Leah McKerrow: North Chamber CEO on the lawsuit being levied towards Transpower over the widespread power outages

A suggestion most Northland businesses are ready to move on rather than seek compensation over widespread power outages. 

In June last year, an inexperienced worker removed nuts from three of a pylon's legs causing it to fall over cutting power to almost the entire region. 

The opt-out class action against Transpower and its lines maintenance contractor is being backed by Australian financing firm Omni Bridgeway.  

North Chamber Chief Executive Leah McKerrow told Mike Hosking local businesses are ready to move on, if it's been learnt from. 

She says businesses would rather see investment in energy resilience and roading rather than try to take on a government-owned entity. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Remember the pylon that fell over in Northland, Well it's
off the court. We have a class action against Transpower
and a mixim seeks compensation and justice for the one
hundred and eighty thousand residents the twenty thousand businesses. Lee
macarro is the CEO of North Chamber and as with
there's Lee morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Good morning.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Are you guys in do you take a stand on
this or a stance on this or not.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I think at this stage we're just taking a bit
of a wait and see because when we first when
this first came up and we actually went out to
some of our businesses, they were kind of in the
mindset of it's done, it happened, we want to move on.
So I'm not sure that there is that much energy
towards it. There may be from a few, but I

(00:41):
think in general people see this as something that happened
in the past and as long as it's been learnt
from then they're ready to move on.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
It's an interesting view. So what could you suggest that
these are Australian lawyers, by the way, are into this
class action stuff? Are they trying it on?

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Well you could say that this is a cult that
is probably not aligned with a New Zealand culture, perhaps
others overseas, and whether it's something that our businesses want
to spend that energy on. I think they would much
prefer to see money, energy and focus spent on things
like energy, resilience, roading and things like that, rather than

(01:20):
trying to take down a government identity in your.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
View, to transpower behave properly post the disaster.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
All of my interactions indicate that yes they did. They
took it very seriously and they put in a process
to actually understand what happened and learn from it. I
think that's really important from a safety perspective, because as
soon as we start taking a blame culture and finger pointing,
there's a lot of risk and issues that have swept

(01:51):
under the carpet. They also gave a million dollars to Northland,
which has been half of that's been distributed to projects
around the district. So I think they does yes, good stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Lee, Appreciate your insight, Lee Mckerror, who's the chief executive
officer of north Chambers. For more from the My Asking
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