Union meets with Labour Party on Ports of Auckland

On Wednes­day 23 Decem­ber rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Mar­itime Union of New Zealand, Auck­land Branch, Local 13 met with Labour MP’s Trevor Mal­lard, Phil Twyford and Darien Fen­ton regard­ing the future of key Auck­land assets under the pro­posed Super City leg­is­la­tion.
Local 13 Pres­i­dent Gar­ry Parsloe, Sec­re­tary Rus­sell Mayn and Mar­itime Walk­ing Del­e­gate Dave Phillips expressed their con­cern over the future of the Ports of Auck­land which is under the cloud of pri­va­ti­za­tion sig­nalled by the removal of the pub­lic ref­er­en­dum safe­guard cov­er­ing this strate­gic pub­lic asset.
Gar­ry Parsloe said that a city the size of Auck­land depend­ed on a vibrant port to sus­tain future growth, and the ben­e­fits returned to Auck­land ratepay­ers through pub­lic own­er­ship were sig­nif­i­cant. Not only does the port return prof­its to the pub­lic but it sup­port­ed indus­try through­out the Auck­land region.
It became clear that a lack of plan­ning for an inte­grat­ed Logis­tics Chain Strat­e­gy under a Nation­al Gov­ern­ment would lead to fur­ther con­ges­tion on New Zealand roads.
With the demise of the Labour Party’s Road­ways to Water­ways Pol­i­cy a void has been left in the future plan­ning for an effi­cient New Zealand Trans­port Chain.
Rail and Coastal Ship­ping would play a key role in reduc­ing the “Car­bon Foot­print” going into the future, and a pol­i­cy to retain these key strate­gic assets in pub­lic con­trol was essen­tial as the demand for exports and imports increased over the next decade.
The Labour Par­ty and the Union agreed to meet ear­ly in the New Year for for­mu­late a pol­i­cy that would address these issues and the wider issue of all Auck­land pub­lic assets.
Mr Mayn com­ment­ed that the future of the Ports of Auck­land had been placed in the hands of the cit­i­zens of Auck­land and the actions of Act MP Rod­ney Hide and the Nation­al Par­ty to remove leg­is­la­tion pro­tect­ing the Ports with­out con­sult­ing with the Auck­land pub­lic were rep­re­hen­si­ble.