How the cycleway became the PM's pet project

Anthony Hubbard traces the origins of the most curious idea to emerge from John Key's Job Summit.

Businessman Graham Wall got the idea while talking to some English cyclists at the beach. He told Auckland mayor John Banks, who thought it was terrific. "I'll pass it on to John Key," Banks said.

Wall also told his local MP, Auckland Central's Nikki Kaye, who arranged for him to meet the PM. The PM said it was a terrific idea, and told the people at his Job Summit. Then they passed it back to him again.

So it was that in a very New Zealand way the idea of a national cycleway was born. And now the idea is in some danger of becoming a reality.

The PM "raised it with the minister of tourism and we both like it", Key told the Sunday Star- Times. "We had discussions while I was shaving this morning."

Key is the minister of tourism.

Wall, who specialises in selling multimillion-dollar houses - he sold the Sultan of Brunei's clutch of Kiwi mansions - got talking to the cyclists at the seaside.

"They were cycling around New Zealand and saying how marvellous it was," he recalls. So he thought "how nice would it be if there was a cycle-way that went all the way?"

He is anxious not to take the credit for the idea. "Lots of other people must have had a similar thought." Also: "I'm the only person in this loop who has no expertise, no bloody idea. I've never tramped and never owned a bike since I left school."

But everyone he approached liked the idea and helped him develop it - "It's almost the opposite of what happens in business," Wall says.

The experts included Geoff Chapple, the journalist who thought up the national walkway Te Araroa, and who called at the jobs summit for $6 million to complete that.

Key is enthusiastic about Te Araroa as well but cautions that more work is needed to see how the ideas stack up against the summit's other proposals. Perhaps the two pathways could even be joined together, he suggests.

"New Zealand has a clean green image and we attract a lot of young people here, and international biking tours are very successful."

The progress of the idea of a national cycleway, says Wall, who was not at the summit, "is a very New Zealand story".