Dave Armstrong, a playwright and satirist based in Wellington, and who’s a regular opinion contributor to The Post, has written this insightful piece that was published in the The Post newspaper today (Tuesday 15 October.) We thought it summed up the situation around the Wellington City Council table so well, that we’d give it plug.
Online, the article can be found here: https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350450673/shares-sell-offs-and-whats-next-long-running-city-soap-opera
OPINION: What a dramatic, twisty-turny, popcorn-munching saga the airport share sell-off turned out to be. During the last term, council management first tried to sell the airport shares but were soundly defeated 10-4. But like Wile E Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, they came back with another cunning plan.
Firstly, the councillors voted to open up the whole sale idea to consultation. Dumb move, guys. That process culminated in a vote to sell the shares. The four Labour councillors stood firm against privatisation while right-leaning councillors voted for selling. However, some of them were suspicious that the whole share sell-off process was actually a cunning way to increase the council’s debt level.
They were assured by the mayor and management that the reasons for privatising were to do with resilience and insurance. Money would go into this wonderful clean and green resilience fund and would be there to bail us out if we had a major disaster.
Then a number of councillors, including the Green deputy mayor Laurie Foon and rightie Ray Chung, told a Unions Wellington meeting that they would support keeping the shares. So perhaps they wouldn’t be sold after all?
But then in June, Foon switched her vote, and the sale would be a part of the LTP (Long-term plan).
This created a dilemma for councillors such as Labour’s Rebecca Matthews and Teri O’Neill, who had initially voted against the airport sale but supported the thrust of the pro-intensification LTP.
The LTP squeaked through, but some right-leaning councillors soon had seller’s remorse. They realised that the promise that selling the shares wouldn’t lead to increased council debt was hollow.
Green councillor Nīkau Wi Neera was appalled to see his fellow Greens vote for airport privatisation by ratifying the LTP. Then the wiliest coyote in the room, Nurredin Abdurahman, brought in a notice of motion, and got it signed by a majority of councillors, including the disgruntled righties. Brilliant.
This changed everything. On the right, only John Apanowicz, an architect of the disastrous Reading Deal, and former airport chairman Tim Brown now supported the sell-off.
But in yet another twist, Wi Neera was unhappy that the notice of motion excluded iwi representatives, who earlier had both supported the sell-off. Would he now vote against the notice of motion because of the shabby way he reckoned that the council had treated Māori?
Had he or anyone else changed sides to sell last Thursday, the mayor’s casting vote would have won it for the privatisers. I would love to report that this is the end of the story, but I fear the soap opera will continue. The LTP goes back out for consultation and councillors are now being told that they “could” have to make hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cuts.
Over the years I have noticed that the council management always paints the worst possible picture for the outcomes of things with which they disagree.
And what about the insurance problem? The council could certainly start planning for a rainy day. But the chances of a quake which entirely destroys the airport is, while not impossible, highly unlikely. That’s why private investors in the airport are quite happy to live with that risk and would jump at the chance of buying the council’s shares.
In a worst-case scenario, the money from the shares would not be enough to fund a rebuild anyway. And do you think central government would just sit idly by while the capital’s airport was out of commission?
Mayor Tory Whanau has now suffered her second big defeat. No-one who voted for her expected a multi-million dollar subsidy for a US multinational and a failed share privatisation to end up being the main features of her term. The support of Green councillors for privatisation, Wi Neera excepted, and the deafening silence from the two local Green MPs about it speaks volumes. Iona Pannett got deselected for far less.
“Labour and Green Councillors in Pōneke fought hard against the council even entertaining the idea of selling our public shares in the airport,” wrote Tamatha Paul in May 2023. “Don’t privatise public transport!! Under any circumstances!” Well, it nearly got privatised thanks to the Greens.
So what next? As I write this, it’s raining so heavily that I am watching my small back lawn turn into a swimming pool. Even though we are currently awash with water, expect the mayor, who supports water meters, to be part of an effort to introduce water meters next year.
It may seem insane to suggest charging per litre when half of our water is lost through leaky pipes. A sensible person may say fix the leaks first then we could take a look at reducing our consumption. But I suspect council will tell us, just like they did over the airport shares, there is no alternative. We must act quickly and swiftly otherwise disaster “could” strike.
And after meters comes privatisation. But surely our left-leaning councillors would never agree to that? Really?
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