Committees adopted, chairs appointed

The North Shore City Council has appointed Tony Barker, Callum Blair, Dianne Hale, Gary Holmes and Margaret Miles to chair its committees over the next three years.

Councillors met tonight (November 4) to adopt their committee structure for the 2004-07 term and decide who would chair council's four standing committees.

Birkenhead's Tony Barker will chair the council's infrastructure and environment committee, a role the fourth-term councillor knows well. He chaired this committee (formerly known as "works") from 1993-95 and was deputy chairperson during the last council term.

Margaret Miles will chair the community services and parks committee for a third consecutive term. The Paremoremo resident was first elected as a councillor in 1995 and a community board member in 1989.

The council's strategic management committee, formerly known as strategy and finance, will be chaired by Browns Bay resident Gary Holmes. The third-term councillor had chaired North Shore City's regulatory and hearings committee during the previous term.

Another third-term councillor, Callum Blair of Murrays Bay, will chair North Shore City's regulatory committee - the council's fourth standing committee comprising the full 16-member council.

Deputy Mayor Dianne Hale, the Devonport resident serving her fifth term on North Shore City Council, will once again chair the contract management committee which oversees the chief executive's contract.

Councillors adopted a meeting schedule for the standing committees for the rest of 2004. At the inaugural meetings of these committees, deputy chairpeople will be appointed.

For further information, people are invited to visit the council's website www.northshorecity.govt.nz

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>