Moving port inevitable: PM
Final report says Auckland set-up is no longer viable
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says moving Auckland’s port is not a question of if, but one of when. This comes as the final report into the future of the port has been handed back to ministers.
The report concluded that Auckland’s current port operations are “no longer economically or environmentally viable”, TVNZ reported.
This raises the question of the port moving to another location, as had been suggested in the past.
Neither Ardern nor Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters has had a detailed look at the report yet and it hasn’t gone through Cabinet.
Regional Economic Development Minister Shane Jones confirmed the report did, indeed, say Auckland was no longer a viable option for the port.
The report means the huge transition could begin by December 2020, with completion as early as 2029.
Speaking to the AM Show yesterday, Ardern said there was a certain inevitability over moving the port, the question was when. “Is it 20 years, is it 30 years, is it 10 years?”
In the past, Ardern had made no secret of the fact she did not think the port should expand any further into Auckland’s harbour.
In the NZ First and Labour coalition agreement, the Government agreed to: “Commission a feasibility study on the options for moving the Ports of Auckland, including giving Northport serious consideration”. The completion of the report means that agreement has now been fulfilled. But the next step is up in the air. Finance Minister Grant Robertson said he still has questions he would like to see answered before the Government could consider the move.
“Clearly as we look to the future, and the Ports of Auckland acknowledge this themselves, as the nature of shipping changes, they don’t have the capacity from the 2020-2030s onwards to be the kind of deep water port that’s needed,” he said yesterday.
NZ First has been keen to move the port to Northland but Robertson said a full analysis is needed before any commitments are made.
Asked if he was pleased with the report’s outcome, Peters said: “The chance of expansion for the Auckland port is zero — we all know that.”
Jones said he’d had some negative feedback on moving the port from car importers, worried their business may be hit. “But I would say to Aucklanders, ‘don’t surrender to the profit margins of the car importers’,”
But National Party leader Simon Bridges doubts anything will come from the report. “There will be lots of talk, there will be lots of Shane Jones hot air, but not a lot else.”
He said several important questions still need to be answered, including the cost, where it might move to and who would own it.
“I doubt they would have been given the serious sort of thought that’s needed in the working group Shane Jones has set up,” Bridges said.
“This is being driven by politics and by New Zealand First, rather than good, sensible thinking.”