Chris Bishop told Morning Report he did not have a predetermined point of view over Eden Park rules. Photo: RNZ / Nick Monro
Chris Bishop says current restrictions on Auckland's Eden Park stadium are absurd and arbitrary, but is adamant his review will be fair to both sides.
The minister responsible for Resource Management Act reform is leading an investigation into the local rules at Eden Park, which limit the stadium to just 12 concerts a year.
"It's pretty clear, I think, to most people who look at it that the rules are pretty comically absurd, when it comes to Eden Park," he told RNZ's Morning Report.
"You're not allowed more than four concerts in a four-week period, you can have 12 [per year], but they can't be from more than six acts. They have to finish at 11 o'clock, you can't have a concert on a Sunday - there's a whole lot of rules that are frankly pretty arbitrary."
Bishop maintained he wouldn't enter the investigation with a predetermined point of view.
"No, no, I want to be really clear, I have not made up my mind," he said. "It's a statutory process.
"I'm not pre-judging anything, but clearly, we are interested in investigating them and looking at them."
He said residents would be consulted.
"They'll get a chance to feed into that and let us know what their feedback is on that. The power is to modify or amend, so it may be that we modify the concert limit, for example, or it may be we say you can have concerts on a Sunday."
One of those locals was former prime minister Helen Clark, who said the stadium wasn't even close to maximising the level of use under the current rules.
Bishop said that was precisely why the rules needed to be changed.
"That's true and there's a couple of reasons for that. One, they haven't had the event-attraction package like we've just announced, which puts us on par with Melbourne and Brisbane.
"Secondly, these restrictions make it really hard for people to actually hold concerts at Eden Park."
Although local residents may object, he said hosting more concerts was in Auckland's best interests.
"[We'll] try to find the right balance between local decisions by local communities, but also bearing in mind those local decisions have quite big national impacts.
"There's a widespread agreement that we want to have more events in Auckland. We want to have more concerts, we want more Coldplays, Pearl Jams, Metallicas, etc.
"We want those to be in Auckland [and] the reality is Eden Park is where it's at. It's the only venue of enough size to host those major concerts that we want to come to New Zealand."
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