Partial sale for port that has nowhere to go

Mayor Phil Goff deserves the utmost credit for being at least willing to contemplate the council selling the Ports of Auckland. He has not quite gone that far, saying only that he wants to address the ports’ long term future in this term of office, but the hint is there. When people refer to the ports’ long term future they are acknowledging that it cannot stay as it is, where it is. The wharves are extending as far into the harbour as Aucklanders are going to allow. That much has been made clear to the mayor, the Auckland Council and its port company by the public outcry against the company’s attempts in recent years to extend Bledisloe Wharf.

Auckland is growing rapidly and its need for trade through a seaport will increase proportionately. If no further reclamation of the Waitemata can be permitted — and it should not be — there are only two solutions. Either a new or additional port must be established in the Auckland region, or more of Auckland’s imports must come through ports in nearby regions that already have room to expand. There is not much doubt which is the easier, cheaper, more sensible solution.

The only difficulty with coming to a sensible arrangement with nearby ports is that the Auckland ports are wholly owned by the Auckland Council, which has been reluctant to “get into bed”, as some delicately put it, with privatised ports. The nearest ones, at Marsden Pt and Mt Maunganui, are both partially owned by a company, Port of Tauranga Ltd, which is listed on the sharemarket.

If the Auckland Council was willing to sell at least some of its stake in Ports of Auckland on the sharemarket, the dilemma facing the city would be quickly solved. Either a cross shareholding of the Auckland and Tauranga companies would emerge or the shareholders of the separate companies would see mutual benefits to be achieved by cooperating to serve Auckland more efficiently.

That is what happens when ports are in the private sector. There is no reason in theory why the same decisions could not be made by companies wholly in public ownership but in practice it tends not to happen. Territorial authorities are very jealous of assets they own and determined to keep as much business as possible in the region that pays them rates.

That is why the previous Auckland mayor and his council, in response to the Bledisloe outcry, commissioned an extra-ordinary study of other possible sites for a port in the region in preference to Tauranga or Marsden Pt. The result was an absurd list of imagined sites from Muriwai to the Firth of Thames. It is not going to happen. No sane Government would allow it. The last thing New Zealand needs is another port. It has too many. Only the parochialism of harbour boards and, later, port companies, has stood in the way of ports being rationalised long ago.

Parochialism and public ownership remain powerful political forces, which is why the council will be wary of even a partial port sale excluding the land. But it has to happen, the port has nowhere to go.