Editor
Councillor Cardiff is right to feel “extremely uncomfortable” about litigation over the coastal hazard lines but wrong to blame central government. The process of commissioning a report and using it to draw lines on maps and dictate the content of LIM reports was apparently carried out by KCDC staff in secrecy. Certainly ignorance of it as claimed by councillors and the absence of consultation with affected property owners supports the description of the process as secretive. Only after the event was it referred to our elected representatives. They then failed to question the secretive process, they failed to ask why they had not been informed beforehand, and they failed to challenge the lack of consultation. It did not seem to have occurred to them that what they were being told and asked to sanction would impact negatively on property values and the sense of well-being of owners, all based on a report that had not been scrutinised or adequately reviewed. Instead, and Cardiff inadvertently makes the point, they thought they had no role to play other than meekly acquiesce in what they were told by their staff. What the councillors have given us is an abject failure of democratic accountability. Small wonder that litigation is likely, because the report has flaws, it has been misrepresented, and those affected by it and the lines that have been drawn have been told it is beyond question or review, except on a property specific basis in the upcoming District Plan review.
John Morrison
Waikanae
