ACIL confused about their role in Port of Auckland dispute

The release of an inter­nal email today shows that ACIL is con­fused about their role in the Port of Auck­land dis­pute, says the Mar­itime Union.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Nation­al Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe says despite lec­tur­ing Auck­land Coun­cil­lors on the dif­fer­ence between man­age­ment and gov­er­nance, ACIL CEO Gary Swift, the head of a sup­pos­ed­ly Coun­cil Con­trolled Organ­i­sa­tion was shown to be com­plete­ly involved in man­ag­ing the Port Company’s polit­i­cal and com­mu­ni­ca­tion strat­e­gy.

Mr Swift’s protes­ta­tions of what was appro­pri­ate and not appro­pri­ate for ACIL seemed to be under­mined by the clear involve­ment he per­son­al­ly had in the dis­pute.

In an email to a POAL com­mu­ni­ca­tions staff mem­ber, which was read to the Coun­cil, Mr Swift clear­ly direct­ed her work.

In the email he wrote “It is crit­i­cal that we keep all the key play­ers well informed and that the politi­cians are con­fi­dent that the dis­pute is being over­seen not only by the POAL board but also by ACIL. The last thing we need is polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. If they sense that ACIL is not on top of what’s hap­pen­ing they may inter­fere and it may not go the way we want (the vote 12 to 9 was not a strong endorse­ment of our posi­tion).”

In response to ques­tions at today’s Auck­land Coun­cil Account­abil­i­ty and Per­for­mance Com­mit­tee meet­ing, Mr Swift was unable to pro­vide Coun­cil­lors with infor­ma­tion on the costs of the long­stand­ing Ports of Auck­land dis­pute.

Coun­cil­lors raised con­cerns about the costs of the dis­pute includ­ing the wide­spread use of PR and indus­tri­al rela­tions con­sul­tants and exten­sive legal costs.

Mr Swift said that know­ing such costs was inap­pro­pri­ate at a gov­er­nance lev­el, but that ACIL had not seen any­thing in the quar­ter­ly reports of POAL to war­rant their con­cern.

Mr Parsloe says it is astound­ing that POAL, whol­ly owned by ACIL on behalf of the peo­ple of Auck­land, has not been sub­ject to a thor­ough analy­sis of the costs of the long stand­ing dis­pute.

The ACIL State­ment of Intent specif­i­cal­ly makes them “account­able for the pru­dent gov­er­nance and man­age­ment” of the invest­ments they hold on behalf of the Auck­land Coun­cil.

Mr Parsloe says if ACIL are not will­ing to ask the ques­tions, who is hold­ing the Port Com­pa­ny account­able to the peo­ple of Auck­land?

As Coun­cil­lor Mike Lee said, If you don’t know the cost – you can’t count it, you can’t mea­sure it, you can’t man­age or gov­ern it.

Mr Parsloe says the facts of the mat­ter are the con­tents of Mr Swift’s email shows that ACIL does not have the “hands off” role in this dis­pute they claim to have.

He says the email also shows Mr Swift’s com­plete con­tempt for the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple of Auck­land, who should be requir­ing account­abil­i­ty in what is a mat­ter of sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic inter­est.