Man v machine
The fight for a racetrack
Auckland Council owns a 1.85 hectare block in the industrial eastern suburb of Mt Wellington. 39a and b Tainui Rd is zoned ‘‘Business – Light Industry’’. For three decades, it’s been intended, eventually, to be used for a major arterial road. Until then, the council wants to make money from the land and lease it commercially.
All this is logical, if you see Tainui Rd as merely a barren chunk of terrain awaiting white lines and kerbstones. But not if you’re Liam Venter, who describes it as a ‘‘humble 364-metre stretch of bitumen’’ that has produced world champions like US IndyCar driver Scott Dixon.
For 50 years, the Tainui Rd racetrack was home to kart, motorbike and rollerblade racing. Then, the council padlocked the gates and, for two years, it has sat empty as a bitter fight raged between the bureaucratic machinery of the city, and one very determined man.
How could the council evict several sports clubs from their long-term home and refuse to find them a new one? How could they decide something used for sport for a half-century wasn’t a park but in legal fact a road, despite no formal roading plans even existing?
The argument went to the High Court. The outcome is chilling for any sporting group that relies on the benevolence of its local council for a patch of earth to call home.
As a kid, Liam Venter was car-obsessed. By 14, he and his best friend were running an unofficial workshop on their parents’ driveways in Ponsonby, central Auckland. They graduated to building kitset cars.
He wasn’t, he says, good at school: he asked too many questions. But he went on to an engineering degree, started his own IT firm, and sold it in 2005. At 40, he retired on the proceeds. ‘‘I bought a motorhome, thought I’d go fishing. I hate fishing, it turns out. And I didn’t much like motorhomes.’’
Instead, he became a hobbyist motorbike engineer. At his waterfront Te Atatu home, he’s got a big workshop filled with bits of bikes and cars and machinery where he designs and makes bike parts. ‘‘I love solving problems,’’ he says.
Tainui Rd was just such a problem. Venter had been a kart club member and a stalwart of the motorbike bucket-racing club at the track.
Bucket-racing is entry-level motorbike racing. Low-powered bikes, built from scrap parts and worth as little as $200, give beginners and veterans the chance to race safely. Venter loved it. Then his club was told the track would close, and they were homeless. ‘‘I said it was unfair, and everyone said ‘there’s nothing you can do about it’.
‘‘But... it was so patently wrong it jarred with me. I felt these guys were being screwed over and I had the capacity to challenge it, where they didn’t.’’
Venter had the time and money. And so began one man’s war against the machine.
In an affidavit, council official Ian Wheeler described him as ‘‘confrontational and unpleasant’’. Venter’s self-description: ‘‘I am polite. I am courteous. But I am tenacious. I will keep asking the same questions.’’
In 1959, a group of go-kart enthusiasts carved a dirt track in the east Auckland farmland, under the guidance of Mt Wellington town clerk ‘‘Pop’’ Volkner.
Over the years, it was used for german shepherd displays, police dog training, hot rods, cycling lessons and filming TV show The Block.
But principally, it was home to the Mt Wellington kart club, which in turn sublet to three other groups: the Auckland Motorcycle ‘‘bucket’’ club, the Mt Wellington roller blade club and the Auckland University SAE club (engineering students who design electric race cars).
The karters, however, never owned it. Originally, it was Crown land, held for potential railway needs. In 1998, Auckland Council bought it for $980,000 to protect a future road corridor. But they kept renting it to the karters, on a lease that rose over time to $20,000 a year.
Auckland Council grants community leases of just a few hundred dollars, to worthy community groups. It also has commercial leases, where it seeks market value for its properties. This fell somewhere in between: the kart club was often told by officials they were paying under the odds because of their ‘‘very significant contribution to the community’’.
The possibility of eviction always lingered. By 2012, they were on a month-to-month lease, while council officials were debating whether to give them a community lease.
Then, in 2018, the council had the land assessed for lease at a market rate of $285,000 a year. Internally, the council had decided it wanted more money. Auckland Transport’s head of property, Jane Small, wrote a memo saying it was not AT’s ‘‘role to subsidise the kartsport club’s tenancy of transport land’’, and there was no public interest in subsidising small ‘‘private sports clubs’’.
So the kart club negotiated a temporary trackshare with the city’s other kart club at Rosebank Rd, Avondale. But limited racing time meant no room there for the bucket-racers, rollerbladers or electric car enthusiasts.
In June 2018, the council gave notice to vacate by October. They didn’t talk to the sub-tenants. ‘‘We were gobsmacked,’’ recalls Venter. ‘‘We were asking ‘where are we racing now, what’s the plan?’ ‘There is no plan’.’’
