''Stop Right There!'' Keep Our Port Public Tells Christchurch City Council

Keep Our Port Public (KOPP) spokesperson Murray Horton today congratulated the Christchurch City Council on its progress towards obtaining 100% public ownership of the Lyttelton Port Company. He also advised it to ''Stop right there!''

''Keep Our Port Public is being inundated with requests for copies of our petition against privatising the port,'' said Mr Horton. The petition and other information on the proposed Port Company sale and the campaign against it can be accessed at
http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/
CAFCA/publications/KOPP/index.html

''The public meeting on the proposed port sale planned for April 10 (7.30 p.m. Limes Room, Christchurch Town Hall) will certainly go ahead. We believe the Council needs to get a strong message from the citizens of Christchurch – don't flog off our assets.''

''KOPP is also concerned that statements about shelving the proposed sell-off to Hutchison Port Holdings represent a tactical withdrawal, not a real one, on the Council's part. The Council has said that if/when it succeeds in gaining 100% of the Port Company’s shares it “may”approach Hutchison again with a similar proposal. What this means that it has found the kitchen rather too hot and is waiting for things to cool down before having another go at cooking up a deal.

KOPP claims a partial victory, in that Hutchison Port Holdings is now standing aside from the deal. But the public assets that belong to the people of Christchurch and Canterbury will not be fully safe until this rogue Council renounces its newly discovered craze for privatisation. Hopefully, it’s just going through a phase. We won’t go away until this fever has been cured.

By secretly changing the rules on the sale of assets at its February 2 meeting, the Council has opened the door to privatisation of our assets at any time. The Red Bus Co and City Care are already in the gun, having been removed from the Council’s list of protected strategic assets and no public assets are safe until the Council is instructed by the public to protect them and manage them wisely, and the rules are changed accordingly.''

ENDS

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