CAFCA, as a matter of very longstanding policy, is independent of all political parties and endorses none. We have always been fiercely independent and unaffiliated to any party, whether Parliamentary or extra-Parliamentary. We reserve the right to criticise all of them, and do so (this political independence used to piss off the late Rod Donald, founder Co-Leader of the Greens and CAFCA member for years, up until his tragically early death. He used to badger me about it. My obituary of Rod is in Watchdog 110, December 2005, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/10/09.htm).

But we see no contradiction in our very active involvement in the Minto For Mayor Campaign. John ran as the candidate for Keep Our Assets Canterbury and KOA is not a political party, so nothing has changed in terms of our key policy.  CAFCA has been an active member of KOA since it was founded in 2012, as part of the national campaign against the Government’s asset sales programme (the Government ignored the people and went on with the sales).

We’ve Done It Before

Nor was CAFCA’s involvement in a Christchurch local body election campaign unprecedented. Here is an extract from my 2007 annual Organiser’s Report: “CAFCA’s unique campaign in 2006 was to be heavily involved in the successful fight to stop the Christchurch City Council selling the Lyttelton Port Company to a Hong Kong transnational. That was a classic reactive campaign. In 2007, we decided to build on that victory, to take the initiative and take advantage of it being local body election year”.

“For starters we offered to brief the newly reinvigorated Christchurch 2021 team on how foreign control affects local government and Christchurch in particular. A number of their candidates, including the Mayoral candidate, Megan Woods, attended this very productive meeting. At it we floated the idea of asking all candidates to sign a Public Ownership Pledge committing themselves, if elected, to supporting continued public ownership of City Council assets and services”.

“2021 seized upon this as a central policy plank, undertook to sign it en masse and to do so publicly at a July media conference, which was held on the historic tug moored at the Lyttelton wharf (to dramatise the continuity of the earlier battle to keep the port in public ownership). I and Megan Woods were the speakers (although, inevitably, the media only reported what the Mayoral candidate had to say, but that’s fine by us). This event was well reported”.

“CAFCA does not endorse political parties but as a quid pro quo we were happy to allow 2021’s request to include a flyer (specially written for our Christchurch members) in the August (2007) Watchdog”. Megan Woods did not win the Mayoralty in 2007 (Bob Parker did) but she is now a Christchurch Labour MP (the difference in 2007 was that CAFCA was directly involved, as opposed to as part of a network like KOA – which was heavily involved in the 2013 local body election).

Boots And All

We plunged boots and all into the 2016 Minto For Mayor Campaign, because it confronted head on a key CAFCA issue, namely public asset sales. Apart from anything else, the most likely buyers would be transnational corporations. The City Council tried, and failed, to sell City Care, its infrastructure and maintenance company. But the Council refuses to name the one and only unsuccessful prospective buyer, because that is “commercially sensitive”. I’d put money on it being a transnational.

And this was a campaign with major national implications. Jane Clifton devoted her Politics column in the Listener to the subject (1/10/16, “Kick In The Asset: Newly Elected Councils Will Be Under Pressure To Sell The Family Silver”): “The unspoken theme of the local body elections is asset sales. Only in Christchurch has this become an openly debated issue (my emphasis. MH), hedged about with furious denials on most sides. But the bigger truism is that when it comes to local versus national politics, city hall can’t trump the Beehive. And the Beehive, without yet having spelt it out in block capitals, expects councils increasingly to find their own funding solutions by cashing up even strategic assets”.

I have never been involved in any mainstream political campaign before, so this was a first for me. As John has already detailed (above), his campaign got huge media coverage (the Press gave it several front page leads, plus editorials). As KOA Convenor I chaired the official campaign launch, which likewise drew major media coverage. The Minto For Mayor Campaign was greatly heartened by the outpouring of public support – merchandise sales (badges, bumper stickers, T shirts) and donations totalled $23,000+ (including the $1,500 that CAFCA put in). Expenses also totalled $23,000, but we finished with a tiny surplus, with all bills paid. We raised enough to pay for dozens of short ads on commercial radio stations in the final two weeks of the campaign.

People volunteered to distribute 65,000 leaflets and host 300 fence placards and a small number of large billboards on their properties (we even ended up with a fence placard in our unruly giant front hedge. Plus Becky and I did our share of letterboxing the streets and housing complexes of Addington. Our daily walk was combined with political work). John described it as the best resourced and most fun campaign he’d been involved in since the 1981 Springbok Tour one.

John’s Campaign Manager was CAFCA Committee member Warren Brewer (the Press highlighted Warren’s CAFCA role, which KOA hadn’t mentioned at all) and Warren did an excellent job. He threw himself into it heart and soul (just as he did in organising my 2014 CAFCA/ABC national speaking tour), arranging John or another representative of the campaign to speak at suburban meetings, to meet with unions, political parties and community groups (of course, John himself has been a CAFCA member for nearly 30 years and has been a regular Watchdog writer for years).

