Arrowtown Noleaf Response to ODT Opinion Piece

(PR.co.nz) After being told by ODT Queenstown last week that nothing re the proposed unusual leaf shaped building (to be built alongside historic St Patrick’s Church in Arrowtown) would be published before Resource Consent application submissions to QLDC close next Thursday 13 September, ODT published this completely biased opinion piece. It contains many inaccuracies and which we believe is defamatory. These inaccuracies need to be corrected.

The application was not “voluntarily notified” – the architect suggested to the planner that it NOT be notified

The NOLEAF Society has NOT carried out leaflet drops – we have a flyer which like the pro-leaf promoter information has been given out to people and made available for collection at various locations

The “highly misleading” photo was in fact PUBLISHED BY THE PROMOTERS in a brochure distributed to the public by the architect and trustees and is therefore in the public domain for the NOLEAF group to use. It shows the reality of the dominance of the proposed new building over the old – Is this why the pro-leaf promoters no longer use this particular photo in their material ?

The term “modernist” would be taken by most readers except an architect to mean DIFFERENT or UNUSUAL.

NOWHERE has the NOLEAF campaign said that sympathy with the past “requires mindless imitation”

Use of the words “dishonest”, “rages” and “spurious” reflect badly on both “Civis” and the ODT and in our opinion are defamatory

It is disappointing that a newspaper with the mana of the ODT has made such a serious error of judgement in printing this completely one sided opinion piece within a few days of the close of submissions without putting the other side of the robust discussion.

This reeks of bias (favour) and begs the question – is this happening in other areas of reporting by this newspaper?

Media Release 11 September 2018.