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John Minto
Christchurch, September 4, 2016
I am delighted at the announcement by incumbent Mayor Lianne Dalziel that the council’s fibre broadband company Enable will go back on the council’s strategic assets list after the election if Dalziel remains Mayor.
We are very pleased the Mayor has had a change of heart.
Enable was quietly removed from the strategic assets register last year so no consultation would be needed for the council to sell it.
Under pressure on the election trail the Mayor made the announcement at a candidate meeting in St Albans Uniting Church on Friday night.
I challenged her about Enable being dropped from the strategic assets register so it could be sold without consultation. The Mayor responded that she’d be happy for it to be reinstated because the council now owns 100% of Enable. She repeated this later saying it would be reinstated after the election should she win.
Neutralising issue
It is clear the Mayor wants to neutralise the issue of asset sales during the election campaign with the abandonment of the sale of City Care and reinstatement of Enable.
The problem for Christchurch is that without a change in city leadership these assets will be back on the block for sale after the election.
Our assets help future-proof the city against rate increases which are already too high.
KOA Convenor Murray Horton (027 430 7742) comments:
“Today is the sixth anniversary of the first earthquake. It has taken that long for the Mayor and her pro-asset selling Councillors to come to their senses and start to step back from the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism rammed down their all too eager throats by a pro-privatisation central Government. There never was a need to sell pubic assets and it’s good to see the Mayor and Council coming out of their trance, first with regards to City Care and now with Enable. Better late than never – but KOA won’t put away our banners until the Council completely abandons its policy of selling assets.
John Minto in a candidate for the Christchurch Mayorality.
Photo Courtesy: Creative Commons (2.0)
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