In order to get for a CIR we first need to get the signatures of 10% of the voting population. That amounts to a bit more than 300,000 signatures. It is a lot, but on this issue there is no doubt that the public is on our side.

The Clerk of parliament has approved the referendum question. It is:

Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?

Labour has created a website to support the campaign.  This is a great chance to put the government under pressure and to remind New Zealanders that the future of their power companies and airline is at stake.

Most Kiwis want to keep our assets in NZ hands. If you agree please sign the petition. You can download it here and circulate to everyone you know, and you can sign up to the campaign here.

You can make a difference.

Every year around ANZAC Day the North Shore Labour Electorate Committee puts on the Jack Lyon Memorial Lecture.  Jack Lyon was a Labour MP in the First Labour Governnent and the Member for Waitemata which back then covered the North Shore. He gave up his seat in Parliament and volunteered to fight in World War Two. He was killed by German fire in the evacuation of Crete. Jack Lyon was a left wing social democrat, and an internationalist who gave his life fighting fascism.

This year’s speaker is celebrated film maker Gaylene Preston. Gaylene will show excerpts from two of her recent films and talk about how we remember the war, and what exactly we are trying to remember. War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, and Home By Christmas (trailer above) were inspired by Gaylene’s parents’ stories of their wartime experience. Home By Christmas with the wonderful Tony Barry playing Gaylene’s Dad, brings to life the Kiwi wartime experience; the young man heading off to fight and his family left behind to wait. War Stories is pure oral history, with Kiwi women telling moving and often hilarious stories of their war.

The Jack Lyon lecture series is a way to remember and celebrate what Jack Lyon stood for, and what he died for.  Each year the lecture deals with a different aspect of war and peace and national identity.  The inaugural speaker was Hon Bob Tizard who served in WW2 and later as a Cabinet Minister in the 3rd and 4th Labour Governments. The next year military historian Glyn Harper talked about the battles of the Western Front and how WW1 shaped modern New Zealand. Last year Moriori leader Maui Solomon talked about the ancient peace culture of the Moriori.

If you want to come along and hear Gaylene Preston tell war stories, book your ticket ($20) by emailing frabil@xtra.co.nz or phone 09 445 6178. The event is at 5pm this Sunday 22 April, 1st floor, 7 The Strand, Takapuna.

Which makes it puzzling that he is choosing to stand by and watch while his port subsidiary tries to contract out 300 jobs.

Len Brown is one of the few people with a lever to pull in this situation. He is the shareholder. He and the Council bear a large part of the responsibility for the dispute because their demand for a 12% return on capital from the ports handed the Ports board the justification to embark on this drive to casualise its workforce. The 12% demand is ridiculous. No other port in Australasia achieves this. Few if any companies in the transport and logistics sector achieve it. The current return is 6% and the ports of Tauranga, poster child for port productivity, only gets 6.3%.

It is all the more puzzling given the Mayor’s commitment to reducing social inequality, reflected in the excellent Auckland Plan. It is hard to see how we are going to build a more prosperous and inclusive city by stripping the city’s employees of their work rights and job security.

With the port company intent on contracting out, the wharfies now have nothing to lose. The current strike is due to continue for two more weeks. Disruption will likely go on for months. The financial cost to the ports, and the economic disruption to Auckland’s economy will be significant.

It is time for Len Brown and his Council to rethink their demand for a 12% return, and replace it with something reasonable and not excessive. He should tell the port company casualisation is not an acceptable approach to employment relations in a port owned by the people of Auckland.

The union has already agreed to almost all the company’s demands for greater labour flexibility designed to increase the labour utilisation rate and improve productivity. The company and union should get back to the table and settle so everyone can get back to work.

Len Brown is a good man. His Auckland Plan and advocacy for the City Rail Link is the kind of leadership the city has been crying out for. But if the port company’s crude union busting succeeds in casualising its workforce on his watch it will be a stain on his legacy.

But in Glen Innes where Housing NZ is redeveloping 156 of their properties the Government is breaking every rule in the book, and giving urban renewal a bad name.

At a lively public meeting in GI last night, three hapless National backbenchers (the new member for Tamaki Simon O’Connor, list member Alfred Ngaro who was a community worker in the area, and neighbouring MP Sam Lotu-Iiga) got an old fashioned bollocking from a crowd of around 300 including many Housing NZ tenants facing eviction.

