Call for Auckland Council to be allowed greater oversight of port after damning report

New Zealand's main imports port is owned by Auckland Council. Photo / Michael Craig

A senior Auckland councillor who accused the council of being a "lazy" owner of the embattled Ports of Auckland says it's time for a chat with the Minister of Transport Michael Wood after a damning new report.

Chris Darby said the council needs to use the "hammerblow" in the findings of an independent review of the port's abandoned container terminal automation project to give it more oversight of the country's main imports gateway without contravening the Ports Companies Act.

The council, sole shareholder of the port, continues to distance itself from port issues, saying the Act restricts it from involving itself in operational and commercial decisions and actions - a claim Darby has disputed since serious health and safety issues and questions about the ongoing failure to implement the costly automation project came to a head last year.

The mayor's office, however, commissioned an independent review last year of the health and safety issues after fatalities at the port, drove the introduction of a largely new board of directors in the past year, and asked that the new board commission a review of governance around the automation project after it was finally abandoned in June, with a resulting $65 million write-off. More costs from the failed six-year-long project are to come.

The report of the automation review by independent infrastructure specialist and lawyer Mark Binns was released this week, identifying multiple failures in company governance, management and accountability around the project. The independent health and safety review last year also identified serious failures at the port, which are being rectified.

Transport minister Michael Wood told the Herald he was open to meeting with Auckland Council representatives to discuss their concerns with the current legislation.

Asked for his response to the Binns' report findings he said it was "an operational matter for the port and its shareholder Auckland Council to respond to".

Darby said he had confidence the port under new board chairwoman Jan Dawson and new chief executive Roger Gray would address issues raised by the Binns report and his recommendations, but there was a need for greater council oversight.

"The Port Companies Act keeps the parent shareholder [the council] at arms' length, but do we just keep reciting that hands-off approach or do we interrogate the opportunities in the Act to give us oversight? We need to stretch the Act. The port is a $2 billion asset.

"Do we look at the legislation and find ways by which we can override it and have oversight, or do we continue to put our hands in the air and say 'it's not our job'?

"Does the [report] require us to have a chat with the minister [of transport] about the port Act and the way it's written?"

Meanwhile, the Maritime Union said the real cost of the automation "fiasco" would run into hundreds of millions of dollars when taking into account the shipping delays caused by the project and reconfiguring the ports and plant back to manual operation.

National secretary Craig Harrison said the union red-flagged the project time and again, as its members worked on the ground at the port and identified numerous problems.

"Sadly, our concerns were disregarded at the time, but if the board and council had listened, the project would not have had this frankly disastrous outcome."

Harrison said the decision by the new chief executive to scrap the automation project had been the only logical move, and there was now a "more respectful" relationship between senior management and the union workforce.

Harrison said lessons must be learned from what has happened at the port and the union's warnings had been vindicated.

The way to ensure better results in future was to have a union member on the board of directors to represent the workers' viewpoint, a common practice in many successful economies, he said.