Ms Turei spent about an hour yesterday with the Waitaki Concerned Citizens and Ratepayers' Association and others opposed to the 22-section, 5.8ha subdivision on Cape Wanbrow.
The invitation to Ms Turei was the association's latest move in its fight against the development. She was shown the proposed subdivision, including under-runners at Oamaru Harbour which the association said undermined Cape Wanbrow, and views from Test and Avon Sts and Lookout Point.
The association invited Ms Turei to Oamaru while Parliament's local government and environment select committee is considering the Waitaki District Council Reserves and Other Land Empowering Bill, which is intended to change the status of Forrester Heights land from reserve to endowment to enable the development.
That would clarify an error the council said was made in 1937 when the land was incorrectly gazetted as reserve under the Reserves Act.
The ratepayers and citizens association has opposed the move in two of 17 submissions on the Bill.
Association chairman Warren Crawford said the association was attempting to get other MPs - including National's select committee chairwoman Nicky Wagner and committee member Labour's Annette King - to visit Oamaru to look at the development and hear opposition.
The council would be going to the select committee to put its views and provide information in support of the Bill. Ms Turei is not on the select committee, but said she would pass on what she had learnt to the two Green Party representatives on it - deputy chairwoman Eugenie Sage and Gareth Hughes.
Public land needed to be retained in public ownership, Ms Turei said, and there would need to be good reasons why it should be allowed to be developed.
Mr Crawford said the association had invited all members of the select committee to visit Oamaru and see the proposed development, but he was not confident they would come.
"We need to grab any MP we can," he said, not just members of the select committee.
