Mayor Brown: it's quite simple.....

The Ports issue can be put back on a sensible course by Mr Brown saying two things:

a) there will be no wholesale redundancy and contracting out arrangements in POAL whilst he's on the job;

b) he requires POAL and MUNZ to hammer out long-term performance arrangements, in the context of a broader debate about port capacity in NZ. He can do this with confidence, for MUNZ knows that it must drive progress in negotiations, much as it did in last week's mediation. MUNZ is on a steep learning curve at the moment.

In passing, the more one discovers about POAL management's intransigence in the mediation process, the more one is forced into the belief that the "manufactured crisis" argument is irrefutable.