of Music proposal undermines our heritage and fails to deliver for our city, says Christchurch Central MP Brendon Burns

The proposal to put a modern building on the heritage Arts Centre site is symptomatic of several issues facing Christchurch.

First, it rather blatantly under-lines the lack of regard and protection often shown towards the very thing that makes Christchurch unique and brings visitors here – the neo-Gothic and Edwardian architecture of our city. Every day, character homes and buildings are lost, pulled like rotten teeth, replaced with shiny new edifices. Even eminent architects find it difficult to stop the jarring that occurs when new tilt-slab is inserted alongside old stone or weatherboard. Now that an Australian architectural consultant has commented thus to the City Council, an effort is underway to tweak the new conservatorium and make it look a little more Mountford. I won’t hold my breath.

Secondly, the project resonates with preference. As someone who spent eight years on a polytechnic council, I know too well that polytechnics tend to be the poor cousins of the tertiary sector. As the MP representing the inner city, I personally favour bringing more students into our inner city and helping revitalise it. The CPIT campus students make the redevelopment of the High St/Lichfield St work. There are ten thousand students providing a lot of spend for the south-eastern CBD, from morning lattes to late-night lagers and much in between. You have to ask how a hundred or so university music students and associated staff will rejuvenate the area around the Arts Centre?

I accept that the deal will help prop up the Arts Centre itself but council could chose to divert the funding from any development it funded, on any site, to this cause.

Thirdly, there is the need to maximise any public investment, especially in these difficult economic times. The City Council is currently engaged in a review of community facilities. If a school hall, a church hall and a council meeting place are all within a few hundred yards of each other, often sitting idle and in need of maintenance, it can make sense, from a community perspective, to concentrate on one decent facility. The best possible use of capital and resources has to be considered, whether ratepayer or taxpayer or private sector funding is involved.

If the city council has $25 million to spend on supporting an education initiative, it makes sense to coordinate this in a way that makes it work for our city, rather than a particular institution. Canterbury University has around 120 full-time equivalent music students; CPIT has 300.  From the city’s perspective, a conservatorium deserves to be available for use by students from both institutions and beyond. I understand Christ’s College would like more room for its music students to practice but doesn’t see much opportunity for access to the Conservatorium as proposed. That’s because the School of Music building is shoe-horned onto the Arts Centre site. It has to provide numerous rooms for one-on-one coaching as well as a 300-person auditorium. Car parking is having to be provided by the expensive and some suggest risky option of going underground in an area with a notoriously high water-level. Beyond not being able to share facilities with the bigger and brilliant CPIT jazz school, the Conservatorium has no capacity for its own future growth.

Again, if we were looking at a city-focussed rather than institution-driven facility,   sense dictates that consideration also be given to providing a home for our Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Its constant financial challenges are exacerbated by the lack of a permanent home. Addressing that for our city should be an essential feature of any new School of Music.

I did not rush to judgement on the School of Music proposal. However, my concerns  strengthened in discovering that a similar proposal in Wellington’s has faced years of delays and cost escalations. The project has gone from $30m to what is now believed to be $90m for a project with a similar sized auditorium but three times as many students. Even with a now deleted Government promise to contribute $11.5m and the support of both Victoria and Massey universities, the project has dragged on for more than five years.

A $25m conservatorium including 40 carparks for the City Council might be technically possible but I doubt even Sir Miles can do justice on that budget to Mountford’s iconic heritage site and give Christchurch something we can be proud of and which helps us compete for students and visitors.

After clinching a deal with the Maori Party 18 minutes before its announcement, the National Government has pushed through under urgency emissions trading laws that will over the years ahead cost Kiwi families the thick end of $100,000.

That’s not Labour’s figure but Treasury’s estimate. Part of the cost is the horse-trading done by the Maori Party which hits Maori and Pakeha families alike.
My colleague Shane Jones summarised it well as “pork bone politics.”
It does virtually nothing to end the emissions of carbon which threaten our very planet’s future. Instead, the big emitters are given tens of billions of dollars in subsidies, paid for by us as taxpayers for a generation and more. The National/Maori Party deal provides no real incentive to polluters to stop harmful emissions entering out atmosphere. As the recent film on climate change would attest, it is The Wage of Stupid.

That’s agreed by Labour, Green, Progressive and even ACT’s deflowered Perkbuster Rodney Hide.

Little wonder many media commentators are branding the government’s bill as “farcical.”Former National Party’s chief of staff Richard Long described the bill as a ‘dog.”

Unfortunately it is a dog which bites households and families at the very time when they are struggling. It’s been a year of nil wage rounds and ongoing price increases; of rising unemployment and soaring costs such as ACC levies; of paying more and getting less.

One can only hope the dog will somehow be put down and that an age of sense rather than stupidity prevails.