WELLINGTON: Ports of Auckland chair Graeme Hawkins said the company was standing by its intention to extend two wharves into the harbour. Mayor Len Brown plans to convey his disappointment to Mr Hawkins about the comments.
The council has been waiting for nearly a month, for a formal response to its request to halt the extensions until a wider port study is carried out.
The mayor said he had now asked for that response by Tuesday, when there would be a closed door meeting involving councillors and senior legal and governance advisors.
Mr Hawkins said the board had seven or eight legal opinions, showing the directors were obliged to act in the best interests of the port company, rather than the best interests of the owner.
Mr Hawkins said it would be his legal duty to resign rather than pause controversial wharf extensions.
He said a formal response could be a week away and politicians were close to crossing a line meant to keep them out of commercial business decisions.
Mr Hawkins said the board had seven or eight legal opinions, showing the directors were obligated to act in the best interests of the port company, rather than the best interests of the owner.
The port company has been considering a council request to halt the $22 million project, to extend two arms of Bledisloe Wharf, for nearly four weeks.
The mayor said he had now asked for that response by Tuesday, when there would be a closed door meeting involving councillors and senior legal and governance advisors.
Mr Hawkins said the board was finalising a detailed business case to quantify the commercial risk of not having the extensions, and of not being able to accommodate increasingly large ships.
However, all of that detail may not be shown to the politicians, whose relationship with the port company is via the council investment agency ACIL.
“The structure we work under is to keep politicians separate from our responsibilities as commercial directors. When we start to mix those two, that’s when the problems in the past have occurred,” he told Radio New Zealand.”We’re very very close to that edge at the moment.”
“It’s not an easy issue, but this will send a shudder through other structures around the country, port companies or the like, that depend on a separation between commercial expertise, and the owner.”
