Pipes, planes and passion: Wellington City Council ticks off long-term plan

Friday, 31 May 2024

Green councillor Nīkau Wi Neera said he wanted “no part” in a party that voted for selling airport shares.

An 18% Wellington City rates increase is coming, the public stake in the capital’s airport is going, and a Green-led council bloc has been divided in a fractious meeting that will hit the city’s ratepayers hard.

The final tick for the Wellington City Council’s long-term plan won’t come until late-June but Thursday’s meeting was the last chance for big changes.

It means Wellington rate payers will face a 16.4% rates increase, or closer to 18% once a levy is added for most for a new sludge treatment plant.

The council agreed to borrow $3.3 million to get on top of the leaky pipes backlog in the coming financial year, a proposal to introduce more parking fees in the suburbs was pushed back, and the Khandallah summer pool was given a one-year reprieve from closure.

Meanwhile, a new waste and recycling system took another step closer with a plan for four bins for each household and the council went ahead with a proposal to introduce parking fees for motorcycles in the city.

Mayor Tory Whanau said keeping the airport shares would mean ‘less money for social housing, less money for libraries, pools, sports fields’.

But tensions were so high about the council selling its airport shares – to set up an insurance fund to help the city after a natural disaster – that Green councillor Nīkau Wi Neera, was warned for throwing a page of his speech behind him. His voice cracked as he made his case to keep the council’s 34% stake.

Mayor Tory Whanau, a pro-sale Green, managed to get a majority of councillors on her side after an impassioned speech arguing that not selling would mean cuts in core services so deep that “the impact would be felt in our communities for generations to come”.

“It would mean less money for social housing, less money for libraries, pools, sports fields,” she said.

“Less money for water, and better public transport and cycleways, or protecting our communities against the impacts of climate change.”

Wi Neera read out the Green manifesto which said that Green’s would oppose the sale of public assets and specifically mentioned the airport.

While Whanau was elected as an independent, councillor Laurie Foon was voted in on a Green ticket.

Councillor Ben McNulty alluded to a behind-closed doors warning from lawyers that voting against the airport share sales could leave individual councillors in legal jeopardy, it is understood.

“If this is the new direction of the party, I want no part in it,” Wi Neera said.

After losing the vote, he would not comment on whether he would stay with the Green Party.

Staff had warned councillors that not selling the airport shares would see the 18% rates rise go up to about 20%.

Rebecca Matthews, chairing the meeting, said she voted against Wi Neera’s amendment in light of the rates warning. She had previously pledged to keep the shares.

Foon acknowledged it was against how she campaigned. “I also made an oath to do my best by Wellington,” she said.

Unions Wellington said it was investigating all avenues to stop the sale, saying the vote was devastating and put the airport on track to be the first fully privatised airport in the country.

Co-convenor Sabina Rizos-Shaw said the council had abandoned its commitment to workers, the environment and economic democracy. “We are disappointed in the mayor and deputy mayor for not doing the right thing and insisting on alternative financial modelling, given the massive public opposition to privatisation.”

Meanwhile, councillor Ben McNulty alluded to staff cautions last week in a public-excluded session. It is understood that McNulty was talking of a warning in a closed door meeting that councillors would be personally liable to legal risk if they voted for no-sale.

In the end the council voted 10 votes to 8 to sell the shares and establish the fund.