I chaired and spoke at a whole series of John’s suburban meetings, plus ended up speaking to a Grey Power meeting on John’s behalf (he is a full time high school teacher and couldn’t undertake campaign commitments during school hours. Dalziel’s team unsuccessfully tried to have me stopped from speaking, on the grounds that I was not a candidate – Grey Power stuck to its guns and congratulated me on my speech, after I’d delivered it). As an account signatory I did a lot of banking and paying bills. CAFCA Committee members Jeremy Agar, Paul Piesse and Brian Turner were also very actively involved in John’s campaign (others on the KOA Committee who deserve special praise are Bronwen Summers, Denis O’Connor [a former CAFCA Committee member himself], Steve Howard, Dot Lovell-Smith, Paul Hopkinson and Mike Newlove).

Raising Issues Was The Point, Not Winning

It goes without saying that Lianne Dalziel won by what the media laughably described as a landslide (she got 75,000 votes to John’s 13,000). But KOA thinks winning 15% of the vote is a very respectable result for such a grassroots, guerrilla campaign. If John had not run, Dalziel would have been re-elected unopposed (as were several City Councillors). All in all, KOA made sure that the issue of asset sales remained front and centre in the election campaign, exactly as we said we would.

And we forced Dalziel to address issues she’d rather have ignored – like asset sales (she tried to declare black as white by saying the Council was not selling any assets during her term); and like the white elephant central city anchor projects which the Government had forced the previous (2010-13) Council to sign up to paying for; and like the whole oppressive Cost-Share Agreement between the Government and the Council. It is telling that the traditional Right didn’t put up a Mayoral candidate (meaning that local Big Business was happy with Dalziel representing its interests).

That meant that unlike any other major city in 2016, Christchurch’s Mayoral campaign was a two horse race (when John had run for Mayor of Auckland several years ago he’d been just one face in a very big crowd). This meant that the mainstream media had to treat him not only as a credible candidate but as The Challenger. So there was a whole series of Mayoral debates (including one in a full house Cardboard Cathedral) of just him and Dalziel. The publicity dividend to KOA was priceless.

Nor was it a single issue campaign – no asset sales was only one of the six policies on which John stood (they are detailed above). We didn’t run any candidates for the City Council, Environment Canterbury (the regional council) or any community boards, so we didn’t tread on anybody’s toes. That meant that KOA could, and did, work with the likes of The People’s Choice (the Christchurch local body version of Labour and successor of Christchurch 2021), whose six Councillors had voted against asset sales (they’ve now got seven Councillors but that is still not a majority on the Council, which has been expanded from 14 to 17).  The issue of asset sales hasn’t finished yet and is unlikely to be for some time.

During the election campaign the Council gave KOA an unexpected present by announcing that it was abandoning the sale of City Care, which KOA had vigorously campaigned against since the Council announced it in 2015 (see my article “A Victory For Common Sense. Christchurch City Council Abandons Plan To Sell City Care”, in Watchdog 142, August 2016, http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/42/05.html).

The Fight Continues Post-Election

There was more good news post-election – the Council restored Enable, its broadband infrastructure company, to the strategic assets list, meaning that it can’t be sold without public consultation (the other four strategic assets on that list are lines company Orion, Lyttelton Port Company, Christchurch Airport Ltd and recycling company Eco Central). But being on the list doesn’t mean they can’t be sold. And as a Railways worker during the 1980s and 90s’ “restructuring” bloodbath, I am decidedly sceptical about “consultation”.

KOA was front and centre in the Enable decision as well – we highlighted the fact that Dalziel had promised to put it back on the list, in an election debate with John, but we also pointed out that it was going to be decided in the public excluded section of a Council meeting. The media picked up on that and gave it (and KOA) big coverage. KOA said we’d be at that meeting to protest; Dalziel moved the item back into the public section of the meeting and invited KOA to speak to the meeting (I did that, at very short notice).

But that same Council meeting postponed a vote on whether to put City Care onto the strategic assets list – they wanted to define “strategic asset” first. That remains undecided at the time of writing. It must stick in the throat of the Mayor and her fellow would-be asset sellers to now have to debate protecting the very City Care that they spent 18 months busting their guts trying (unsuccessfully) to sell. The score so far: KOA 1, asset sellers nil. KOA (and CAFCA) won’t put away our banners until the Christchurch City Council takes asset sales right off its policy agenda. The fight that we are waging in the country’s second biggest city has implications for all New Zealanders and our public assets.