Not for sale signs go up in port city

NOT FOR SALE: Napier MP Stuart Nash (left) and Labour Party helper Karen Findlay put up the first of the signs yesterday. PHOTO/DUNCAN BROWN

Napier MP Stuart Nash is taking to the streets with a campaign to stop sale of any part of Napier Port company Port of Napier Ltd.

Mr Nash says he wants a written assurance that the company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hawke's Bay Regional Council assets arm Hawke's Bay Regional Investment Co, and won't give up till he gets it.

Similar to his high-profile "No to Amalgamation" campaign in 2014-2015, Mr Nash yesterday started erecting "Napier Port Not For Sale" billboards on 10 prominent sites around the streets of Napier, starting with the intersection of Hyderabad Rd and Meeanee Quay, the entry to port suburb Ahuriri.

"I will only take them down if I get a formal assurance, in writing from the chairman, that no part of the Port (company) will be sold," he said.

He does, however, have two fallback positions, being if a sale is to Napier City Council or done within the formation of a larger structure formed to own the Port and other regional assets such as Hawke's Bay Airport.

"I would agree," he said.

"The Port is owned by the people of Hawke's Bay," he said. "They should have a really big say."

"I'm not very happy with the Regional Council," he said, complaining of the lack of public consultation in the sale of 50 years of income from its leasehold lands to the ACC (announced three years ago and yielding $37.4 million) and the spending of "$20 million" on the Ruataniwha Dam proposal - "without the turning of a single sod of soil."

"It was really quite ingenuous how they went about it," he said. "They sold the income from the leasehold because they can't sell the land. The people had no say."

But he is proposing they will have some say on the Port issue, at a meeting being planned for June 23.

The option of selling part of the port company - but not any land - was raised by Napier Port chief executive Garth Cowie earlier this month when discussing possibilities for financing a new wharf and infrastructure expected to cost over $100 million, which he said could be "years away" with no decisions yet made.