Source: Keep Our Assets (KOA)
PUBLIC MEETING
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 16, 7 P.M.
WEA HALL, 59 GLOUCESTER ST, ChCh
The purpose is to invite as many candidates as possible to publicly sign a pledge not to sell assets (see below for pledge wording)
Asset sales is the issue that won’t die. It was hardly mentioned at the 2022 election, then suddenly sprung on the people of Christchurch shortly afterwards and narrowly averted.
So, in 2025, Keep Our Assets (KOA) is reviving something we last utilised in the 2013 election – calling on candidates to sign a pledge not to sell assets.
There will be three speakers, speaking for ten minutes each
The three speakers, in order, are Murray Horton, as KOA Convenor; youth activist Aurora Garner-Randolph and Paul McMahon, Co-Chair of The People’s Choice (TPC)
Topics: Murray on the Christchurch assets issue, from the KOA perspective; Aurora on what public ownership of key public assets means for her generation; Paul on TPC’s policy on asset sales.
Following Paul McMahon’s speech, meeting chair Paul Watson will invite candidates present to sign KOA’s pledge to not sell assets.
The pledge will be present as individual A4 certificates to be signed by one person each (and for them to keep). And as one big A2 sheet for multiple people to sign and for KOA to keep. We’d like to get a photo op with that big signed sheet.
Here is the pledge and its explanatory notes (the pledge is only for candidates to sign, not members of the public):
https://www.cafca.org.nz/uncategorised/2025/07/keep-our-assets-pledge/
I pledge to maintain Christchurch’s key strategic assets in public ownership and control and to utilise the ownership to build a community development strategy for Ōtautahi/Christchurch looking decades into the future.
Notes:
A community development strategy means to utilise the assets in ways which would include:
- Maximising the training of apprentices across all trades associated with the assets
- Provision of retraining opportunities in cases of private sector business failure
- Provide leading models of good employment practices for the private sector to aspire to
- Provide opportunities to expand housing initiatives for tenants and families on low incomes
- Future proofing the assets so infrastructure development is maintained through the long term rather than providing short term profits
- Foster community pride through owning the assets rather than “renting” them from the private sector
- Develop the assets to invest in public transport initiatives with their economic, social and environmental benefits
- Maintain the ability to react immediately in times of crisis (e.g. our airport and port would be our lifelines to the outside world in times of crisis)
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions to the greatest extent possible in order to contribute to the goal of keeping global temperature increases well below +2 degrees C.
Murray Horton
Convenor
Keep Our Assets-Canterbury
