Aerial view of a golf course with two large red golf clubs crossed over the image. The landscape includes green fairways, trees, and city buildings in the distance under a partly cloudy sky.

Takapuna Golf Course could be for the chop (Image: The Spinoff)

PoliticsMarch 31, 2025

Can Auckland Council finally do the impossible and get rid of one (1) golf course?

Contributing writer

Takapuna Golf Course could be for the chop (Image: The Spinoff)

The last time an Auckland Council body tried to get rid of a golf course, it ended in disaster. Maybe this time it’ll be different.

Auckland Council isn’t known for its ambition. Recently it turned down an 11-storey timber building next to a train station to protect the heritage value of a gravel lot and a Mobil station. It took one of its agencies to court for going rogue and trying to build houses. Then it went back to court to argue against its own climate plan because it feared being forced to build cycle lanes.

Given that, it’s a surprise to see the council trying to pull off the only task harder than replacing a villa with townhouses on the local government difficulty meter. If what looks to be a majority of councillors get their way, it will halve one of its golf courses and open the land up for activities like walking, picnicking, and not being struck in the head by a shanked drive from a local retiree.

A semicircular difficulty meter for local governments with sections from green to red. Tasks listed: "saying no for three years," "sinking $1 billion into a convention centre," "taking away a carpark," "building a bike lane," "replacing a villa," "taking away a golf course. — The scientifically robust local government difficulty meter (Science: Hayden Donnell)

The case for change is robust. In the January 2023 Auckland floods, much of the area around Takapuna golf course went several metres underwater. Two people died. Homes and businesses were destroyed. Afterward, locals asked the council to make sure it doesn’t happen again. “I’ve stood up in front of hundreds of really upset, sometimes angry, flooded communities. They’re angry that we haven’t done anything already,” says North Shore councillor Richard Hills.

Council staff were tasked with figuring out a way to flood-proof the area by finding enough space to capture 550,000 litres of water during an intense weather event. Head of sustainable partnerships Tom Mansell says the only real solution they could find was to turn half of the AF Thomas Park, where the golf course is situated, into a wetland. “We had to store huge amounts of water. The only area we own of that amount of land is AF Thomas. So we had to utilise that.”

Flooded parking lot with submerged cars near a PAK'nSAVE store. The sky is overcast, and water levels are high, covering most of the vehicles, including a red car and a white van. Buildings and a wooden fence are partially visible in the background. — Flooding on Wairau Valley Rd, near Takapuna Golf Course, at Auckland Anniversary weekend in 2023 (Photo: Auckland Council)

There’s political support for the plan. Hills says local National MPs Simon Watts and Dan Bidois have voiced support, along with local boards. Mansell says the government has agreed to jointly fund the redevelopment. Mayor Wayne Brown seems to be onside, along with most councillors.

All this is before you even mention the fact that Auckland Council currently owns 14 golf courses, most of which are almost twice as big as the Carrington redevelopment project that will soon deliver 4,000 more homes to alleviate the city’s eternal demon of a housing crisis.

If you think that sounds like this project is a shoo-in, you haven’t familiarised yourself with golfers. The council has tried something like this before. In 2017, the Albert-Eden-Puketāpapa local board proposed redeveloping half of Mt Albert’s Chamberlain Park golf course into parkland and badly needed sports facilities, while also ensuring people could access transport corridors like Carrington Rd and the northwestern cycle path without sustaining a concussion.

A group called Save Chamberlain Park took them to the High Court. It distributed flyers with crosses emblazoned on all the trees it said would have to die for the board’s plans. At a meeting I attended in 2019, I watched a prominent member of the Auckland Horticultural Society call board member Graeme Easte “Judas Easte” and board chair Peter Haynes “Lucifer Haynes”.

Haynes was voted out at the local elections a few months later. The right-leaning Communities and Residents ticket won a board majority and put a stop to the plans to redevelop the park.

This is the first time the council has attempted something similar since, and another rearguard action is under way. Golfing groups are requesting council emails on the project under the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act. Emails and calls are coming in daily. A spokesperson for the Takapuna golf course claims flood mitigation could be incorporated into its existing design.

Hills disagrees, and soon he’ll find out whether his colleagues back him up. This week, on Thursday, April 3, the council’s transport and infrastructure committee will vote on whether to send the wetland proposal out for a detailed business case. That would give Mansell and his team the ability to move forward with the near-impossible task of actually getting rid of part of one (1) golf course.

They’d do so with bipartisan political backing. The project would undoubtedly save local businesses millions of dollars in repairs, and households thousands in insurance premiums. If worst comes to worst, it could actually save lives. On the other hand, the next local election is in October and Hills could soon be Richard Beelzebub. I give them a 50-50 chance of success.

Keep going!

a tectured background of NZ notes, with an outline of a ticket in the centre and an NZ icon on top of that ticket. There's a photo of a pretty lake and some hilssi n the foreground (at the base of gertrude valley if you're interested) the kind of generic pretty nature there is heaps of in New Zealand, often protected as conservation land

Charging for access to conservation land could give DoC much needed funds. What’s the tradeoff? (Image: Shanti Mathias)

PoliticsMarch 31, 2025

The proposed changes to DOC land – and the reaction to them – explained

Shanti Mathias

Contributing writer

Charging for access to conservation land could give DoC much needed funds. What’s the tradeoff? (Image: Shanti Mathias)

A proposal to shake up how conservation land is managed could mean people are charged to access parts of national parks. Shanti Mathias explains the proposed changes, and what people have said in response.

Almost a third of New Zealand – 32.9% of the country’s total land area – is classified as conservation land. This includes national and regional parks, stewardship land and QEII and Ngā Whenua Rāhui covenants. Around 50% of New Zealanders visit a national park annually, along with thousands of international tourists.

