Airport shares, City to Sea Bridge could go in council plan

Friday, 10 November 2023

One councillor says Wellington Airport shares should be sold because the airport is both generating emissions and at risk from sea level rise.

Talk of ditching a 34% airport shareholding and demolishing the City to Sea bridge to Wellington’s waterfront proved heated debate topics, as city councillors spent a long day jostling over cash-saving cuts.

Escalating project budgets like the Town Hall rebuild have helped blow out Wellington City Council capital spending programme, prompting a major rethink of big-ticket items over the next 10 years and where savings could be made.

The resulting cuts are wide ranging, covering everything from Begonia House in the Botanic Garden to funding for national arts organisations.

City to Sea Bridge a goner? Council staff will investigate whether it’s feasible to demolish the earthquake prone structure.

In a day-long debate on Thursday, there was fiery opposition to the sale of airport shares – valued at at least $278m – from Labour councillor Nureddin Abdurahman. Past asset sales had been “disastrous for the city”, he said.

“The proposal is confused, it lacks mandate and it risks repeating the mistakes of the past.”

The comments were met with outrage from colleague Tim Brown, who wanted to drop the shares despite his previous links to the airport as chairperson of the board.

Anyone who did not support consulting the public on the share sale was being irresponsible with the city’s assets, Brown said.

All four Labour councillors voted against, as per the party’s policy against selling strategic assets. The rest of the council supported going to public consultation.

Councillor Nureddin Abdurahman says the council risks repeating the mistakes of the past with asset sales. (File photo)

The idea was not to sell the shares in order to pay down debt, but to set up an investment fund the city could use as insurance in the event of a major natural disaster like an earthquake.

“What we’re doing here is helping future-proof the city against an earthquake which we all know is a ‘when’, not an ‘if’,” Brown said.

Projects the council was pouring hundreds of millions into, like the expensive sludge treatment plant (located right on a fault line) and the Town Hall, would not be insured once they were complete because insurance had become too expensive.

John Apanowicz said the investment fund would ensure the council wasn’t putting all its eggs in one basket ‒ the basket being Wellington, where almost all of the council’s investments are assets that could be damaged in a single earthquake.

Iona Pannett agreed it was “Investing 101”, but also believed the airport shares should be sold because the airport was both generating emissions and would be at risk from sea level rise.

“It is a climate-unjust asset to hold.”

Mayor Tory Whanau said she would never support the sale of assets to pay off debt, but in this case, the council would be swapping one asset for another “at a time when climate change is bearing down on us”.

Next year the public will be consulted on whether the council should sell airport shares, along with various pieces of land on the waterfront and in town.

Councillors had earlier decided which items should be in and out of the budget for the next 10 years. These too will be put out for public consultation.

Diane Calvert championed budget increases for three projects in her ward ‒ the $11m Khandallah Pool upgrade, along with other million-dollar budget lines for Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush and the Karori Events Centre.

“I do seem to recall that you talked about a financial crisis … I am perplexed about why you support this in a crisis. It’s a lot of money,” said Pannett in response.

Community groups concerned at the proposed cuts opened the meeting by telling councillors what they would like saved.

“As we tell our children, it is important to keep promises,” said Tawa Community Board’s Rachel Allan, who was advocating for the council to continue with an upgrade to the boggy sports fields at Grenada North Park.

The council sent out fliers earlier in the year saying that planning and design on the park upgrade was going to start soon; now the project was going to be scrapped.

Michael Chapman, from the Tawa Junior Football Club, said there were players breaking their ankles because of the muddy sports fields. “We can’t commit to the growth the community wants,” he said.

It was a travesty to stop the fit-out of the Karori Event Centre, said Heather Baldwin, a representative of the trust that had raised community funds to get the centre mostly completed.

The Trustees of Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush were appalled at plans not to upgrade the park, which was a nationally significant garden including some of New Zealand’s rarest native plants, said representative Kathy Ombler.

What has the council voted to save?

The budget will provide $3m to upgrade the Ōtari-Wilton’s Bush plant nursery, $1.7m for Huetepara Park in Lyall Bay, an upgrade of Grenada North Park, suburban town centre upgrades for places like Newtown and Johnsonville and $1m for new playgrounds. All of these projects were getting the axe in the original proposal. The Karori Event Centre fit-out will remain paused, but the council will no longer investigate selling the building.

What has the council voted to cut?

The council voted to cut $170m from the budget for Civic Square and the City to Sea Bridge, and to investigate whether the bridge, basement and former Capital E building could be demolished. It also cut $25m allocated for transitioning the city’s swimming pool heaters from gas to electricity.