page 93

A Bad Bill

Listeners to a recent “Lookout” broadcast were probably startled to hear new Government legislation roundly described as “shocking”. The legislation referred to was the Town and Country Planning Bill, the speaker Mr. D. W. McKenzie, senior lecturer in Geography at Victoria University College. “Design Review” has invited Mr. McKenzie to set out here his views on this matter of vital national importance.

New Zealand's rising population must expand its agricultural production to feed itself and to maintain the country's world trade. The rise in general farm production is a matter of improving techniques, the research for which is inadequately supported by New Zealanders. One aspect of food production, the growing of vegetables, is in a critical position, for while population rises, the acreage under vegetables declines. This decline, reflected in soaring vegetable prices, is closely bound up with the expansion of housing on to veegtable-growing land, which is widespread in New Zealand. Only adequate planning of urban expansion will save our limited vegetable-growing soils for continued production.

The control of urban development in the national interest will receive a severe set-back if the Town and Country Planning Bill now before the House becomes law. The Bill does not demand that a community plan the wise use of its land, and even when the community does so plan, it does not provide that such a plan shall be approved by any competent body as being in the national interest. The people to be satisfied are in essence the people who make the plan. Provision for appeal against a plan virtually deals only with an individual who feels he is not justly done by. The contrast is revealing between such thoughtless “laissez-faire” use of our national heritage and the strict control which Britain exercises.

New Zealand should have such a body as a National Resources Board, to whom plans both large and small should be submitted, a board which is competent to assess what our resources are and how we should conserve them. The “go-as-you-please” attitude of the New Zealander is his greatest weakness; his Government in this Bill is pandering to this, and closing its eyes to the crying need for the conservation and wise use of our resources.