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October 10, 2024 4 mins

Wellington City Councillors have voted against selling it's airport shares. 

Council currently owns a 34% stake in Wellington Airport, and the shares needed to be sold in order to make it's recently adopted long-term plan viable. 

Wellington City Councillor Ben McNulty joins Francesca Rudkin to discuss what this means for the council.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
Wellington City Councilors have voted against selling the airport shares.
Council currently owns a thirty four percent stake in Wellington
Airport and the shares needed to be sold in order
to make its recently adopted long term plan viable. The
vote was narrow nine to seven against the sale. So
what does this mean for the council now? Wellington City
Councilor Ben McNulty joins me. Now, thanks for being with us.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Ben Cutor, Francesca, thank you.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Are you happy with the outcome?

Speaker 1 (00:26):
I am ecstatic? Why this so? In June when we
passed our long term plan there was already a public
on the record majority of councilors who said, actually no,
we don't want to proceed with the sale of our
airport shares as part of the long term plan. Any
opportunity for the councilor to express However, in a vote

(00:47):
that opposition was nine to us. And we've tried today.
It's actually the fourth time we've tried since June. The
R and I look up to the flight path right
now and there's a plane over me. Out of the
fourth time since poon that we have tried to bring
a vote on this issue, and today we have just
reaffirmed what could have been done June and it actually
the support's not there at council. It's time to call

(01:07):
it quit, to move on.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Okay, good to have you say, did you expect it
to be as narrow as it was?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
I did, but I was always confident that we had
the numbers. You know, from an early put on we
had a majority at Council who have for very different
ideological reasons. We had a little bit of I called
it the unholy coalition, but were all made it clear
that we did not believe the sale of the airport
shares at this time was warranted more justified.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Okay, Ben, So what does this mean for the long
term plan?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Yes? So fortunately Vermayor has confirmed in the statement that
she is not going to try and relitigate the airport
issue because it could have gone on and gotten a
lot mess here. So what this means now is that
we do need to go back to Wellingtonians and look
at our issues. Clearly there's some need for spending cuts
has been addressed that we will need to put to

(01:55):
Wellingtonians and that will go through consultation and we all
have a look at prioritizing what's really important for the
rest of tray in and what's not so important, and
we'll ask Wellingtonians for their view and next year we'll
pass the annual plan in June and that will incorporate
no sale of the airport whilst changes to the budget
that we need to do to move forward.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Is it going to have an impact on rates?

Speaker 1 (02:18):
This is look, it's a good question. At this point.
We're not sure remembering selling the airport would have had
an impact on rates because the airport's returned around ten
to eleven percent consistently, where the estimates that are a
fund will do about eight percent. So we're actually we're
going to establish a shortfall in our rates funding by
moving the asset from the airport into a perpetual investment fund.
So there is a possibility that there could be some

(02:40):
rates impact, but there'll be hard decisions in front of counselors,
things that really test us. But that's a conversation. I
think most whaling Tonians expect us that we should have
already had and we will be happy moving forward.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Then I can I can you know, I hear your
frustration about the way the whole decision has been made
in the process. Do you think there are still concerns
about how this decision and makes counsel look and this
process that you've been through.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Laugh. You know, I can't really express it any different
than us. We do a resident satisfaction. So they broken
down by the ward. So I represent the northern suburbs
of Wellington and my ward had the lowest satisfaction of
any of the five wards in Wellington nine percent of
people that proved of the way council makes this decision.
So I've been acutely aware that the way we've been
going about things has not been appropriated and has not

(03:25):
brought the community with us. At the same time, there
has been overwhelming opposition from the community to this proposal,
and I hope that they see today actually counselors can
come together and listen to the community and put forward
something that the community wants to see, which in this
case was no sale of the shares, and we might
just start the journey of rebuilding that trust. It is
a year's journey to happen, but if we just put

(03:46):
one too forward today, then I said that as a
sort of thing, Ben.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Look, I really appreciate your time this evening. Thank you
very much. Were you coming to us from a bird? Avery?

Speaker 1 (03:54):
Ah, No, this is this is the beauty of Wellington
in the trees. You know, it is a beautiful city
and despite the fundamentals, we are a great place to live.
So you're hearing all the native wildlife.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
I thought you had a soundtrack on behind you.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Ben.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
That's lovely. Thank you very much, lovely to hear the birds.
Coming up next, Liam dan Is with us to talk immigration.
It is twelve past six.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
news talks it'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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