Councillors seeking re-election are gagged from discussing one of Queenstown’s biggest talking points in years.
The zip-your-lip order came to light when mayoral candidate Vanessa van Uden was approached by Mountain Scene over new revelations in the Queenstown Airport sell-off saga.
Van Uden: “I’m under instruction that we’re not to speak on the airport at all – much as I’d like to.”
Says who? “[Council] management, given there’s a court case happening.”
Thorney’s learnt his lesson
The former All Black standing for Queenstown’s council admits he “lost the plot” last time he was a councillor.
Grahame Thorne skipped more than a dozen meetings while on the Nelson City Council between 2004-07. He controversially refused to resign, claiming he needed the $26,674 salary.
“I should have resigned but the mayor didn’t want me to because I was on his side – I almost had the balance of power,” Thorne says.
“The problem is [the salary] was the only income we had.”
Thorne, 64, first skipped meetings to commentate on the Lions tour of New Zealand in 2005 but became a regular absentee when his son David, then 21, suffered a stroke from a head-high tackle in an under-21 game in May 2006.
“We had come to Christchurch and were paying $500 a week for an unfurnished student flat to look after David. I was between a rock and a hard place but what was I going to do? It was a bad look.”
Fellow councillors even refused to accept his apology at one meeting. Thorne didn’t contest his Nelson seat again but confesses he “lost the plot” once more when standing for Christchurch City Council.
Rather than campaigning, he took off to the Rugby World Cup in France. “It was a doomed bid from day one,” Thorne concedes.
He says Queenstowners shouldn’t be concerned about his commitment now: “I’ve pulled myself toward myself.”
Thorne’s only lived here two years but has visited since 1966.
He hadn’t intended standing but “people started coming to me in the last week”.
“Even my wife said, ‘there’s no one standing for council’.”
Air New Zealand and the Queenstown Community Strategic Assets Group have filed legal actions over the sale of 24.99 to 35 per cent of the resort airport to Auckland International Airport.
The new gag stems from council lawyers, Van Uden says – and she’ll comply.
Mayoral rivals Michael Scott and Simon Hayes understand the airport debating restrictions but Hayes says they’re “annoying”.
He may have an electoral advantage over Van Uden: “I’m able to speak a little more freely.”
It’s not ideal for democracy: “Far from it – there’s nothing about this [airport] deal that’s ideal.”
Hayes is also stunned at new airport revelations.
Mountain Scene has discovered that nine days before councillors learned of the secret share sale, Queenstown Lakes District Council voted for greater transparency from their airport.
A June 29 QLDC meeting finalised a Queenstown Airport Corporation “statement of intent” – a formal document giving QLDC some control over QAC.
Councillors weren’t happy with the draft SOI and made a key change. “The goal of ‘open, meaningful and effective communication with the community’ was added,” official minutes record.
Mountain Scene pointed this out to QAC chairman Mark Taylor.
Taylor claims after the meeting, QLDC staff looked at the existing SOI wording and decided it met councillors’ wishes – so the new wording wasn’t added.
The present wording merely refers to “adequate communication between QAC, the community and elected representatives”.
“I’m bloody gobsmacked,” mayoral hopeful Hayes says.
“If I had a situation where staff, whoever they might be, were changing the directive given them by council – their heads have got to be on the block.”
Scott didn’t want to comment on airport matters.
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