My Account
Only 11 people in the Rodney Local Board area submitted views on an Auckland Council proposal for a new navigational safety bylaw, a board meeting heard recently.
The plans were publicly notified for feedback from mid-November to February 14 and included proposals to make all boaties carry at least two independent forms of communication and to increase the speed limit from 12 knots to 18 knots in Waitemata Harbour.
Board members said the small proportion of feedback from the Rodney area, despite it having the largest area of coastline in Auckland, could be down to three things – inadequate promotion of the feedback period by Council, contentment with the status quo or apathy.
They voted to express concern over the plan to make boat owners carry two methods of communication, saying it would be practically unenforceable by Council. Members also said it could cause financial hardship to people who used boats to gather kaimoana for the table, because items such as hand-held VHF radios could be prohibitively expensive.
Members also said the new bylaw was too restrictive, particularly for small boats.
They also expressed concern that there was no differentiation in some clauses between different types of craft, such as between a kayak and a launch, and said that a one-size-fits-all policy would not always be appropriate or applicable to every craft.
Deputy chair Beth Houlbrooke presented the Board’s feedback to Council’s bylaw panel last month, stressing that education may be better than regulation and “bylaws are not worth the paper they’re written on if they cannot be practically enforced”. She said the compliance team was already woefully under-resourced and without a harbourmaster based locally, there was little chance that the bylaw could be monitored or enforced.
