This is a video made for Not Yours To Sell, Labour’s campaign to save Auckland’s assets under the super city. Click here to find out more.
This is a video made for Not Yours To Sell, Labour’s campaign to save Auckland’s assets under the super city. Click here to find out more.
This entry was posted on Thursday, August 13th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Auckland, democracy, economic, local government, privatisation, video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Goodluck with your campaign!
Im still looking for any mention anywhere apart from labour scaremondering that libraries and parks are going to be sold off.
Have not been able to find anything. Given that its such a ridiculous suggestion – it hardly gives any credibility to your argument.
@ bikerkiwi – Have you read the cabinet paper for Rodney Hide’s review of the local government act that advocates for local government to be rolled back to core services (water, waste, roads etc)? Nothing in there about recreation (parks) and education (libraries). In fact cultural, social and environmental would be outside the definition. ACT policy is for Councils to be forced to sell off commercial enterprises: stadiums? theatres?
Sell them to who ? Auckland has nothing of value to sell except a minority position in the airport. Nobody is going to buy anything unless it makes a return and standing in front of a port that the ARC has managed to strip a billion dollars out of is not a good example. With the under investment, the huge hole in the balance sheet and the way it has been poorly run in comparison to tauranga the ports are worth a fiver if your lucky.
“Public transport is not exactly a money spinner…” quite right. Unlikely that anyone would really want to buy it then.
So, further to bikerkiwi’s question, what is the business case for privatising a park? I cannot see any model whereby that could work as a privatised asset.
Come on Phil, the “save the parks” line is pure scaremongering. It undermines your credibility when you run it. Your argument is otherwise valid, but please don’t treat me and my fellow Aucklanders as idiots with this stupid piece of rhetoric.
That is quite different to any statement that there is intent to sell libraries and parks.
For that matter who the heck would buy a library?
again – its nothing but needless scaremongering
Actually libraries and parks have commercial value- just not for those uses. They often sit on valuable real estate. Ditto the countless Scout Halls, heritage buildings, art galleries, soccer fields, film studios, playgrounds etc.. that are all over Auckland.
Problem is, not all the assets are that much use to the community (councils have made many decisions to save run down old buildings or purchase flood prone land that tehy probably would prefer not to have now). So where do you draw the line? There’s no simple answer.
So, further to bikerkiwi’s question, what is the business case for privatising a park?
I’m in favour of it, along with more prisons and a separation wall around South Auckland.
Good work Phil but I reckon you’re best to keep videos that are mainly talking down to two minutes max. Sometimes less is more.
I’m not too sure what public transport assets are owned by one of the Auckland councils, in terms of the services anyway. Unfortunately all the Nats forced the sale of the buses to Stagecoach in the mid 90′s, and the train services were contracted out to the French company Veolia in about 2003, and before that were operated by the privatized Tranz Rail anyway.
I know the stations are owned by either ARTA or the city councils but not much use selling them.
As for the port it would be good to keep a more open mind. There are some complex issues with the massive overseas shipping lines playing the ports off against each other, esp Auckland and Tauranga. I believe that Auckland Port in some trouble because they bid too low to get the biggest contract for the Maersk shipping line, and arent going to be making any money. And this was money ARC had earmarked for public transport projects. Certainly all the land needs to stay locally owned but some sort of operational merger with other NZ ports may well be beneficial.
Good points in there Phil.
bikerkiwi – I know an entrepeneur who I spoken with about this and he is keen to get his hands on a couple of libraries especially the one in ST Lukes.
Not scaremongering at all.
We would be in trouble at Christmas time if the Domain was sold off, what about all the free community events held in parks through-out the year.
Sporting clubs would have to pay exorbatant rates to use sportfields if the land hadn’t already been cut up and sold.
Simon I’m in favour of a separation wall around the boundary of your section and across your drive-way, throw in some razor wire, some guards and cameras to make sure no one can get in and you can’t get out. It would be a whole lot cheaper than doing the whole of South auckland and IMHO would give a better result.
Simon,
Is the wall about South Auckland to protect Manakau residents from John Banks? i’m sure he would love to get his hands on those Airport shares as well as the Swimming Pools which can be run commercially. Better still it would be cheaper to ringfence Parnell and Remuera to stop them getting control of our council assets.
Regarding Mr Twyfords mail out.
I wonder how much this mail out cost the tax payer, did Mr Twyford stop to think, or is this the Chris Carter mind set too. $5k I bet to raise ones profile.
The letter sent to so many households fails to point out that the largest sell off of state ‘assets’ was conducted by Labour while its caretaker leader Mr Goff supported that policy at the time.
Looks like Mr Twyford will be as useful for Auckland as the last ‘Auckland issues’ spokeswoman who achieved nothing for so many years apart from being photographed in the Ponsonby news.
Oh, but she was elected. I do wonder whether these ‘list’ folks who have no mandate from any one ought to be a spokesperson for anything.
Our assets have been purchased with OUR Tax dollars. They MUST remain in the hands of the people of New Zealand while administrated by our elected officials and not sold off.
Our assets, our infrastrucutre create our enviroment and support our lives. They are our life line – THEY are important – HYDE is NOT – DOUGLAS is NOT.
We need a different person with a more balanced point of view as local government minister. Hyde’s views are too biased.