Councillor’s advice: ‘Catch the bus’ to heliport
Auckland councillor Chris Darby’s advice to wealthy, innerAuckland residents wanting helipads is to take public transport.
The travel advice came at the end of a lengthy session on Thursday where Auckland Council’s planning, environment and parks committee considered how to curtail soaring demand for helipads, particularly on the region’s Hauraki Gulf islands.
‘‘My message to the lovely folk of Herne Bay if they want to take their Champagne hampers and polo sticks somewhere via a helicopter, is use a commercial airfield like Mechanics Bay,’’ Darby said, before offering the bus route to get there.
‘‘According to the AT [Auckland Transport] journey planner you can take the Outer Link and the Tamaki Link and it’s very convenient.’’
Darby’s point was there is no shortage of commercial helipads in the city and commercial facilities are already in place on Waiheke and Aotea Great Barrier Island.
Waiheke Local Board chairperson Cath Handley made an impassioned plea to the committee to endorse rule changes.
A council analysis of helicopter activity in Auckland from April 2021-22 showed that in peak season there were more flights to, and over, Waiheke than over the rest of Auckland, Handley said.
She asked council to adopt National Planning Standard 15 – which means helicopter noise cannot be averaged over three days in helipad consent applications, as it currently is.
Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa ward councillor Julie Fairey said it was a double standard that council was incentivising people not to use private cars, while consenting helipads in backyards.
Another plea for rule changes came from Quiet Sky Waiheke’s Kim Whitaker.
He pointed to three recently consented helipads on Waiheke with approved flightpaths over the breeding ground of the nationally endangered reef heron and over Te Matuku Marine Reserve.
Whitaker questioned how this was possible when the council’s own planning note said applications for helicopter landing areas within a coastal environment, should be supported by an assessment against the New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement 2010 and expert reporting on biodiversity.
Waitematā and Gulf Islands councillor Mike Lee said Aotea Great Barrier Island Local Board wanted to go further and make helicopters a prohibited activity.
With concern about the lack of budget for the work, Lee put forward a motion to find out how the matter could be brought into existing work.
That was passed 14 votes to six, with mayor Wayne Brown and deputy mayor Desley Simpson among those who voted against it.
The committee agreed to urgently implement the helicopter noise measurement planning standard, a change expected to take two weeks.