Posts by Russell Brown
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Now I think you'll find it is the other way around. It seems that once Auckland City heard about it they immediately leaked "details" to the press about how much it was going to cost 100 mill + was the figure floating around.
Nope. From the Wikipedia article on the stadium that never was:
In a 5 hour meeting on the night of November 23, the Auckland City Council gave support to the waterfront proposal by a 13-7 vote. However they qualified their assent by wanting the stadium to be "substantially east" of the Marsden Wharf/Captain Cook location preferred by the government, cutting more deeply into port lands, but also keeping views from Britomart unobstructed.[9]
On November 24, the Auckland Regional Council unanimously voted against supporting the construction of the stadium at the waterfront (mainly due to its effects on port operations), opting instead to lend their support to an upgrade of Auckland's current rugby venue, Eden Park.[10]
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I cannot understand why the visionless Auckland City leaders refused goverment cash to build an asset for Auckland.
To be fair, it was the Auckland City leaders who said yes please, and the ARC that decided it might inconvenience the importers of used cars.
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Wasn't the Viaduct basin built as "party central" for a previous publically subsidised sporting defeat? Is it not suitable for the RWC for some reason?
It'll be used, of course, but there's not much public space there. The last Diwali festivities were crammed in there, and for all the colour and great food (yum! Diwali food!) it was a pain to navigate, and really couldn't grow any more.
I don't quite get the hostility towards public waterfront space. Australian cities have been developing this way for years -- what's happened along the rivers in Brisbane and Melbourne (where they took out a road to make a pedestrian concourse along the Yarra) is brilliant.
And I don't think converting Queens Wharf into a public open space is neccesarily a bad idea. I'm not sure on converting it into a duplicated area of bars for North Shore kids to vomit in is that good a use of public cash, though.
The "party central", which, again, was going to happen anyway, is for the RWC. The acquisition has laid the ground for further development afterwards. Why do you have envisage the most pessimistic and unappealing scenario possible?
Building a billion dollar stadium would have been a terrible idea, though.
There were questions over cost and time scale, sure. But having that facility there, instead of throwing hundreds of millions at a rugby ground in the middle of a suburb, would have been brilliant.
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It's learned helplessness. I call it battered-citizens syndrome.
I'll try and remember to credit you when I use that.
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I suppose this is the right point to note that the "honeytrap" theory being propagated by the usual suspects is absurd.
Goff's handling of things can certainly be faulted, but the idea that it was all a jack-up is crazy. If you were to build a honeytrap for the poor minister (who clearly had no control over his own behaviour), you wouldn't:
1. Pick a one-time Labour candidate as your femme fatale.
2. Forget to record the phone calls.
3. Delete the most offensive and sensational text messages.
4. Not mention it until John Key has already mentioned the complaint to reporters.
The really irritating thing is the conflation of the text-message complaint with the case of the Korean woman -- which, for goodness sake, involves an allegation of sexual assault.
Jim Mora on RNZ yesterday seemed only dimly aware of the difference between the cases, and pretty much sat there while Richard Griffin praised his friend Worth and depicted the Korean woman as some kind of needy nutcase. It was horrible.
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And don't get me started on Goff.
OMG. Is this his fault too?
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For those who haven't read the stories, the deal seems reasonable to me.
Brian Rudman was fretting that the ARC was going to have to find $80m to buy its own asset, so the agreement on $20m from government and $20m from the ARC for a significant asset seems pretty good.
Yes, it will cost money to develop, but it will also earn revenue. On face value, it seems more transparent than the Auckland City Council boondoggle around the Viaduct for the America's Cup -- although it's now hard to imagine downtown Auckland without that.
The odd thing is that it seems that some people who opposed the stadium because it would close off the waterfront (like the big red fence wasn't already doing that) are now opposing opening up the waterfront.
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Is it really such an outrageous proposition to want Auckland to have a pleasant waterfront area that ordinary people can use for pleasure or recreation?
Apparently that's Wellington's job.
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Professional rugby is an entertainment business it should be treated the same way as any other
For the third time, the RWC "party central" was going to happen anyway . The acquisition of the wharf should finally mean a public reconnection to the waterfront in perpetuity.
And it does seem that the cruise ship terminal will in fact be an earner.
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So can you explain why building "grands projets" is a better use of public money than insulating homes and improving the public transport network for people to get to work and school?
You forgot to mention hip replacements.
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