Len Brown

Behold – 28 loons challenge MUNZ for King Idiot status.

Well well well, three holes in the ground, what do we have here by a press release co-signed by 28 left wing local board loons of Auckland.

Just when we thought that MUNZ had a monopoly on self-immolating stupidity, the Auckland political left rises up to challenge for King Idiot status.

“In an unprecedented move, 28 Auckland Local Board members from 10 different Boards are uniting to call for Ports of Auckland to return to good faith bargaining and drop plans to outsource jobs at the port.”

The idiots are:

Shale Chambers (Goff mate)
Michael Woods (Goff mate and penis lolly defeatist)
Denise Roche (now a Green MP, hopelessly conflicted in her political hat wearing, shouldn’t she have resigned – November 27 was 7 weeks ago?)
Pippa Cooms (Greenie cyclist action fruit)
Leila Boyle (ex Labour candidate)
Greg Presland (taking the Mickey out of politics as per usual)
Josephine Bartley (ex Labour candidate)
Grant Gillon (ex Alliance MP)
Grame Easte (the left wing Gnome of Mt Albert)

So then, a number of questions for the media to consider:

1. Have the 28 local board loons run out of local issues to consider, and must know apply their considerable business skills to solving the Ports crisis?
2. Did Len Brown know about his army of 28 loons launching into the Ports of Auckland in advance? if yes, did he try and counsel them against stickybeaking? If no, does that mean that Len has been marginalised by his comrades?
3. Does Len Brown approve of the stance of the 28, or does he continue to “back both sides”?
4. If Len disagrees with the 28, will he tell them to shut up and get back to local issues instead of stickybeaking into a council CCO that is tasked by the Mayor and Council to get on with their work?
5. If he won’t condemn them for stickybeaking, does that then mean this is now an official matter to discuss at future council meetings?
6. Is that presser a sign that Labour and the Greens are testing the waters for a plunge into the Ports crisis?
7. Is this just Michael Wood jockeying for position to take over from Phil Goff in Mt Roskill

I wonder what answers might come back after a bit of digging?

As if Len Brown hasn’t got enough on his plate with the POAL dispute and Matt McCarten’s vile hatred, he also has major problems with his Auckland Plan.  The tipline has run so hot over the weekend with information about the mayor’s “visions” for Auckland that I’ve literally run out of paper to print it on.

So much information has come across my desk that it is difficult to find the time to read all of it and it is also hard not to fall off my chair laughing at some of it.

The main issue is the retention of the urban limit. Greenie planners despise removing the urban limit.  They also masturbate over heritage as Len Brown’s chief media mouthpiece, Bernard Orsman, wailed in Saturday’s Herald.

This gnashing of teeth and argy bargy between greenie environmentalist planners has come about because a leaked report on the Auckland Plan by third party consultant developers hired by Len’s council has pretty much said that Len’s intensification model for Auckland is not going to work unless some major changes occur in land zoning and demolition of heritage housing.  Yep, massive re-zoning and demolition of heritage housing.  Remember the outcry from greenie environmentalists when Len stood by and watched those outdated, decrepit old houses torn down in St Heliers?  And what about the reaction from greenie environmentalists in Saturday’s Herald when that old rust bucket in Freemans Bay was going to be demolished?  City Vision’s Shale Chambers (a Labour Party hack) called it a “sick joke”.

Well get your bucket ready Shale because here’s another sick joke for you, and for your party’s leader.  The consultant report said this about Mt Albert:

Substantial intensification opportunities exist. The Unitec site could be substantially master-planned to a high density Campus, similar to the British Columbia University in Vancouver.

This area is capable of supporting substantial market-led intensification, with bold up-zoning.

Mt Albert will be a litmus test for political resilience.

Prepare an intensification master-plan for Mt Albert. Communicate the Plan clearly with the Community.

Council should not believe intensification will occur without major upzoning. Without boldness, intensification will be ad-hoc and low in number.

Mt Albert is a litmus test for political resilience. Without major up-zoning intensification will be sporadic and low quality. Quality upzoning could make Mt Albert a vibrant intensified precinct.

I can’t wait to see David Shearer standing in front of the bulldozers when the developers start demolishing those 80yr old houses in Mt Albert for semi-detached townhouses and units.

As the tipline has been running so hot this weekend on this stuff, I will reproduce more material in coming days that will show Len’s compact city model is, to quote Shale Chambers, a sick joke.

