nathaniel@livingwage.org.nz

The success of our campaign to flip the vote on asset sales at Christchurch City Council has been well-documented by Murray Horton in Watchdog 165 (April 2024, "Christchurch City Council Votes To Keep Our Assets. Grassroots Campaign Succeeds [For Second Time]").

To be clear, we're talking about stopping the sale of our city's sea port, airport, fibre broadband, electricity, and public maintenance companies - the fabric of Christchurch. Long story short: a majority on Council wanted to look into selling off assets to reduce rates rises. By the end of the campaign, they were in the minority. But even as we celebrated the December 2023 vote, our union-civil society coalition recognised that a knife-edge, 8-7 vote against asset sales was a bad omen for the long-term security of our assets. We recognised that if things didn't change, we would sooner or later witness a knife-edge vote the other way - sell it once and it's gone forever. So, what to do?

First, we admitted that the status quo was barely worth fighting for. At the moment, layer on layer of corporate boards and senior management separate our infrastructure from the ratepayers who own it. This means that we lose the chance to discuss exciting, important questions about our city's future: what should Lyttelton's waterfront look like? How can our airport adapt to the climate crisis?

How can we encourage solar panels in our city's power grid? An elite corporate bureaucracy takes these decisions away from residents, and charges us over $10 million a year for the privilege. If we wanted Christchurch residents to care about our infrastructure, we needed a different model. So, we decided to build one.

Campaign For Public Infrastructure

We formed the Campaign for Public Infrastructure as a vehicle for getting public input on the issues. We're still a loose grouping of civil society organisations: unions, activists, and environmental groups. We plan to formalise our structure, so that we can make hard decisions together about our final proposal. But for now, we are seeking buy-in and ideas from the people of Christchurch. This process started in June 2024, with the first in a series of public workshops designed to get residents thinking creatively about what's possible.

The meeting was hosted at The Loons Club, the spiritual home of the Maritime Union of New Zealand (MUNZ). Co-chairs Jake Wilson and Annie McCauley, both members of the MUNZ Local Executive, guided us through proceedings. Mark Wilson, Branch Secretary of the Rail and Maritime Transport Union, told the story of the port from its founding to his job as a straddle hoist crane operator. He also laid out the stakes of the work: every worker at Lyttelton Port knows someone who has died on the job.

Then we heard from Luke Jones, director of local consulting company CPG, who emphasised that our infrastructure was doing well financially and able to invest more in our city's future. And then it was time to hear from the audience. We split into groups, and 65 Lyttelton residents and port workers shared their views with the help of seven facilitators from our campaign. Conversation was lively and energised-- actually, it was pretty difficult to get people to stop talking.

By the end of the night, we had gathered pages of fascinating ideas about how our city would look if we took back control. But perhaps more importantly, we had planted a seed: people left feeling that change was possible, necessary, and urgent. We will be running many more of these workshops in 2024, and are currently locking in dates. If you want to get involved, please get in touch!

Watchdog - 166 August 2024