Ever since the Christchurch City Council announced, in 2015, that it intended to sell public assets, starting with City Care, Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA), of which I’m the Convenor, has campaigned to save City Care. Our tactics included very regular pickets, either outside City Care depots (where we were strongly supported by rush hour motorists) or inside the Council Chamber, where the Councillors who had voted to sell tried to ignore us. This is our press release in response to the Council’s August 2016 announcement that it has decided not to sell City Care.

Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA) is delighted that the Christchurch City Council has finally agreed with what we’ve said all along – namely that there is not, and never was, any justification for selling City Care. No commercial justification and certainly no political justification. The Council press release announcing this 180 degree policy U turn quotes Cr Raf Manji as saying: “The decision not to sell was based on the nature of the preferred offer and associated conditions”.

The people of Christchurch, who own City Care, will probably never be told who made that preferred offer or what the “associated conditions” were. KOA hazards a guess that the Council couldn’t get the price it was seeking and decided to retain a vestige of self respect by not giving City Care away. We also suspect that the Council (or at least the seven Councillors plus the Mayor who voted to sell assets, including City Care) will be mightily relieved to get this political hot potato off the table just a few months out from the local body election.

KOA won’t let them off so easily though. The Council press release says: “Christchurch City Holdings Ltd remains committed to returning the full amount of capital release funding required in our budgets”. The Council voted 8-6 to sell assets to the value of $600 million (reduced from the original $750m) over three years.

Meaning that once the election is out of the way, it can resume selling assets, which could include anything from Red Bus to Enable to Lancaster Park (and everything inbetween – with the exception of the only three remaining listed strategic assets: Orion, Lyttelton Port Company and Christchurch Airport Ltd. There has to be a public consultation before any of those can be sold). Whilst savouring our victory in having saved City Care, KOA won’t be putting away our banners just yet. Not until the Christchurch City Council renounces its plan to sell any public assets. Dump the outmoded 1980s’ privatisation agenda. It didn’t work then and it certainly doesn’t work now.

We said that we would ensure that asset sales will be one of the major issues (if not the major one) in the local body election. To that end, we are not just protesting on the street or inside the Council Chamber. We are running John Minto as our candidate for Mayor, with a full folder of progressive, positive people-first policies (which can all be viewed at http://mintoformayor.org.nz/keep-our-assets/). A Minto led Christchurch City Council will keep our assets as its top priority.