As the council’s property arm, Panuku, began what became 10-month negotiations to find a tenant, the track sat empty.
The roller-blade club – which had forged top skaters like multiple world champion Scott Arlidge – was reduced to training at night on supermarket car parks, where one skater was hit by a car.
And for the bucket club, which had raced there since 1988, the nearest suitable tracks were in Whanga¯ rei, Tokoroa, Taumaranui and Edgecumbe (near Whakata¯ ne), leaving its dwindling membership travelling up to six hours to race.
‘‘It’s impossible to acquire new members for a club that doesn’t have a track,’’ said the club secretary, Dr Aimee Inomata.
Venter had thought the track was needed urgently for the road. He discovered there were no roading plans for at least a decade, and began hopefully phoning council officials. ‘‘I thought ‘this is insane, I’ll just go speak to them and they will be awfully reasonable’.’’
The council seemed surprised to hear from Venter, claiming they were never aware of the subleasing (though the sub-tenants’ existence often appears in older council paperwork).
Apart from phone calls with parks official Martin Devoy, who suggested the bucket racers try Ardmore Airport, it took four months – and a publicity stunt of a fake race in Aotea Square – to secure a meeting with Devoy’s boss, Martin Stewart.
Stewart suggested sharing Rosebank Rd was possible. But no offer was ever made. The council does not seem to have ever offered an alternate venue.
Venter then turned to the council’s property arm, Panuku, which was tasked with leasing the property. First, he threatened an injunction. Then, he tried bidding for the lease, in conjunction with businessman Tony Quinn, who owns racetracks including Hampton Downs in the Waikato.
Panuku gave him 14 days to express interest, then cut it to six. The Panuku official in charge, Ian Wheeler, told Venter he needed ‘‘north of $200,000’’ a year. Panuku, however, would end up signing for an initial amount of just $150,000 pa. ‘‘Why didn’t they get on the phone to me and say ‘are you serious? How can we make this happen’?’’ says Venter.
Meanwhile, he was trying to get a council vote
‘‘It was so patently wrong it jarred with me. I felt these guys were being screwed over and I had the capacity to challenge it, where they didn’t.’’
Liam Venter
on a decision made by officials, rather than elected councillors. With strong support from two councillors, Wayne Walker and John Watson, and extensive canvassing, Venter believed he had the numbers to reverse the decision if it went to a vote. It never did.
Then Venter formed an incorporated society, Mt Wellington Racepark, and hired a barrister, Will McKenzie, to make a legal challenge.
McKenzie felt that Section 138 of the Local Government Act meant the council was acting unlawfully. The section reads: ‘‘A local authority proposing to sell or otherwise dispose of a park or part of a park must consult on the proposal before it sells or disposes of, or agrees to sell or dispose of, the park or part of the park.’’
And a park is: ‘‘Land acquired or used principally for community, recreational, environmental, cultural, or spiritual purposes’’.
To Venter, the raceway was a park, and there had been no consultation. Councillor Walker agreed, writing to senior officials urging them to halt the lease process or risk breaching Section 138.
The bucket racers placed a sign on the gates saying the property was subject to legal action.
Ameeting of senior councillors and officials decided to forge ahead, bolstered by a supportive internal legal opinion, and agreed a deal with a traffic management company, ITC, to lease Tainui Road.
ITC signed for an initial $150,000 a year, rising to $290,000 in 2028. Internal council emails hailed this as a great deal. But it’s far less than the original rent appraisal – and ITC has already agreed to sublet about three-quarters of the site for $702,000 a year.
The council also never told its new tenant of the raging dispute until after the deal was done. An affidavit from ITC director Glen Ruma said: ‘‘We’d have done everything possible to avoid the situation that we’re now in.’’ ITC would want at least $3m compensation from council if the deal was cancelled.
Council offered alternative sites to ITC (which it declined), and money to the bucket racers (which they declined). And so, a few days after level 3 lockdown ended, the scene shifted to the Auckland High Court.
It was quiet inside, like a school during holiday time. Courtroom 11 was vast, almost empty. Black and yellow striped tape blocked most of the seats in the gallery, and judge Edwin Wylie had limited the public gallery to 10. Not that it mattered – there was never more than seven.
Venter was a constant – usually impassive, sometimes exasperated – joined by rollerblading trustee Bill Over and councillor Wayne Walker. The council fielded various bored, phone-tapping officials.
McKenzie, a former sports administrator who had converted to law later in life, wore a box-fresh gown and looked rattled early on. At the first break, he slumped, drained, on the chairs outside – but thereafter grew in confidence and passion.
