Watchdog 162 (April 2023), featured, as its cover story, my article "Here We Go Again. Asset Sales Back On The Agenda". I'm delighted to report that it only took a year to get them off the agenda of the Christchurch City Council. Let's refresh our memories. The subject had not been mentioned by the Council since it tried and failed to sell Citycare several years ago - which was a major and successful campaign by Keep Our Assets Canterbury (KOA, a group with which CAFCA is heavily involved. I'm its Convenor).

Scheme To Sell Assets Came Out Of Nowhere

But, lo and behold - just weeks after the October 2022 local body elections, the City Council announced that a confidential report on its publicly-owned assets by investment bankers had been commissioned by the previous Lianne Dalziel-led City Council. Where did this come from? KOA wrote to the Council and got this answer:

1. Council requested Christchurch City Holdings Ltd (CCHL, which handles the City Council's commercial assets) undertake the report as part of the Letter of Expectations to CCHL in December 2021. This was in a public meeting (meaning, a City Council meeting open to the public).
2. Council took over the lead of the procurement of the report in July 2022 after CCHL had advised that it could not make the deadlines. Northington Partners (investment bankers) were appointed in August 2022 following a market process.
3. The cost was $275,000.

And, guess what - the report recommended selling them. It never used the word sell - it talked about "recycling" assets. And it tried to soften the blow by recommending only partial sales. In December 2022 the Council voted to investigate this further. The rationale was the same as when the Christchurch City Council first tried to flog off assets in the previous decade - it is short of money (last time, the excuse was the post-quake rebuild cost). This time around, the Council that says it is short of money is the same one that, in 2022, blithely voted an extra $150 million towards the ballooning costs of the white elephant stadium it is building (the cost of which is now nearly $700 million).

KOA immediately pointed out the obvious - not one Councillor nor the new Mayor had campaigned to sell assets during the 2022 campaign. Indeed, the Mayor, Phil Mauger, promised not to do so. So, not one of them had a mandate to sell assets. KOA told the Council it was buying a fight - John Minto and Steve Howard told Councillors that to their faces at a February 2023 full Council meeting, while other KOA members displayed a "Keep Our Assets" banner in the public gallery (sadly, that turned out to be Steve's last public appearance for KOA. See my obituary of him elsewhere in this issue). We told the media what we were going to do, and it got coverage in both print media and on commercial radio.

An encouraging development in 2023 was the creation of the CCHL Asset Sales Committee. This was at the initiative of Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, the Christchurch organiser for the Living Wage Movement (and a regular Watchdog writer). He expanded his activism into campaigning against asset sales, bringing fresh energy and impressive organising skills into the campaign.

Nathaniel developed excellent working relations with local unions, bringing a different perspective to that of KOA. His angle was that only by retaining City Council ownership of its' commercial companies would their workers be likely to be paid the Living Wage (currently $26 per hour). I represent KOA at their meetings, which are comprised of a mixture of union officials and activists.

In August 2023 a KOA deputation of myself, Brian Turner and John Minto met Mayor Phil Mauger to personally stress to him why asset sales are a bad idea. He didn't seem to have got the message. Afterwards he talked about the City Council's "dilemma" as being to either "sell assets or provide less services", such as libraries and pools. The media reported that a lot of work by Council officials was going on behind the scenes to soften up Councillors to vote yes to selling assets.

Victory!

KOA went into campaign mode, producing a leaflet; Committee members met with individual Councillors; I met with one of the co-leaders of The People's Choice (the Left bloc on the Council); plus, I wrote to every community board. KOA and the CCHL Asset Sales Committee combined forces in November 2023 to hold a very well attended, very successful and very positive public meeting. John Minto was KOA's speaker; the other speakers were Nathaniel Herz-Edinger, former Christchurch Mayor Garry Moore, Councillor Melanie Coker, and two union officials representing workers who work for some of the assets that were under the threat of sale.

In a stroke of genius, John Minto invited the leading light of the local School Strike 4 Climate campaign to chair the meeting. The 17-year-old schoolgirl did a brilliant job, even though she had to leave early because she had an exam the next morning (now a first-year university student, she's involved with the CCHL Asset Sales Committee, which is an excellent outcome). That Committee arranged people (local residents in every case) to speak to their local community board - I spoke to mine, not as a KOA representative, but as a local resident of more than 40 years. Nathaniel and co put in a lot of work meeting with, and building relationships with, individual City Councillors.

