Explanation demanded on Ports’ monster payout to ex-CEO

The Mar­itime Union of New Zealand is back­ing efforts to uncov­er why a mil­lion-dol­lar pay­ment (on top of salary) was made to for­mer Ports of Auck­land CEO Tony Gib­son fol­low­ing his res­ig­na­tion ear­li­er this year.

The May­or and Coun­cil has writ­ten a ‘please explain’ let­ter to the Chair of the Ports of Auck­land as they were not informed of the deci­sion, despite a ‘no sur­pris­es’ pol­i­cy.

Mar­itime Union of New Zealand Auck­land Branch Local 13 Sec­re­tary Rus­sell Mayn says the POAL Board con­tin­ues to oper­ate out­side the effec­tive con­trol of its own­ers, Auck­land City, and must be brought to heel.

He says cur­rent leg­is­la­tion insu­lates man­agers and Boards from over­sight by demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of pub­lic and ratepay­er owned enter­pris­es and must be changed.

Cur­rent POAL Board Chair Bill Osborne, who would have autho­rized the pay­ment to the depart­ing CEO, also announced his res­ig­na­tion in August.

The pre­vi­ous POAL Board Chair Liz Coutts stepped down in Jan­u­ary 2021, after con­tro­ver­sial­ly accept­ing a busi­ness award for Chair­per­son of the Year on 3 Decem­ber 2020. The fol­low­ing day POAL was sen­tenced and fined half a mil­lion dol­lars for their role in the death of a young work­er at the Port in 2018.

Mr Mayn says a huge, con­tro­ver­sial pay­out to a CEO at the same time as a Board Chair exits is an extreme­ly bad look in the cir­cum­stances.

He says POAL and Mr Gib­son will be in Court lat­er this month on health and safe­ty charges result­ing from the death of a Port work­er in 2020.

“The peo­ple of Auck­land have paid a heavy price for the per­for­mance of the Board and Man­age­ment, and the cur­rent leg­is­la­tion has proved not fit for pur­pose in hold­ing them to account.”

He says the Board must con­firm all roles held by Mr Gib­son have end­ed and he no longer rep­re­sents the Ports and its own­ers in any posi­tion.

Mr Mayn says the Mar­itime Union will cam­paign for work­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion at Board lev­el, which is an estab­lished best prac­tice in a num­ber of Euro­pean coun­tries.

“This would go a long way to end­ing the cul­ture of impuni­ty and the club men­tal­i­ty that oper­ates now at the Board and senior man­age­ment lev­el.”