The council’s lawyer, Meredith Connell partner Anna Adams, was precise, methodical, and painfully slow. Her snakeskin shoes hinted at character, but none emerged as she professionally spelled out her case.
The often deadly-dull two-day hearing was essentially about definitions: what was ‘‘a park’’. What did ‘‘use’’ mean. What did ‘‘consult’’ mean.
McKenzie said the meaning of park should be the ‘‘most natural grammatical meaning’’. His case was simple: the land was a park, therefore the council had to consult; it didn’t, therefore the lease to ITC was wrong.
He was ambitious: he wanted the judge to order compensation, cancel the lease, restore the bucket racers. The judge asked him to demonstrate where his legal power to do any of that was. He couldn’t.
Adams’ counter was thorough but relied on some contortions. Principal use meant the purpose the land was held for: the mythical road, not what it was actually used for. It wasn’t a park because the council didn’t classify it as a park, and a park needed 24/7 public access.
McKenzie said you couldn’t get into most sports clubs 24/7, nor the zoo, the Botanic Gardens or the Chamberlain Park golf course, but council classified all of them as parks. And the use of the land wasn’t some accident of history, but a deliberate decision by successive councils.
Adams said if the definition of a park was too wide, it could cause councils all sorts of difficulties. If the racetrack wasn’t a park, then Section 138 didn’t apply, and so the council could do whatever it wished.
Adams had a fallback argument: council had actually consulted, even if they hadn’t called it that when they had listened to Venter’s barrage of emails and phone calls.
The day after the hearing closed, with the judge’s decision reserved, Venter was buoyant. He and McKenzie had been for a beer afterwards, and the lawyer felt confident. A week later, McKenzie told me the Crown had given an 8/10 performance with a 0/10 case.
Then Justice Wylie released his judgement. It was a complete, unmitigated triumph for council. The judge seemed troubled by Venter and McKenzie’s idea of what a park was. He quoted four different legal dictionaries which all broadly defined a park the same way (Butterworth’s: ‘‘Land used for public health, recreation, enjoyment and other public purposes of a like nature’’), and so, he conceded, it could be argued that public use was what defined a park. So far, so good for the motorcyclists.
But Justice Wylie felt the purpose of the act ‘‘would be frustrated if an over-broad interpretation of the word park’’ was adopted.
‘‘Construed literally, it is very wide-ranging,’’ said Wylie, and could even include a car park used by skateboarders or a strip of trees used by pedestrians for shade.
‘‘This,’’ he opined, ‘‘suggests the meaning of the word ‘park’ may not be so obvious.’’
He said the track didn’t have ‘‘the character or trappings of a park’’, suggested it was commercially leased, the track was ‘‘incidental or temporary use’’ and, yes, the ‘‘literal interpretation’’ of the word park was too wideranging. Thus – it wasn’t a park, so no need to consult. But they had consulted anyway. And even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have ordered them to do it again, because of the impact on the innocent ITC, and anyway, he thought they would have come to the same conclusion.
It was a judgement without a crumb of comfort for Liam Venter, who rued ever going to court. Getting the track back was always a long shot, but he’d expected to prevent this sort of thing happening again. Instead, he’d delivered a legal precedent allowing any council to sell off unprotected recreational land.
Gloomily, he saw it as a chance for cashstrapped, post-Covid councils to hock off assets. Auckland, for example, ‘‘think the answer is to sell off the silver to pay for the groceries,’’ he reckoned.
It seems logical the ruling could impact stadia, golf courses, bowls clubs and tennis clubs, any sports club with its clubrooms sitting on leased council land – indeed, anywhere that isn’t an unfenced public park with free 24-hour access.
McKenzie jotted a list of sports codes he felt could be affected. It filled a page of his notebook.
Of course, councils don’t usually sell up the land from beneath their sports clubs. But imagine, McKenzie says, some rugby club which has been annoying its council for years has its lease come up – council could now simply lease out its clubrooms as a cafe´ . ‘‘Any situation where an organisation isn’t getting on with their council, this is a way to get rid of them.’’
Meanwhile, the decision isn’t just the death of the bucket racing club, says Venter, but a blow to a $200m-a-year motorsport manufacturing industry, and a crack in the foundations of the entire sport. ‘‘We have lost the ability to produce world champions ... buckets is our nursery ground, it is our barefoot [midget] rugby.’’
They still have a fortnight to appeal. The track is lost, but Venter is holding to his principles and contacting sports organisations to fund the estimated $100,000 legal bill. ‘‘I want my grandchildren to enjoy the facilities in Auckland that I enjoyed when I grew up,’’ he says.