Tax cheat Matt McCarten continues to hate on Len Brown:

When Len Brown was asked for a response to Ports of Auckland’s plan to casualise the jobs of waterfront workers, couldn’t he have simply said that as Mayor he supported well-paid, fulltime jobs for workers in his city?

Instead he bent over backwards to distance himself from the wharfies and asked the workers this week to negotiate “more flexible work practices to reflect changing trends of the international shipping market”.

Is our Mayor for real? What trends?

Yes, rather than feather the beds of the already well paid unionists.

It seems our “people’s Mayor” is more concerned with not offending the political and business elites. And anyway, how exactly was the Mayor expecting the wharfies to negotiate when Gibson told them his plan to eliminate fulltime jobs was non-negotiable? The workers either agree to give up their jobs or he’ll sack them.

When you have wharfies sitting on $800,000 pension plans and with very generous redundancy provisions you start having to follow the money if you are looking for reasons why the union has been so intransigent.

The Mayor’s responsibility is to represent the will of his citizens and act in the interests of their city. To sit on the sideline and pretend the port dispute is merely about wages is naive, or disingenuous at worse. It is grand-scale theft by the very people we are paying to run it.

It’s time to step up for the people, Len. Either demand Gibson’s sacking or stand on the sideline watching hundreds of workers who voted for you lose their livelihoods. The next phase will be to sell the port.

The reason there is a board and ownership structure is to stop speechifying tax cheats from ever delivering on threats to sack people who are actually doing their jobs.

Gosh, aren’t we lucky that the Maritime Union didn’t strike during the Rugby World Cup. They could have also easily started striking before the November 27 election, and got a lot of publicity. Either of these two timeframes could have caused significant strife.

MUNZ and POAL started negotiating in early September.

Yet, MUNZ could have easily have had strikes during October and November, indeed even late September, when they realised that POAL wanted casualisation.

Yet they didn’t start striking until December 1. (They announced their first strike on November 18)

So, random impertinent time:

Who asked the Maritime Union to hold off striking until December 1?

Why was this date chosen when RWC and the election would have been perfect moments to apply pressure?

Was it Len Brown who told them to back off, who didn’t need another crisis during the Rugby World Cup after his rail failures?

Was it Phil Goff and the Labour Party, who didn’t want bully boy antics from a union costing them votes?

I think we should be told, do you?

The Maritime Union in Auckland is now facing a catastrophe. Not the loss of the jobs by the Port saying enough of their unreasonable demands. Rather this catastrophe is yet to be realised by the union.

You see they have over 300 workers at the Ports of Auckland, plus another 150 odd Ports staff in other areas of Port operations that they represent. Those members pay union dues.

Good accurate sources tell me that the amount of union dues per annum paid to the Maritime Union in Auckland exceeds $500,000 per annum.

Right now those union members are not only losing wages through silly strikes, but now they also face losing their jobs as a result of union intransigence. their union bosses like Gary Parsloe though won’t have gone without a single cent as the crisis deepened, they have the union dues they picked from the pockets of their members to live on. Half a million dollars per annum picked from those pockets.

If I was a union member I would be looking very closely right now if it was all worth it. I would wonder why the union refuses to have proper secret ballots on issues and why they continue with the culture of fear and intimidation that racks their workplace that other workplaces eradicated by making their ballots secret. And If I was a union member I would certainly be questioning the value of those weekly deductions from my salary. I most certainly would be questioning the payment of political donations to Len Brown and to Mike Lee and wonder if it was worth spending all that cash campaigning on behalf of MMP as their jobs slid from under them.

Now as the 300 strong work force is split into 3 or maybe 4 smaller companies they may well wonder if the union deserves their support any more or if they’d be better looking for another union to better represent their interests, because it seems the Maritime Union is more interested in causing unrest, paying donations of union funds to politicians and sending cash to the Labour party than representing them.

The Socialist Aotearoa folks and assorted socialists aren’t happy with Len Brown. They just posted this their Facebook wall:

That is a bit unfair on Len Brown. He is only doing what he thinks best to protect Auckland’s investment in the Port Company after the legacy of Mike Lee which saw massive write down’s in value. He did after all promise to govern for all of Auckland not just the Union bosses of the Maritime Union.

Len Brown has broken his silence and come out backing his board at Ports of Auckland:

Auckland Mayor Len Brown has issued an ultimatum to the Maritime Union in the bitter industrial dispute on the city’s wharves, saying there must be more flexibility in work practices to make the port more productive and profitable for the council.

