There needs to be some fresh thinking on the Albert Eden Local Board given what Save Chamberlain Park witnessed at the Local Board’s monthly meeting on the 26th of June.

After being given a totally insufficient three minutes to try to deal with the large number of inaccuracies and omissions in the report being presented to the Board, a motion was put to have the Board meet with Save CP so that the concerns could be considered in more detail.

This vote was lost on “party” lines with Peter Haynes and members Fryer, Easte, Rose and Watson voting against. Members Corrick, Langton and Lee supported the motion.

Glenda Fryer, the deputy chair, and Jessica Rose who are apparently departing the Board for other area boards get to vote on what is the biggest ticket item for the Albert Eden Local Board - that is the $29.7m expenditure on what can only be described as a vanity project. I guess they will not get to cut the ribbon if what is the biggest waste of rate payer money ever passes the laborious and confusing Local Board and Council process to become a reality.

Graeme Easte however objected to the notion that the cost would be anything near $29.7m – in fact he said he did not even agree with the previous council estimate of $22m. Graeme told of investigations he had done on getting fill from around Auckland at mates rates...yea 66,000 cubic meters of the stuff to create a platform for a couple of sports fields that by council’s estimations will cost $16m plus.

Then Mr Easte came up with some maths to say that only 1,000 people a year played at Chamberlain Park compared with 100 thousand odd people who live in the area as a reason to get rid of half the course. I would like to see him do the numbers on any other sporting field - who was it that said “lies, damn lies and statistics?” Save CP, who have actually done the work which Council should have done to find out what goes on at Chamberlain Park, identified almost 500 individual users in a period of a month.

There was even a racial twist when Rachel Langton questioned of one of the authors of the report how was it that increasing numbers of Asians in Albert Eden was a justification for the golf course to be cut in half. The author, Ruth Woodward, couldn’t remember that statistic. Rachel Langton followed up with a statement that surely Asian people would more likely be golfers than Rugby players. Again, Save CP could have told the Board what the real ethnic make-up of course users is instead of having staff members tell them about the ethnic mix of Albert-Eden residents, which bears no correlation.

The bottom line is that anyone who supports the expenditure of $29.7m based on the shoddy information that is before them does not deserve to represent the good people of Albert Eden.

Unfortunately Peter, Graeme, Glenda, Jessica and Margie all voted for this - shame on them all.