At least they turned up, which is more than can be said for Housing Minister Phil Heatley.

Under his watch, National has reneged on commitments made by the Labour Government when it started the project.  They have walked away from the pledge that residents would have the right to move back into the community after the redevelopment. They have broken the promise the number of Housing NZ properties would be increased. And they dropped the community development process that was part of the original design.

Housing NZ reports the current 156 properties will be redeveloped to generate 260 new properties. Only 78 will be owned by Housing NZ. Another 39 “affordable” properties will possibly be managed by community agencies although I understand all expressions of interest were recently rejected and it is uncertain what will happen to them now. The remainder will all be sold to the highest bidders.

No wonder the dozens of GI residents who have received eviction notices were enraged at last night’s meeting and howled down O’Connor, Ngaro and Lotu-Iiga down as sell outs.

It is a disgrace what is happening in GI. National’s perverted version of urban renewal is moving poor people out, and shipping the rich in, as if low income Kiwis should not be allowed a sea view. Just as John Key stripped the state housing out of the new development in Hobsonville in his electorate.

The people of Glen Innes deserve our support.

Free marketeers (and Rudman is not one of those) have long resorted to branding as racist anyone who opposes foreign ownership.  But I don’t buy it, and never have.

If Labour didn’t have a policy of opposition to rural land sales to foreign buyers and we opposed the Chinese bid, then yes that would look like xenophobia aimed at the Chinese. But during the last parliamentary term we adopted new policy in this area, proposing to clamp down on the sale of rural land to foreign buyers unless significant benefits to the national interest could be demonstrated. And as David Parker pointed out on Monday, we have criticised sales to German, US, Chinese and other foreign investors.

So is it xenophobic to oppose any measure that promotes the New Zealand economy and limits foreign ownership in our economy?  Is it racist of China and numerous other countries to place limits on the sale of land to foreigners in their countries? Of course not.

During the election campaign I did a talkback radio debate with National MP Jami-Lee Ross on the ethnic Indian station Humm FM. Jamie accused me of racism when I said National’s asset sales policy risked putting our most valuable SOEs in foreign hands.  Two callers responded: newly arrived Indian migrants who disagreed strongly with Mr Ross, both saying they were Kiwis and wanted the assets to stay in New Zealand ownership, and that the issue wasn’t about race at all.

Brian also seems to think that because so much of our economy is foreign-owned we may as well sell what is left:

With our banks and insurance companies and much else long sold off – $45 billion worth in the hands of Australians the last time I checked – it seems a little late in the day for Labour to espouse this particular principle.

I don’t want to sell what is left. Labour learned the lessons of the botched privatisations of the 80s and 90s. The challenge for our generation in politics is to build up New Zealand’s assets. That is why we need to make Kiwisaver universal to build our capital markets. It is why we need to build successful Kiwi firms through investing in research and development. It is why we should not be selling down our most successful state owned enterprises, nor KiwiBank. And it is why we should not be selling prime rural land to overseas buyers.

When National set up the Auckland super city they loved to say they were doing it so Auckland could speak with one voice. Well Aucklanders have spoken. They want a world class transport system, starting with the City Rail Link. But National is not listening.

Labour is. At a rally today at Beresford Square, just off Karangahape Rd and site of a future underground rail station, Phil Goff announced Labour in Government will contribute one-half of the cost of the City Rail Link ($1.2 bn). The other half will be the responsibility of Auckland Council.

The Rail Link is the centrepiece of the Auckland Council’s draft plan. It will double the capacity of the city’s rail network by making Britomart a through-station, and adding underground stations at Aotea (Wellesley & Albert), K Rd, and Newton. And as the Council’s internationally peer-reviewed study showed, it will transform the city centre.

To pay for it we will cancel Steven Joyce’s pet project, the Puhoi-Wellsford holiday highway, freeing up $1.69 billion, and quickly implement the $320m Operation Lifesaver plan to fix the highway’s crash black spots and bottlenecks.

As Phil Goff said at the rally to announce the pledge, the city rail link is the next step in building a modern Auckland public transport system. Without it, Auckland will never meet its ambition of being the world’s most liveable city. Aucklanders know we simply cannot continue building more and more motorways.

Aucklanders now have a clear choice: a vote for Labour is a vote for the City Rail Link, and a partnership between central government and the Auckland Council to deliver the world’s most liveable city. A vote for National is a vote for motorways and sprawl, and a Government doing its best to sabotage Auckland’s desire for a world class transport system.

