Let Ports of Auckland do its job

The Mari­time Uni­on says Ports of Auck­land is back on track and there is no need to “mess with suc­cess.”

The Uni­on was respond­ing to news of a review of the Ports of Auck­land by Flag­staff Con­sult­ing Group being fun­ded by the Mayor’s office.

Mari­time Uni­on Auck­land Branch Sec­ret­ary Rus­sell Mayn says the his­tory of the Ports of Auck­land in recent dec­ades provides one les­son.

“When there is prag­mat­ic man­age­ment that works with the work­force, and focuses on get­ting the basics right, we get a suc­cess­ful port.”

Mr Mayn says stated goals for the Ports of improv­ing safety, oper­at­ing per­form­ance and return on assets are all pos­it­ive and are all being achieved.

He says the turn­around of the Ports per­form­ance in the last year has been remark­able.

“The Ports of Auck­land is rap­idly improv­ing dividends, it has dumped the failed auto­ma­tion pro­ject, it has trans­formed the work­place cul­ture by work­ing with the Uni­on, and it has taken lead­er­ship in areas like health and safety.”

My Mayn warns that part-privat­iz­a­tion or mul­tiple oper­at­ors in ter­min­als else­where often led to a destruct­ive pro­cess.

“Wages, con­di­tions, and health and safety become bar­gain­ing chips, and it would move us fur­ther away from the integ­rated, focussed plan we need for New Zea­l­and ports.”

Mr Mayn says it is not a good time to intro­duce fur­ther uncer­tainty around New Zealand’s major import port.

“New Zea­l­and will con­tin­ue to exper­i­ence shocks to its sup­ply chain, wheth­er from extreme weath­er, pan­dem­ics, or a volat­ile glob­al situ­ation, and we need to be firm­ing up our cap­ab­il­ity.”

Mr Mayn says May­or Wayne Brown has in the past expressed his con­cern about the per­form­ance of the Ports of Auck­land, which was reas­on­able since the pre­vi­ous man­age­ment and Board had made many errors.

Like­wise, there was a widely agreed need to devel­op oth­er ports in the north­ern region to cater for the grow­ing freight task.

“How­ever, our view is the Ports of Auck­land is now on an extremely prom­ising tra­ject­ory which will deliv­er dividends to the people of Auck­land while main­tain­ing its import­ant stra­tegic role in the sup­ply chain.”

“We need to let the Ports do its job.”