Anti-marina group demonstrates outside Auckland Council, demands work to stop

Friday, 23 July 2021

Tensions have been rising at the Kennedy Point Marina site on Waiheke Island, as activists and crew tussle and occupiers take over the floating pontoon. (First published July 8, 2021)

A crowd carrying penguin placards gathered outside Auckland Council’s city centre tower on Friday morning to protest the Kennedy Point marina.

The demonstration, organised by Protect Pūtiki, drew around one hundred people.

Many had travelled over from Waiheke Island to make their message clear.

Protect Pūtiki spokeswoman Emily Māia Weiss said they want Auckland Council to step in and stop works.

They demanded the council stop all work on the marina and revoke resource consent.

* Waiheke marina opponents in court charged with trespassing construction zone

* Waiheke marina: Occupiers set up floating camp, one apparently kicked in the face

Protectors are concerned the construction work could harm the little blue penguins at the bay.

Speaking through a megaphone on the steps of the tower, Protect Pūtiki spokeswoman Emily Māia Weiss said the bay was a taonga, or treasure.

To have council agree for it to be privatised was a “huge insult to tāngata whenua”, she said.

Consent was granted in 2017 and was unsuccessfully fought through the courts over four years.

It allows the developer to build a 180-berth marina, a floating car park and other amenities at Kennedy Point.

About a hundred people gathered outside the Council building in Auckland’s CBD holding paintings by Waiheke school children.

But Weiss said a consent being legal “doesn’t mean it’s right”.

Those opposing the marina are also concerned construction work could harm the kororā, little blue penguins, nesting in the rock breakwater.

Weiss said protectors had called on council and government ministers to stop construction, but had taken matters into their own hands, swimming and kayaking in the bay to make sure construction can’t happen.

For that, they had been gathering criminal convictions for trespassing and the possibility of jail time, she said.

The protectors “absolutely do not and will not recognise” the moana as something they can be banned from, she said.

After the protest, the crowd headed to Auckland District Court to tautoko [support] another protector facing trespass charges.

Weiss said they had invited Auckland Mayor Phil Goff to Friday’s protest, but he did not make an appearance.

Inside the tower, Auckland Council director Barry Potter said he was willing to collect a petition if there was one, but no-one from the council would be making an official appearance.

A petition, asking council and ministers for the environment and conservation to intervene, has been signed almost 25,000 times. It was not handed over on Friday.

A spokeswoman for Auckland Council said before the resource consent was granted in 2017 it was fully publicly notified, enabling anybody to make a submission on it.

The consent includes a range of conditions and practical requirements to protect the kororā, she said.

“Auckland Council respects people’s right to protest and express their opinion.

”We value our relationship with mana whenua and seek to deliver on our commitments to Māori.”