Not Yours To Sell

My private member’s bill to protect Auckland’s assets from privatisation has been drawn from the ballot.

So today we are launching Not Yours To Sell - Labour's campaign to save Auckland's assets and mobilise support for my bill.

No one trusts Rodney Hide and his cronies to keep Auckland community assets in public hands so my member’s bill will put any decision to sell community assets firmly into the hands of Aucklanders. The bill requires the sale or privatisation of any assets to be first put to a public referendum.

I’m hoping ACT will support the bill. They are big on referenda in local government. In fact Rodney Hide’s recent cabinet paper proposes that councils be required to put any ’significant or irreversible’ decisions to referendum. If flogging off the assets Aucklanders have paid off with their rates over generations is not ’significant or irreversible’ I don’t know what is.

I'm especially hopeful that National's Auckland MPs will support the bill. That is why I am writing to them all asking them to support it, and asking Aucklanders to do the same.

I think one of the big anxieties underlying the super city debate is the fear that the super city is just the prelude to corporatisation of local government, and privatisation of our assets: the ports, the water, and our transport infrastructure, not to mention libraries, parks, halls and other assets. These fears have been fueled by Local Government Minister Rodney Hide’s proposed reforms of the Local Government Act which seek to reduce council activities to core services. And by ACT’s stated policy to force Councils to sell off their commercial enterprises. Bear in mind also that it is only a decade or so since the right wing were trying to hock off the ports.

My bill, the Local Government (Protection of Auckland Assets) Amendment Bill, would require the Auckland Council to hold a referendum if significant asset sales are being considered. An appropriate threshold for the value of an asset that would trigger a referendum will be developed through the select committee process in consultation with Aucklanders. But the Bill would outlaw the sale of a range of assets including parks, swimming pools, libraries and public housing - other than when a sale might be part of the normal day-to-day portfolio management and has been subject to the normal consultation.

It was a perfect time for my bill to be drawn from the ballot. Aucklanders will be following the super city select committee hearings over the next few weeks as the committee considers a couple of thousand submissions. My bill will likely get its first reading on July 29 so we have four weeks to get some good debate going on this issue.

I hope you will take action to save Auckand's assets. Sign up as a supporter. Email your closest National MP. And forward a link to this site to all your friends and family.