More detail on the policy here.

I have been friends with Keith for about 25 years and I have to admit when I heard he was standing for Parliament I didn’t immediately think that with his activist and revolutionary politics he’d be suited for the place. How wrong I was. He has made a huge contribution.

He has been a dogged advocate on civil liberties and human rights, and a voice for a progressive internationalist foreign policy.

He put up with endless barbs from members of the House who wanted to paint him as an ultra-left nutter, and just kept plugging away, sticking to his principles, avoiding ad hominem attacks, and maintaining his dignity. And for someone whose politics are pretty far to the left, he has shown a great ability to work with MPs across the House.

Go well Keith. Thanks for so many years of great service to New Zealand.

It wasn’t meant to be like this. Hide, backed by PM Key and Transport Minister Steven Joyce, set out to hijack the process begun by the last Labour Government when it set up the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. Their plan was to go for a more highly centralised model, wrap up most of Council operations in corporate-style CCOs, and then win control of the mayoralty and council. They achieved the first two aims, but Len Brown’s resounding win derailed the bigger plan which would have seen the ACT Party’s current Epsom candidate preside over asset sales, dismantling of the metropolitan urban limits, and roads roads roads.

Instead Len Brown and the Auckland Council have developed a plan that is distinctly social democratic.  It assumes active government creating the conditions for and managing growth, reducing social inequalities, and putting people first, all under the banner of creating the world’s most liveable city. It builds seamlessly on the brilliant work done by the Royal Commission, and when implemented will herald big change for Auckland.

Which is why the Government now speaks about the draft plan through gritted teeth. Managed growth? Urban limits? Public investment in public transport? Hands on support for economic development? These things are anathema to the National Party. Not to mention ambitious education and health targets that invite central government to sign on.

The genius of Len Brown’s mayoral campaign was that he evoked an optimistic, inclusive, twenty-first century Auckland with a place for everyone, including the young, the brown, and the new arrivals. It had success stamped all over it. The demographics are all on his side, and John Banks was left looking like an angry old white guy.

National are now being wrong-footed in a similar way.  Aucklanders know the motorways and sprawl model imposed by National in the 1950s won’t do any more. We yearn for a vibrant waterfront and central city. Look at the crowds that descended on Wynyard Quarter’s phase one in recent weeks. We know a modern public transport system can be done. We see them everytime we visit almost any Australian state capital.

In a funny way I think Rodney Hide probably gets it. He is an urban liberal with an interest in what makes cities tick. But Steven Joyce and the National Cabinet are so imbued with an anti-urban, pro-motorways, anti-planning ideology. It is setting up an interesting choice for Aucklanders at this election, given that Auckland’s big ambitions cannot be met without funding and support from central government. If you support Len Brown’s vision for Auckland as the world’s most liveable city you are not going to get it under a National Government.

In the House today Transport Minister Steven Joyce was talking weasel words about his attitude to the draft Auckland Plan even though the Government is implacably opposed to Mayor Len Brown’s city rail link, and the plans to restrain Auckland’s sprawl.

The draft spatial plan hasn’t been released yet but cabinet ministers and the Council have been working away on the plan together for months now.

Differences came to a head at a joint meeting between Cabinet Ministers and the Council on August 26 reported by Brian Rudman in the Herald. Sources in the Auckland Council were quoted saying in a discussion on the issue of urban intensification National Ministers “couldn’t stop browbeating … councillors over the error of their ways”, and were “quite intimidating”.

Ministers at the meeting included Phil Heatley (Housing), Rodney Hide (Local Government), Nick Smith (Environment), Paula Bennett (Social Development) but undoubtedly the Colossus of Roads Steven Joyce would have been calling the shots on the Government side.

He won’t support the city rail link because he is hell bent on spending the transport budget on his Roads of National Party Significance. He won’t support Auckland Council’s plan for a compact city because he is an apostle of the motorways and sprawl model of urban development. On both these issues he is in open conflict with the aspirations of Aucklanders.

Mr Joyce pretended in the House today that he didn’t have a view about the draft Auckland Plan.

It all begs the question of why you would bother to set up a unified Auckland, supposedly so Auckland could speak with one voice,  and then block your ears because you don’t like what the city’s elected leaders are calling for?

I guess the answer is that from the National Party’s point of view the wrong guy won the mayoral election.