Port move - Auckland don't blow your one shot

Friday, 6 December 2019

Wayne Brown - moving Auckland's port to Auckland makes sound business, environmental and social sense.

OPINION: Real Estate agents are always overusing the term 'once in a lifetime' to describe some average house. But very occasionally an opportunity pops up which really is 'Once in a Lifetime'.

That opportunity to really make Auckland a world class liveable city is right in front of Aucklanders, right now, with the move to shift the port to Northland.

This is one of those rare occasions when shifting an unsightly industrial relic from one place to another actually enhances both.

Economically, environmentally and socially Auckland gains by freeing up very desirable, valuable land, reuniting citizens with the much loved Waitemata and getting container trucks out of the city hence easing congestion.

Debate is raging over the future of the Ports of Auckland

* Auckland Port move: CEO decries 'made up facts' by pro-move group

* Replacement for Ports of Auckland needs robust case

Upgrading rail is part of the port relocation plan

* Moving Auckland's port - the curtain rises**

Meanwhile Northland gets an economic shot in the arm, a railway that should have been upgraded years ago and massive dredging in the Rangitoto channel is avoided.

Auckland is growing, especially north and out west, as evidenced by Costco and Ikea choosing to build there.

Goods will enter Auckland from the south via Port of Tauranga to Wiri and from the north by rail via Northport to a new inland port paid for by private enterprise and NZ Refining looking to augment its pipeline which is at capacity.

This alone makes the rail upgrade essential and a port designed to favour rail will carry most of the containers south.

Moving the port would ease truck congestion in Auckland, Wayne Brown argues.

This all makes so much sense that the usual vested interests have been forced to make outrageous claims like the latest from Ports of Auckland chief executive, Tony Gibson, who suggests with no evidence that it would increase the costs of goods by over $500 million in spite of the fact that a third of Auckland's goods arrive via Port of Tauranga at no extra cost.

He invokes the example of Gull holding petrol prices down at its competitors, but in this case it is Tauranga's efficient Gull-like operation that stops Ports of Auckland from gouging Aucklanders.

Ports of Auckland is really a failing business in the wrong place. This year it will post a profit of only $8m for the privilege of occupying land worth $600m, a pathetic return accompanied by truck induced congestion.

Even when it has paid a dividend of $50m, it borrowed $75m to do so.

In reality Auckland ratepayers are subsidising Ports of Auckland for delivering such poor returns.

So will the decision makers in the Government grab this opportunity now or will the fence sitters and ditherers let this slip – like happened years ago when the last visionary mayor, Dove Myer Robinson, nearly got the underground railway to happen?

Will our leaders bequeath a lasting legacy of a wonderful Harbourside city served from south and north with a CBD free of container trucks and a foreshore free of used cars, and at the same time offer help to struggling Northland?

Or will their nerve fail in the face of screaming vested interests and once again miss an opportunity that the Shipping Federation says needs to be taken right now?

Sixty-two percent of Aucklanders want the port gone and those jobs that might follow the port north are held by those who can't afford a house in Auckland but who could at Ruakaka.

Let's give them that chance and give the harbour back to the people.

* Wayne Brown chaired the Upper North Island Supply Chain Strategy working group that recommended relocating the Ports of Auckland cargo operations to Whangarei's deepwater port of Northport.