Campaign against sale of Lyttelton Port gathers steam

The Keep Our Port Public coalition (KOPP) is holding a public meeting in Christchurch opposing the sale of Lyttelton Port Company to Hutchison, a Hong Kong based multinational corporation. The sale represents the restart of the agenda to privatise publicly owned assets, and there are good indications the sale of the port could be followed by the privatisation of the bus company and Citycare.

For some background on this issue see my earlier post here.

We already have an impressive list of speakers for the meeting, including

• Sir Kerry Burke (the current chair of Environment Canterbury but I don't think he is speaking in this capacity)
• Green MP Metiria Turei
• Maritime Union of New Zealand
• Wayne Butson, Rail and Maritime Transport Union
• Murray Horton, CAFCA

So at 7.30 pm on Monday 10 April come along to the Limes Room of the Christchurch Town Hall and stop the privatisation of our port!

An opinion piece by Murray Horton of KOPP, 'Moore's mighty sellout' was published in the Press on Friday, and Murray has already received a lot of positive feedback about the article.

Murray says the proposed port sale sets a dangerous precedent for the future of other publicly owned assets in Christchurch.
"This is the latest move by the Council ideologues who want to convert the People's Republic into Christchurch Inc. It graunches back into life a process that was stalled and discredited back in the unlamented 1990s, namely privatisation. This is the first such sale here since National forced it to sell Southpower. But this one has not been forced on it by anyone else, it is all the Council's own work. It will set off a stampede for port "restructuring and rationalisation" around the country, a process that progressed as far as corporatisation during the 1980s' Rogernomics pandemic. And it looks like there will more to come - the Council has removed both the Red Bus Company and City Care, from its list of strategic assets to be protected. It would now appear that the Mayor's policy on publicly-owned city assets is that less is definitely Moore. It sets a dangerous precedent."

A leaflet and poster advertising the meeting is currently filling up email inboxes all over the country. Once the leaflet, poster and Murray's article are available online I will post up a link. Till then I am happy to email them to interested people :)

Tags: Politics, Lyttelton, Corporates, Hutchison, Privatisation, Christchurch