D-Day is here for Wellington airport shares sale
Wednesday, 26 June 2024
D-Day has come for the Wellington City Council’s airport share sale with opponents pulling out all the stops to kill the idea and possibly the entire 10-year plan with it.
A council committee will meet on Wednesday morning to vote on sending the council’s once-a-triennium long-term plan for final approval at a full council meeting on Thursday.
Early in the meeting, councillor Nīkau Wi Neera is expected to move a motion to suspend council rules to allow councillors to vote again on the airport share sale issue.
Councillor Ben McNulty, who planned to second the motion, said this was because a majority of councillors now opposed the council selling its 34% airport stake.
That long-term plan is a blueprint for how much rates Wellingtonians get charged for the next decade and what the council will spend it on. This includes more money for ailing pipes and many other big items, but it also includes the council’s fraught call to sell airport shares.
The airport share sale issue has already caused rifts in party alliances. The Green party opposes the sale and Wi Neera, a Green, is one of those leading the charge to stop it.
But Mayor Tory Whanau and her deputy Laurie Foon, both Greens, both voted for it in earlier committee. Sources have confirmed their stance has some in the party keen to block them running on the ticket again.
Labour councillors Ben McNulty and Nureddin Abdurahman, with Wi Neera, make up the so-called “airport three” who oppose the sale to such a degree that they plan to vote against the entire long-term plan if the airport sale is in it.
Fellow Labour councillors Teri O’Neill and Rebecca Matthews voted against the airport but plan to vote for the long-term plan, even if it includes the sale.
But it is understood that a Labour Party meeting was called on Tuesday night to take a vote calling for councillors to vote with the party position, which is opposition to asset sales. De-selection of non-compliant councillors was on the table before the meeting started.
O’Neill and Matthews’ votes – assuming they went with likely party orders – could have drastic consequences.
It would mean there was a majority of councillors willing to vote down the entire long-term plan.
Many on the council left oppose the share sale due to opposition to asset sales, while some on the right oppose the high rates and high spending. Supporters back it because the money would be used to set up a perpetual investment fund to help Wellington after a major disaster.
Failure to pass a long-term plan, while allowed, is widely thought to be enough for the government to send a commissioner to take over the running of the council.
It would, in effect, mean councillors voting themselves out of a job.
It comes after a high-tension weekend with councillors firing emailed accusations to each-other.
These emails, see by The Post, included Ray Chung asking John Apanowicz, “are all bean counters as stroppy as you?” and Apanowicz emailing Chung: “I think you need to read your papers, pay attention in meetings and delete the three hundred emails you have not read.”
Mana Whenua representative pouiwi Holden Hohaia emailed all councillors that voting against the long-term plan would be “irresponsible and … a dereliction of your duty as councillors”.
Mayor Tory Whanau has ruled out a second airport vote and caused ire by labelling Thursday’s vote a rubber-stamping exercise.
Victoria University law professor Dean Knight labelled the comments “unfortunate” and legally risky.
“It’s a pretty basic principle that decision-makers must properly exercise their decision-making power with an open mind and not surrender the decision to others by merely rubber-stamping their recommendations,” he said.