Councillor Wayne Walker, chair of the CCO Oversight Committee. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s campaign to hold council-controlled organisations (CCOs) to account came to a grinding halt on Thursday.
An important meeting of the committee he charged with that job had to be abandoned, because it lost its quorum.
Only six – the bare legal minimum – of the 14 members of the committee turned up in person, and when one of them left, after three hours, the meeting could not conclude its business.
This also meant valuable discussions on council services and flood response were curtailed.
The CCO direction and oversight committee was set up by Brown because he believes the CCOs need to be controlled more rigorously. This was a key theme of his election campaign.
The main business of the meeting was to question CCO bosses about their performance to the end of the second quarter of the financial year (to December 31). Most CCOs also took the chance to brief councillors on the impact of the summer’s wild weather on their work.
The chairs and chief executives of Watercare, Eke Panuku (which develops local town centres), Tātaki Auckland Unlimited (which looks after events, venues and economic development) and the wholly-owned company Ports of Auckland were all there for the meeting. Auckland Transport reports to a separate committee.
The committee is comprised of the mayor, 11 councillors and two members of the Independent Māori Statutory Board (IMSB). It’s chaired by councillor Wayne Walker.
Council rules allow committee members to “attend” meetings online, which they do using Microsoft Teams. But online attendance does not count towards the quorum.
The six members physically present were Walker, councillors Shane Henderson, Ken Turner, John Watson and Maurice Williamson, and IMSB member Tau Henare.
Mayor Brown was present online, as were councillors Richard Hills and Daniel Newman.
Brown has advised the Herald he was working from home.
Two absent committee members sent an apology with explanation: Josephine Bartley (council business) and Angela Dalton (sick leave). Two more sent apologies without explanation: Chris Darby and IMSB member James Brown. Deputy mayor Desley Simpson was absent without apology, although because she is an ex-officio member of the committee, she doesn’t have to give one.
Councillors Sharon Stewart and Mike Lee were present, but are not members of the committee.
Henare had earlier advised Walker he would have to leave at 1pm and when he did so the meeting ended.
As the clock ticked down to 1pm, Walker hurried the CCOs through their presentations and the discussion after each of them was truncated.
The most badly affected was Tātaki, the last to present. Acting chair Jennah Wootten and chief executive Nick Hill were obliged to make a very speedy presentation with almost no time for questions.
Tātaki faces sharp cuts to its funding in the new budget and is dealing with some difficult outcomes of the recent floods. Among other things, Hill reported that the floods have closed the Western Springs stadium “for the foreseeable future”.
A retaining wall holding houses up behind the park is “now failing”, the car park is “no longer weight bearing”, the electrical wiring has to be replaced and the Ponsonby Rugby Club rooms are unusable because of contamination.
This deserved substantial discussion, but got none at all. Councillors heard the information and that was that.
The agency also had a confidential report for the committee. The remaining members stayed to hear that report, but without a quorum they could not formally receive it or make any decisions about it.
Two issues stand out. One: The meeting was badly managed. Two: The online attendance rules are not fit for purpose.
The agenda for this meeting was short and three hours should have been long enough for good debate on all the main issues.
But Walker allowed two public submissions at the start, neither of which was relevant to the main business of the day, and even gave both of them extra time.
Requiring the CCOs to report more often and in more depth is one of the good things the new mayor has done, and the CCOs themselves show every sign of rising to the challenge. But while their mandarins waited patiently, the councillors, submitters and the chair himself rambled their way through over an hour of minor business.
As for the quorum, Walker should have known it would be precarious and could easily have ensured more committee members would be in the room.
The mayor, for example, was only a 10-minute walk away from the Town Hall where the meeting was held.
The online attendance option was introduced during Covid lockdowns but has never been revoked. It allows councillors to attend meetings when they’re in self-managed isolation, which makes sense.
But it’s rarely used for that now. The best to be said is that it enables “good time management”. But if councillors are multitasking at home or in a cafe or wherever they are, while keeping one eye on the meeting, is that really “attendance”?
The larger problem is that councillors clock in at the start of a meeting but keep their cameras off, except when they’re speaking. That means there’s no way of knowing if they’re still there.
At one stage on Thursday, the mayor himself was called on to speak. There was silence.
His spokesperson later said he “had to step out for a short time”. If he’d been physically present, that would have been recorded.
For the record, the CCOs had much to report.
Roger Gray, CEO of Ports of Auckland, confirmed they are on target to provide a $30 million dividend for the current year and is aiming to raise that to “$1 million a week” – but not before 2026.
Dave Chambers, CEO of Watercare, reported on their “round-the-clock public-facing response” to the floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, which he said has been widely valued by affected Aucklanders.
Tātaki advised that attendances are strong at the zoo and art gallery, but not yet at Auckland Live venues like the Aotea Centre and the Civic. They hope the Auckland Arts Festival, which opened that evening, will help address this.
David Rankin, CEO of Eke Panuku, reported on their delivery of the new town square in Takapuna, new recreational facilities in Hayman Park in Manukau, improved design of streets and other public spaces around DressSmart in Onehunga, and the success of flood-planning work done with Watercare and Kainga Ora for housing projects in Northcote.
But, he warned, a “budget shortfall” is delaying progress in Avondale, while they have no funding to add new projects to their worklist, despite “years of pleading” from the local boards in Glen Eden, Manurewa and Papakura.
All of these matters, and more, deserved greater discussion.
The mayor’s spokesperson told the Herald he “does not think yesterday’s meeting will affect the ability of the CCO direction and oversight committee to deliver against its work programme”.
But it just did. He must have been annoyed.
The man is now in a critical but stable condition in hospital.