Pressure was mounting to sell. In December 2023 the CCHL Board attempted what amounted to a coup. It told the Council that it (CCHL) could provide the Council with higher dividends over a ten-year period but only if the Council gave CCHL sole power to decide what to do with the assets that it manages, including selling them, with no more decision-making by Councillors or the public.

This was followed, at very short notice (one day), by a City Council meeting to decide whether to proceed with the process to sell the city's public assets (worth several billion dollars - the port, airport, power company, broadband company, maintenance company, etc). KOA and the CCHL Asset Sales Committee worked together and we mobilised people to pack out that meeting - it was a diverse crowd, including pensioners, school kids and workers. Our side put up two speakers - former Mayor Garry Moore and Nathaniel Herz-Edinger. It was a very passionate and boisterous meeting, with heartfelt speeches from Councillors on both sides of the argument.

And, to our pleasant surprise (and to the great displeasure of the business community and its' media mouthpieces), the Council voted - 8/7- to stop the asset sales process there and then. The capacity crowd gave them a standing ovation. The original December 2022 vote to start the process leading to asset sales was 10/7 in favour (there are 17 on the Council, including the Mayor). But at least one Councillor who voted yes in December 2022 changed his vote to no in December 2023. (And two Councillors were not allowed to take part in the debate or vote because they sit on the CCHL Board).

Much was made of the "razor thin margin". I happen to be a rugby fan and I well remember the nail-biting 2011 World Cup Final, which the All Blacks won by a score of - 8/7! Wild was the rejoicing and the solemnly arrived at consensus was that a win by one point was as good as a win by 100 points. So, as the saying goes - we'll take the win (of course, as a rugby fan, I won't be so insensitive as to mention the 2023 World Cup Final, which the All Blacks lost by one point).

To add insult to injury, it was revealed in February 2024 that, between them, the Christchurch City Council and Christchurch City Holdings Ltd had spent $2.2 million on the failed asset sales process. The Press asked me for a comment: "'I would consider it to be an underhanded and deceitful waste of ratepayer's money. Horton said it was especially wasteful at a time when, only a few months ago, (Mayor) Mauger said the city 'was in shit creek financially'" (13/2/24).

Asset Sales Lobby Will Keep On Trying

Sometimes you win one. But we're not naïve enough to think that this is the end of the story. The business community and its' pro-privatisation mouthpieces will keep on trying. Already there has been talk of a judicial review. Councillors who failed in their bid to sell assets are instead talking about the need for eyewatering rates increases to raise money (I speak as someone whose rates went up by $2,000 p.a. in 2023).

My prediction is that a fake "grassroots" group will appear out of nowhere (the Yanks call it astroturfing - groups set up by vested interests and their PR mouthpieces) to bemoan "the people being denied a say" on the subject (the process would have included public consultation) and demanding that it be put to another Council vote. The next local body election is in 2025 - let's see who, if anyone, campaigns for asset sales.

It is also sobering to be reminded what Council-owned assets that Christchurch has recently lost. Red Bus was withdrawn from the strategic assets list, meaning that it could be sold without public consultation. And it was promptly sold overseas. Meaning that that Council has no direct ownership of any public transport asset. And the previous National government forced the Council - NZ's second-biggest landlord, after the Crown - to quit direct ownership of its public rental housing portfolio and hand it over to a community housing trust.

Christchurch People Prepared To Fight To Keep Assets

However, Christchurch still has, by far, the biggest portfolio of Council-owned assets of any NZ city. By contrast, in 2023 Auckland Council sold down its' stake in that city's airport from 18% to 11% (Christchurch City Council owns 75% of Christchurch Airport, with the Government owning the remaining 25%).

And sometimes good things come out of huge disasters - the 2010/11 earthquakes (18,000 of them over several years) wrecked Christchurch's underground pipes for drinking water, stormwater and sewerage. Billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars were spent replacing or repairing them. So, the underground pipes network is much newer than it would have otherwise been, leapfrogging years of maintenance work.

Wellington's water network is Council-owned but essential maintenance has been neglected, meaning that the capital suffers endless leaks and crippling water shortages. Christchurch, comparatively, is in a better position and has demonstrated that it is a city whose people will fight and win (not once but twice) to keep public assets in public ownership. Self-congratulation is in order - we really have Kept Our Assets - but eternal vigilance remains necessary.

Watchdog - 165 April 2024