Media Release
Councillor Cathy Casey & Councillor Glenda Fryer
Auckland City Council
For Immediate Release
Sunday 18 April 2010

Promise to Retain Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place Must be Kept

City Vision Councillor Cathy Casey is asking Auckland City Council’s Arts, Culture and Recreation Committee to recommit to retaining the Suffrage memorial in Khartoum Place.

A voting member of the Arts Culture & Recreation Committee which is to discuss the issue on Tuesday (20 April) Councillor Casey says in her Notice of Motion that the Council resolved in December 2005 to retain the Women’s Suffrage Memorial in its present location and configuration in Khartoum Place and that any change to that would be gross breach of promise.

“Any alteration to that design is dishonest, wasteful and disrespectful. It is dishonest, because Council promised to retain the Suffrage Memorial in Khartoum Place. It is wasteful because almost $1.5 million already been spent upgrading Lower Khartoum Place keeping the Memorial in place. It is also disrespectful to those heroic women who fought so hard to obtain the vote for women in New Zealand and who are depicted and/or named on the Memorial i.e. Kate Sheppard, Elizabeth Caradus, Amey Daldy, Meri Te Tai Mangakahia, Lizzie Rattray, Annie Jane Schnackberg, Anne Ward, Elizabeth Yates and Mary Anne Colclough.”

Councillor Glenda Fryer, the other City Vision councillor with a vote on the Arts Culture & Recreation Committee is equally passionate about the memorial staying where it is:

“We have already spent $1,349,772 on completing Lower Khartoum Place with the Memorial in place and it looks beautiful. Is the arts fraternity simply ignoring the great work that has already been done and paid for? Are they really expecting ratepayers to foot the bill to rip out the Memorial, put it somewhere else and re-do Lower Khartoum Place? All this so that they can get a fancy stairway up to the Art Gallery?”

ENDS

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