On a wing and a prayer with airport shares sale
In 1998, Winston Peters stormed out of a coalition government led by Jenny Shipley, over the privatisation of Wellington Airport. Now again, the vexed issue of airport ownership – even though Wellington doesn’t have a problem with public ownership of its railway station, bus stops and ferry terminal – may once again ruin some careers.
Last Thursday, most Wellingtonians were working out their tax cut (spoiler alert: it’s not as much as Christopher Luxon promised). Some may have been watching the protest, led by Te Pāti Māori, against the coalition’s Māori policies. But few would have seen Wellington City Council vote to sell its remaining shares in the airport.
It was obvious that Mayor Tory Whanau favoured the privatisation that her managers had been touting since the Andy Foster era, and she ignored the advice of local Green MPs to follow party policy. More surprising was the vote for the sale by Deputy Mayor Laurie Foon, and Mana Whenua representative Holden Hohaia, who both usually vote with the Left bloc.
So why did Foon change her vote? Only weeks before, she had pledged her opposition to selling the shares at a meeting organised by Unions Wellington.
Foon has a reputation as one of the nicest councillors in a council full of strong personalities – perhaps she just doesn’t like conflict so goes the way of the room. Then again, she has voted for privatisation before – for the library during the Foster era – but later changed her vote after a public outcry.
It seems that at local level, Labour is solid on keeping public assets and the Greens are flaky. Will Whanau, a supporter of water meters, get their introduction over the line then come under pressure from council management to privatise them, too? For those of us who lived through Rogernomics, it’s not so unlikely.
At the same Unions Wellington meeting, “right-wing” councillor Ray Chung pledged his support for keeping the airport shares and voted that way last Thursday. He also took council management to task for warning councillors that Standard & Poor’s could downgrade the city’s credit rating if they held onto the shares.
Chung did the hard mahi, went through the Standard & Poor’s report, and found absolutely no mention of the issue. I’m reminded of a previous council CEO who loudly warned that the council could be sued if they paid their employees a living wage. The living wage was paid, and legal action never materialised.
According to Labour Takapū/Northern Ward councillor Ben McNulty, to make the share sale happen, “councillors were threatened (by council staff) with legal consequences and last-minute massive cuts to council budgets not detailed during consultation”. It’s easy to see who is in really in charge of the council agenda – and it’s not the mayor or councillors.
Ex-Green Iona Pannett had the courage to admit at the Unions Wellington meeting that she was undecided, but ended up voting against the sale. She was previously deselected by the Greens for contravening their pro-intensification polices. Could Whanau and Foon be treated similarly? Not a chance. I suspect the Greens will keep schtum and hope the issue quietly disappears, along with all their other current problems.
Yet this is a major victory for Whanau. But will it translate to votes? Whanau is too Left for many on the Right, although I believe she’s been captured by the neoliberals in the council management. Yet she has also upset the Left, firstly over the Reading Centre corporate welfare and now the airport privatisation.
Whanau ran an impressive mayoral campaign, turning out many idealistic young supporters. But will these youthful Greens, dressed in their Keffiyehs, still want to take to the streets yelling “Vote Whanau: corporate welfare for Reading, selling airports, selling ground leases, introducing expensive water meters. From the airport to the sea, the market will be free!”
I suspect they might be “too busy” for the mayor and go and help Geordie Rogers and Nīkau Wi Neera, who have been staunchly against the airport sale from the get-go, get re-elected.
Wi Neera was gutted to lose both an amendment and the shares vote, thanks to two of his own Green colleagues. “If this is the new direction of the party, I want no part of it,” he said on the day that Te Pāti Māori was galvanising Māori support around the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wi Neera, who has formerly been a member of Te Pāti Māori, gets a call from John Tamihere over the next couple of weeks.
So, given Labour has been alone in uniformly opposing asset sales, will they put up a true, left-wing mayoral candidate opposed to privatisation and water meters? I’m not holding my breath – they were too timid to stand a candidate in the recent Lambton by-election. In the meantime, watch hungry private investors queue up to get a slice of the action, given the excellent annual return the council received recently from its airport shares.