MEDIA ADVISORY
FROM: Paraparaumu Airport Coalition
CONTACT: Alan Tristram, 904 0285/ 021 139 6386;
10/3/07
EMBARGOED UNTIL 7am, 11/3/07

Airport Showdown

Maori and Pakeha land claimants will confront for the first time Auckland developers who own Paraparaumu Airport at a meeting on the Kapiti Coast today. (March 11)

The meeting, titled Airport Open Forum, has been called by the Kapiti Coast District Council just days before development proposals are due to be debated again by the Council Regulatory Committee.

Unexpectedly the Committee threw out the proposals at its last meeting (February 1).

The Paraparaumu Airport Coalition says the Forum will be the first chance the Maori and Pakeha former landowners have had to cross question the developer's representative, Noel Robinson.

Coalition convenor, Councillor Alan Tristram says: "Mr Robinson has been claiming he has overwhelming public support - and full Iwi approval -- for his plans to put massive industrial and commercial development on the Airport.

"Tomorrow he will hear a very different story from a huge range of opposition spokespeople. "

The leader of the Maori land claimants, Peter Manu Love, of Te Ati Awa, is expected to announce that a local iwi 'memorandum of understanding' with Mr Robinson is now null and void.

Representatives of the Kapiti Aero Club and the Royal New Zealand Aero Clubs Association are also expected to register their opposition to Mr Robinson's plans to put 'big box' commercial buildings on the site of the present sealed East/West alternate runway.

The meeting will be chaired by Kapiti Mayor Alan Milne, who has been criticised in the past for not attending either of the two public meetings called by the Airport Coalition.

Councillor Tristram says the Forum is likely to be one of the most contentious meetings held on the coast for several years.

But he says he hopes that the developers will recognise that they must now shelve their proposals so that full-scale, formal, public consultation can take placed under the Local Government Act.

WHAT; Paraparaumu Airport Forum
WHEN: 2pm to 5pm, Sunday, March 11
WHERE: Kapiti Primary School, Rimu Road, Paraparaumu
(next to the KCDC buildings)

ENDS

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