KEY POINTS:
The high-profile Wellington public law firm Chen Palmer has been hired at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars to monitor the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Auckland Governance.
A representative from the law firm has sat in on public hearings in Pukekohe and Papakura, taking notes on behalf of the Auckland Energy Consumer Trust.
Trust chairman Warren Kyd yesterday defended the decision to hire Chen Palmer, saying it could be a matter of "life and death" for the trust.
The trust owns 75.1 per cent of the power giant Vector on behalf of 300,000 consumers in Auckland City, Manukau and part of Papakura. Each year it pays consumers a dividend of about $320.
"We have got a trust with an asset worth at least $6 billion, net a couple of billion dollars, and we just can't neglect it," Mr Kyd said. "It is our job to ensure that legal protection for our beneficiaries is understood throughout this important process and we are prepared to make a prudent investment in that."
He did not know the cost, except to say it was bound to be "some tens of thousands of dollars".
A number of submissions to the royal commission have raised the matter of the trust, including from Papakura District Council, which yesterday floated the idea of using the income streams from Vector for a new regional entity.
Papakura also raised the idea of placing Auckland and Manukau councils' shares in Auckland Airport into a regional entity, and possibly the funding distributed by the ASB Trust. Both cities have made overtures to get their hands on the energy consumer trust's assets.
