Locke Keith: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Second Reading 
Locke Keith: Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:642;Page:12031] 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 The Green Party is strongly in support of the Waitakere Ranges Heritage Area Bill. It comes out of a long campaign generated by the people of the area of Waitakere City and people in the ranges in particular headed by the Waitakere Ranges Protection Society. I am proud that a number of Greens have been involved in that campaign. One Kath Dewar has held a leading office in that society and a long campaign drew support from the community MPs the Waitakere City Council the Rodney District Council and the Auckland Regional Council. They are all supporting this bill. 
I think what is happening here today through this bill is important for the whole country. In fact the term “national significance” comes into the bill as a back-up—the reason for implementing this bill. But it is important for the whole of Auckland. Aucklanders the people in our biggest city travel regularly into the heritage area either into the foothills the park itself or to the seashore environment on the western side of the heritage area. Solutions like a national park are not particularly appropriate because 30 percent of the heritage area is in private hands and that is the nub of a lot of the problem—that private land is under pressure for greater subdivision. That affects all of us not just the people who go into the heritage area but people like myself who as Brian Donnelly just mentioned can see the Waitakere Ranges from Eden Park. I live in Mount Eden and every morning I look out at that vista too and I do not want it to degenerate into just a backdrop of houses. I like that backdrop of the Waitakere Ranges. 
It is even more important to protect this area because of the expansion of Auckland in terms of population and geographical spread. We have to put restraints there. There are pressures for greater subdivision of private land. There are the normal pressures through the planning process where people look for all exceptional circumstances and creep around the regulations however strongly we try to put them in and that has been happening. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment called it death by a thousand cuts. Bit by bit the number of subdivisions expands and the lot size has gone down over the years. The average lot size used to be 20 hectares in that rural backdrop; now it is gone down to 4 hectares and there is pressure for it to go down further. There is in reality a creep through the existing plan and Resource Management Act system towards further subdivision to a disadvantageous extent and that is reinforced by the way land prices are now. As everyone knows housing prices and land prices have gone up hugely which brings that extra pressure for people to make money out of subdivisions. 
Then there is the population pressure in Auckland. That puts a lot of pressure on subdivision particularly when we have politicians like John Key suggesting that the city edge be extended out into green areas in the west. That would lead to more subdivision as well. We can have good and bad Governments and some of the Governments allow more subdivision that way and we can have good and bad councils. The problem is that we need only one bad council with a bad district plan that allows a lot of subdivision and that will muck things up for future generations. I think that Mike Lee put it nicely in a submission he made to the select committee. He said that this bill provides us with a long-term instrument for getting the right economic cultural social and environmental balance for the heritage area. The bill itself talks about looking at things in totality or holistically and in a long-term way. Sometimes unless we have that sort of framework for looking at things holistically and in a long-term way we will go wrong particularly in a heritage area such as this which as the bill points out is of national significance. 
All the important aspects of the heritage area are spelt out in 10 recitals in the preamble to the bill. There are a lot of ecosystems in that heritage area from the coastal ecosystem the ranges—the mountainous ecosystem—to the grasslands on the east coast and the wetlands on the western coast. There is a whole lot of biodiversity that needs to be protected. In fact the Department of Conservation is trying to put some of the bird life that has been developed on Tiritiri Matangi Island over into the ranges with I think some success recently. The department has been increasing the populations of birds such as the stitchbird the saddleback and the kokako and putting them into the Waitakeres. There are also the streams and the water systems which are important in their own right and also for a good water supply for Auckland. There is the scenic character obviously of the area both of the forest and of the landforms and grasslands below the park. The recreation aspects are pointed out in the bill as is the fact that the foothills are a buffer. It is good to have a buffer between the actual park itself and the suburban environment. 
The bill also talks about the cultural distinctiveness of the area and how in the eastern foothills there is very much a low-density lifestyle. On the western side there is a lifestyle that is trying to prevent too much development. There are a lot of fights going on around Piha and places like that over particular applications for three-storey buildings and the like. So having a framework to protect that low-density lifestyle is important. Also there is Maori cultural heritage which is extremely important. The bill has written very strongly into it the importance of recognising the rights of the tangata whenua in that area. There is a whole historical dimension in terms of the area being a very early area of settlement involving forestry and all the other things that went on there. The historical—the archaeological—dimension of the area is so important. 
As I said all this will be taken into account in a holistic way and the various regional and district plans and the Auckland regional growth strategy will have to take into account what is being provided for in this bill as also will resource consents designations local area management plans and recognition of tangata whenua. All that has to be taken into account within the framework of this bill. Brian Donnelly said that perhaps we should just change the Resource Management Act but I think there is room between the national park structure which has been talked about in this debate and is obviously very rigid and really for serious conservation areas and the Resource Management Act which is a bit more local to have a framework for an area like the Waitakeres to help protect it in a long-term way. 
The framework between the national park and the Resource Management Act processes is good and it helps the Resource Management Act processes to be appropriate. The population is very supportive of this bill too. A survey was conducted in the area and 92 percent of people came out in support of it. So the bill has very strong local support and it would do politicians well to support it.