The post you are reporting:
Howard, I stepped down as Chairman of the DPPT and left the organisation in December 2014. Actions that I had undertaken to do were I to be selected as a Non-Executive Director of the DHB. I delivered exactly as I had undertaken to do. I have also previously said the same on this forum.
Neither Samantha or I are members of the DPPT.
However, both Samantha and I are members of the community with significant insights as to how the activities of the port impact on it and our wider experience and knowledge of disparate subject matters will add to the richness and diversity of the Board. We were selected after a rigorous and extended interview and selection process by a diverse panel of interviewers. Perhaps Peter's reference to the approval of the HRO and the consequent appointment of two community directors being a beginning, when read without the clear bias that you show Mr Vic, merely means that Peter sees it as the first major step in ensuring that the community has a real voice at the highest level within the port which will ensure that the spectre of a private equity sale, so ably defeated by the appearance of the DPPT on the scene, will not again hove into view to haunt all of our futures.
Your continued misunderstanding/misrepresentation of the situations both past and present with regards to the DPPT is disappointing Mr Vic.
Even though I am no longer a member of it, I did Chair the organisation towards some very hard won victories to ensure that the port was not sold off to remote private equity interests and that had the government of the day chosen to proceed with a sale, the community was funded and in a position to have been able to buy it and own it in perpetuity - I am very pleased with all that the organisation achieved.
You forget Mr Vic;
it was not the DPPT that wanted to put the port up for sale - it was the DHB
it was not the DPPT that wanted to get rid of the DHB - it was the DHB
and since the private equity sale proposed by the DHB was rejected by the Govt and a community led buy-out was ruled out, the DPPT has not wanted to get rid of the DHB.
When I was still Chair (prior to December 2014), once the private equity sale of the port was rejected and a community buy-out was ruled out, the DPPT pushed for reform of the DHB and lobbied hard to ensure that the port would be reformed and would change the way in which it approached relationships with its community and its users. Many of those changes have begun to happen.
Now (and since December 2014) that I am a private individual I do not want to abolish the DHB or get rid of it. I want to see it working in harmony with its community, listening to and acting on the concerns raised by the community, taking fully into account the negative impacts that its growing throughput can have on its stakeholders and making informed and wise decisions to implement mitigation as much as possible.
Mr Vic, I have not been in the least bit untruthful and I really do resent your insinuation that I have. I have not been a member of the DPPT since December 2014. So I am neither a member of the group that Peter Chairs or 'with' that group in anyway other than that we might harbour some of the same aspirations for all to conduct business in an open, transparent and honest manner with all good faith.
The comments I post here are my own and do not represent the views of any organisation or public body.