In his first interview since news of the port’s loss of Fonterra export business broke last Wednesday, Mr Brown said he expected the stoush between Ports of Auckland and the union to be resolved soon.

“I would encourage them to do everything they can as loyal Aucklanders to resolve this issue without any further unnecessary time wasting,” he said.

Mr Brown – a member of the Labour Party who received a $2000 donation from the Maritime Union towards his 2010 election campaign – yesterday said the board and management of the 100 per cent council-owned port company had his full confidence but he refused to express confidence in the union, which he was not responsible for.

Mr Brown said the donation did not mean he was in the pocket of the union.

Good to see and perhaps Len Brown will be a bit more careful in future about accepting donations from union, though it is more likely that he will simply hide it like he did for the vast majority of his other donation via a secret trust.

The Maritime Union needs to pull its head in now rather than rely on Hobbit Haters and failed campaign managers for spreading their message

The best investment the Maritime Union ever made was its financial contribution to Auckland Council politicians at the supercity elections.

We now know that both Mike Lee and Len Brown were both given $2000 each by the Maritime Union. We can also hazard a guess that they provided “informal and voluntary” labour to help deliver pamphlets, knock on doors and put up signs, because that was precisely the modus operandi of unions in the supercity elections, and we also know that other unions were providing this labour to Len Brown and other politicians like Richard Northey.

So Len Brown has probably been dodging the media and avoiding making comments, not because he wants to be studiously independent, but because he owes favours to the Maritime Union. Len’s wishy washy comments, while tempting to put down to cowardice, are actually because he’s being influenced by the Maritime Union to stay out, because they gave him money.

Mike Lee, on the other hand, has been repaying the favour with gusto and enthusiasm.

Lee has been on the record voting against efforts to back the Ports Board, and has been publicly attacking those who have been expressing opinions that the Ports of Auckland board should be backed. The $2000 donation from the Maritime Union has bought them a public attack dog in a most influential place.

I can’t think of any circumstance in which a member of the public might think that Mike Lee would be able to give an unbiased opinion given he received a significant cash donation to help him get elected. In fact it was his only declared donation. It looks so obvious that he is conflicted that he shouldn’t have participated in the debate. The sum involved, $2000, is arguably small bikkies for a Mayoral campaign, but actually quite a useful sum of money for a council race. And then, there’s the free labour the union probably provided as well.

The questions the media need to ask are this:

Should Mike Lee have participated in the December 8 Accountability and Performance committee meeting vote on supporting the Ports Board given that he had received money from the Maritime Union and could realistically be expected to be biased or conflicted?

Had he sought advice on this potential for a conflict on interest with the CEO, as good politicians should do prior to participating in such votes?

What other politicians have received donations from the Maritime Union at the supercity?

What votes have they participated in, and how did they vote?

Are the voices in Mike Lee’s head singing barbershop now that he’s been found out?

Someone needs to ask Len Brown and Mike Lee a question:

Is the real reason why you won’t come out and back the Ports of Auckland board because you accepted donations from the Maritime Union at the last supercity elections?

Here, in this Jonathan Marshall article from Stuff in December 2010, it shows Len Brown accepted a $2000 donation from the Maritime Union.

Donors Mr Brown was happy to reveal included SkyCity, which handed over $15,000, and the Maritime Union, $2000. The Labour Party donated leaflets valued at $1050.

Not mentioned is the free labour provided by the union members to left wing politicians also (because that’s how the left operate).

It also transpires that Mike Lee got a cheque from his union mates as well. In fact the Maritime Union was Mike Lee’s sole donor.

The Maritime Union gave $2000 each to Mr Brown and Auckland Council transport committee chairman Mike Lee, who listed no other donations in his election returns.

Considering he did get a cheque from his union mates, its probably something he should have declared before he voted at the Accountability and Performance Committee on 8 December. He was in the hock of the Maritime Union for campaign donations, he really shouldn’t have participated at all.

I hope someone asks this question, because it may reveal why Len and Mike won’t front up on behalf of Auckland Ratepayers – they owe a big favour to the Maritime Union.

And then, someone needs to ask questions of the Auditor General.

Len Brown was unavailable because he was too busy holidaying to respond to the Ports crisis, but not too busy to appear in a self-promoting fluff piece in the Herald.

It seems that Len Brown doesn’t really have his priorities on being the Mayor for All of Auckland like he promised.

He’d prefer to talk about his favourite books and movies rather than working to get the Port back to work.