Peter Williams: The Airport Meeting

Will it or won't it happen?

We had a meeting about the airport just before Christmas.

That’s Tarras airport, the mega-proposal that Christchurch International Airport Limited (CIAL) has planned on about 800 hectares of well irrigated, flat prime farming land about 7 kilometres up the road from where I live.

To say the least, CIAL has been very reluctant to meet with local residents since the proposal first came to light in 2020. That’s hardly surprising as the stealth involved in the original 45 million dollar purchases of the farmland has left most of my neighbours fuming.

(The final piece of the purchase was completed last year when long time Tarras identity Philip Parcell sold the last slither of the required property to CIAL. He collected $5.5 million for his 40 hectares, more than double per hectare what the other land sold for.)

In the week before Christmas CIAL sent a man named Rhys Boswell into the cauldron at the Tarras Hall to face the music.

It was a generally civilised affair which started with a request that no media coverage of the meeting be allowed. When I asked why, the response from Mr Boswell was that if there was media reporting of the meeting then CIAL “would not be able to control the narrative.”

That comment and the attitude it implies meant that this reporter (mostly retired) can’t help himself.

So here’s a few reflections of the gathering attended by about 25 of us from Tarras and environs.

In reality, there was no new “news” on the proposal from CIAL. They are still “gathering information” about the site for the airport. That includes the implications for air quality, bird behaviour and land transport. CIAL’s Boswell suggested a decision about whether or not the project goes ahead won’t be made till later this year.

The usual tropes of how Queenstown Airport will be “maxed out” soon and how we need to plan our infrastructure for thirty and forty years into the future were repeated.

The meeting was just a few days before Finance Minister Nicolas Willis called off the three billion investment in new inter-island ferries and the associated port infrastructure.

That decision suggests the current government, who own a quarter of CIAL, wouldn’t be too enthusiastic about backing a multi-billion spend on an international airport for which there is currently no compelling need..

And that’s before the necessary upgrades to State Highways 8 and 8A which border the airport land. Two new bridges will be needed to replace the current rickety one-laners over the Clutha at Luggate and the Lindis at the Ardgour Valley.

All passengers heading to Wanaka or Queenstown from the proposed airport will need to cross at least one of those rivers.

That extra massive cost for the government is something CIAL doesn’t care about.

“We’re not responsible for roading and housing” said Mr Boswell at the Tarras meeting.

“We’re limiting our infrastructure to airports.”

The dismissal of those concerns is puzzling to say the least. Accommodation for workers in the region is a constant hot topic in this district.

If CIAL is not prepared to think hard about where workers might live - first during construction, and then in the long term - it hardly tallies with Mr Boswell’s other remark about how we don’t do long-term infrastructure well in this country.

On that, he is absolutely correct.

But whether another international airport on prime food producing land and within three hours of two other international terminals (Queenstown and Dunedin) is really needed in the nation’s long term infrastructure plan is a moot point.

The most aggressive comments at the meeting came from another well-known local Billie Marsh.

Your correspondent had raised with Mr Boswell the subject of the CIAL chair, Sarah Ottrey, visiting Tarras School, a primary establishment with about 30 kids.

Apparently the former principal of the school Rachelle Haslegrave was a supporter of the airport proposal and had her students write to the CIAL chair inviting her to the school to explain why the village needed an airport built there.

The irony of countless requests to CIAL management from adults in the Tarras community asking, unsuccessfully, for a face to face meeting was not lost on the gathering in the Tarras hall that evening.

Anyway back to Billie Marsh.

The mention of the CIAL Chair’s visit to the school unleashed some real venom from the normally placid middle aged woman.

“You are weaponizing school children in this fight, and that is not right” she fumed.

It’s also worth noting that a Community Fund into which CIAL has tipped $30,000 distributed $20,000 of that to a group called Friends of Tarras School (FOTS).

Intriguingly Ms Haslegrave, who left Tarras School at the end of term 3 last year, was part of the Community Fund’s establishment group designing its application and distribution process. So was a woman named Michelle Dacombe, the secretary of Friends of Tarras School!

Of course, Ms Haslegrave and Ms Dacombe would no doubt have recused themselves when it came time to awarding $20,000 to FOTS. (sarc)

Frankly, it’s hard to disagree with Ms Marsh’s assessment of the CIAL tactics in talking to the school. The thing about a small rural community is that many of the children will live there long term working on properties that their families have owned for generations.

Kids convinced today will be adults content tomorrow.

As a new arrival in the area – we came here just under two years ago – I’m not convinced there can be a business case for Tarras International Airport.

If Queenstown is the ultimate destination for arriving travelers, will a 75 minute road trip be appealing after a 12 hour flight from the US or Asia, or even a 90 minute flight from Auckland?

The area’s major exports are fruit, wine, animal meat, merino wool and vegetable seeds.

But the season for cherries and apricots is just a few weeks while much of the wine from the region’s extensive vineyards is actually made in Marlborough after the grape juice is taken north by road.

The animals, seeds and wool are also transported out of the area by road for processing elsewhere. So the case for the airport as an export hub doesn’t appear strong either.

In fact, one of the most salient questions put to Mr Boswell in December was what he envisaged being the main business of the airport – international traffic, domestic passengers or freight.

The CIAL man said he didn’t know.

“I don’t have a crystal ball.”

Since the meeting last month, Tarras has been in the news for another mega-project – Santana Minerals revealing there’s 9 billion dollars’ worth of gold in them thar Bendigo Hills, a locale even closer to where I live.

If both the airport and the gold mine go ahead, the peaceful Upper Clutha Valley will be changed beyond recognition.

Some things will be most welcome. I’d like the single lane bridges replaced. I’d appreciate the dirt road to my house being sealed.

But then I remember this area as a kid on holiday where the grazing sheep, and there weren’t very many of them, existed on the rare stalks of brown grass and, we used to joke, tasty stones.

Irrigation from the plentiful waters of the Clutha in the last twenty five years has brought intensive farming of sheep and cattle on lush green grass to the region, along with some of the biggest carrot seed crops in the country.

So this is not the land that nature made originally. It’s what happens when you just add water.

But just what happens when you add our continuing lust for travel and precious metals is the question for the future.

I reach my three score years and ten very soon. By the time I shuffle off this mortal coil, will I still be living in a rural paradise or in a developing industrialized transport and mining hub?

After the pre-Christmas meeting in Tarras, I really have no idea.

I don’t think CIAL do either.

Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.