A new proposal to “modernise” how this land is governed has attracted submissions from hunters, mountain climbers and conservationists.

“The world has changed considerably since the Conservation Act was enacted in 1987,” conservation minister Tama Potaka told Morning Report in November. “We are asking people to get their feedback in around the potential to charge for access in some places – not all places, not most places, but in some very popular places.”

shadows fall between blue, steep mountains in the evening sunlight, with a twining flat glimpse of a fjord beyond — A view of Piopiotahi/Milford Sound from Gertrude Saddle, a popular spot for tourists to visit and on conservation land. (Photo: Shanti Mathias)

What are these changes?

In November, DOC released discussion documents concerning two ways to update how conservation land is managed. Charging for access to some areas under DOC’s management would be a source of income for the department, which has faced recent cuts. While it has raised some money – 7% of its overall budget annually – from the international visitor levy, DOC has said there is a 30% shortfall in the money it needs to maintain huts and tracks. It was also carrying out some operations, like trapping, with Jobs for Nature money, a Covid stimulus that is now coming to an end.

At the moment, national parks and other conservation land is free to access for anyone. However, all international visitors to New Zealand pay a $100 visitor levy, some of which goes to conservation, and visitors to Stewart Island pay a $10 levy on top of that. There are numerous paid experiences, like helicopter flights and landings, private guiding and private huts, which take place on conservation land. The first proposal lays out reasons how and why DOC could charge for access to some of these popular spots.

The second proposal is about the management of concessions, which are permits that allow non-conservation activities to happen on conservation land, such as commercial tourism and recreation, or infrastructure maintenance of pipes or electricity pylons. The stated goals of these proposed changes are to “generate revenue” , “reduce red tape”, strengthen iwi and hapū relationships and “identify and strengthen protection of high-value conservation areas”. This would include a simplified process for applying for a concession, making applying for concessions more competitive and having set timeframes to take action, meaning decisions would be faster. The proposal also considers how “low- or no-value” land could have its conservation status removed and how to make it easier to establish amenity areas (like carparks and toilets) within national parks to reduce congestion in high-traffic areas like the Aoraki visitor centre and Piopiotahi/Milford Sound.

a view from a small plane window of a glacier covered in stones and snowy mountains — Most of the Southern Alps are protected as conservation land. (Photo: Shanti Mathias)

The changes are framed as “modernising” the Conservation Act and ensuring “equity between users of public conservation land, and between the taxpayer and users”, according to the discussion document. However, the suggestion of paying for access to conservation land has raised big questions about whether this land is valuable only for people who use it, or for everyone.

What are people saying about the changes?

Submissions on the proposed changes closed at the end of February, and many interested groups publicly released theirs. Many submitters agreed it was vital to maintain a focus on conservation, not just recreational and tourist use and concessions for other activities. Here are some other key points:

The Environmental Defense Society said the proposals needed to include climate change considerations, and that consultation with the public would be vital before a minister established amenity areas. It also opposed the idea of using a “conservation value” test before removing public conservation status from an area of land, and said that local iwi and hapū needed a right of first refusal over any land being sold.

Forest and Bird, using a template it set up to help others submit, said the value of conservation land should be preserved, without making it easier for the government to change its status. Proposed charges should not prevent New Zealanders from connecting with nature.

The New Zealand Deerstalkers Association was concerned there was almost no reference to recreational hunting in the discussion document. It suggested that updates to the Conservation Act and related legislation should focus on “selective management” of animals like deer and tahr rather than trying to remove all non-native species from conservation land.

State-owned grid operator Transpower, which has about 5% of its infrastructure running through conservation land, said the Conservation and Wildlife Protection Acts can make it hard to carry out important maintenance work on electricity infrastructure. Simplifying the process of getting planning permissions and concessions for work and upgrades in concession areas would make things easier for the organisation.

View of a snow-capped mountain under a clear blue sky, surrounded by dry grass and shrubbery in the foreground. — Mount Ruapehu is protected as part of Tongariro National Park (Photo: Getty Images)

Simon Upton, the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, said that while some of the problems with conservation land management as it stands had been identified, a blanket national response wasn’t always the solution. “Access to public conservation land and the experiences it can offer is a regional issue, not just a national one,” he wrote. He criticised the idea of having area plans focused on concessions for conservation land as a “transactional approach to the conservation system that ignores the primary purpose of the conservation system” – ie conserving nature.

The Federated Mountain Clubs said that charging to access conservation land wouldn’t fix some of the issues that come with having large numbers of tourists, especially given the model of using the international visitor levy to fund conservation and tourism, which “both promote[s] New Zealand as an iconic destination [and pays] for the environmental costs of tourism”. Charges could discourage volunteers, who currently carry out some track and hut maintenance work, and would be expensive to implement. The submission was broadly supportive of improving the process for concessions.

The New Zealand Law Society said that while the proposals addressed long-running concerns with management of conservation land, they raised new legal issues. Referencing the Fast-Track Approvals legislation, the Law Society said it was “concerned that the proposals also mark a shift towards concentrating ministerial power and undermining systemic checks and balances on executive decision-making, in ways not fully acknowledged in the discussion material. When considered together with other current reforms, these are part of a wider and concerning pattern.”

When will these changes be finalised? Will a law change be needed to confirm them?

Yes, charging for conservation land would require a law change and select committee process, meaning more chances for public feedback along the way. According to the discussion document, any confirmed changes, like charges for accessing specific areas, will be announced in 2026, when the public will be able to respond again.

In a statement to The Spinoff, Tama Potaka confirmed that after it has worked through submissions, DOC would provide him with advice soon. “While exact timing for the process after that will depend on the government’s wider work programme, it is my intention for the amendments to come into force this parliamentary term,” he said.