By Jeff Hampton
Passions boiled over as campaigners out to save a much-loved Christchurch heritage building ended up in confrontation with Mayor Bob Parker.
Mr Parker tried to push one of them out of a council meeting, which ended in a significant victory for the campaigners even though they'd been booted out of the discussion.
“I'm not going to sit here and listen to lies,” heritage campaigner Lorraine North said before she stormed out of the meeting.
Interruptions continued, and Mr Parker was fed up.
“I'm now going to ask for the gallery to be cleared,” he said.
The discussion was over the demolition of Cranmer Courts, a heritage building protesters say is being hacked to death. They wanted the council to step in and save it.
Mr Parker then decided to enforce his own ruling, getting physical with protester Richard Hamilton.
Mr Hamilton took photos of the angry mayor.
“He didn't need to confront me like that, he did push me,” he said.
Earlier, campaigners Ms North and associate professor Ian Lochead put their case for a month-long halt on demolition.
“UNESCO for many years, at least since 1972, has been passing declarations which New Zealand has signed to protects places of cultural and historic significance, and we're going against that and no one is doing anything about it,” Ms North said.
Mr Lochead said people don’t know what they are destroying.
“It's that inability to discriminate between buildings that are genuinely old dangers and ones that are of heritage value to the people of Christchurch.”
With protesters shut outside feeling despondent, the council actually went along with to their request to seek the stay of a month.
It's a sign that city authorities are starting to take notice of people's passion for the few remaining heritage buildings in Christchurch.
But just who can actually stop the demolition is already getting murky. The Christchurch Earthquake Recovery Authority said it can't act on the council's request - that's over to the building's owners.
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