The future of our ports

Today at the select committee hearing public submissions on the third super city bill, we had the mayors and ARC chairman Mike Lee in. There were some great submissions and useful debate. In amongst it all I took the opportunity to ask several of them their view of the provision in the bill which repeals the requirement for a binding ballot of Aucklanders before the Ports of Auckland can be sold off.

Mike Lee, Bob Harvey, Andrew Williams and Len Brown all gave unambiguous answers that the binding ballot requirement should stay.

I didn’t however get a straight answer out of John Banks after three attempts. In reply to my first two attempts he said how opposed he was to asset sales but steadfastly avoided my specific question. On my third attempt he just looked away.