Dullard lashes out

By jillikers, Mallard snarls when he's spurned, doesn't he. Clearly the meeting with Auckland councillors yesterday went as well for him as the various stadium votes around the place.

• Aucklanders have "no vision" he says -- or could it just be we dislike his vision, and really don't like being railroaded.
• "Waterfront opponents" are guilty of "a viral campaign" against him, he charges.
• Eden Park trustees are incompetent, he suggests, for offering him a $385 million option for just 14,528 extra seats.

"Trust him," he says, despite his venom and despite him -- in just one week -- lying about Eden park piling and the price of the waterfront stadium; insisting that the Government's own legal avenues for development be sidestepped by the Government; declaring last week he needs "unanimity" in the stadium choice and this week (when things are going against him) that all he needs to go ahead with the waterfront is just a rump that agrees with him; and it being revealed this morning that the piling contract for the waterfront option may have been illegally let (never mind, eh, that's what retrospective legislation is for!).

And I note that "Aucklanders" have been instructed to "decide" on just two stadium choices in just two weeks -- as Jim Hopkins summarises: "Here are your options. Pick one or it goes to Jade!" -- without anything like adequate information being presented to explain the Government's preferred option; without any explanation at all what the plans are for the displaced port operations; without any explanation why other options such as Wiri, Carlaw Park and North Harbour were so summarily rejected, apparently without adequate investigation -- even as he dismisses "phone-in" polls that reject his baby as "unscientific."

Is it any wonder this person and his methods of operation are held in such contempt -- and I say that in the full knowledge that Parliament's speaker "may treat as a contempt reflections on the character or conduct of a member in the member’s capacity as a member of the House."

But tell me this, has anyone seen anything clarifying how those decisions are to be communicated to he who likes to be obeyed? Or is it really just Auckland City and Auckland Regional Councillors who get to decide? Or can we just expect a declaration by the Sports Minister about this time next week decreeing what he has discerned"we" actually want?

Minister, you are contemptible. I fart in your general direction.

UPDATE: Confirmation this morning too that Mallard lied about Carlaw Park, which he said was dismissed for three reasons which included the problem that "roading runs too close to the proposed area for the park, leaving inadequate space for people filling a 60,000 seat stadium to spill out on to afterwards." As I noted at the time, the 'problem' just isn't there at Carlaw Park (see a proposed Carlaw Park plan to the right with concourses effecting the dispersal), but it is there in spades with Mallard's bedpan as traffic engineer Graham Steverson confirms this morning:

A fundamental requirement would be closing Quay St for rugby cup games and other big events.

"That is essential because it is the only side of the compass you have got to get everybody out of the stadium, so you can't have a live road there."

The question of where Quay St's regular traffic would go was "a biggie."

It is. Mr Steverson can't just be dismissed because he's Eden Park's traffic engineer. It is a biggie. See NZ HERALD - Stadium decision: Street closure and tunnel on cards [Hat tip Whale Oil]

RELATED: Stadium, Sport, Politics-NZ, Auckland