Nine councillors have put their signatures to a move to stop the airport sale. Photo: 123rf.com
A majority of city councillors are now against the sale of the council's shares in Wellington Airport, casting doubt on an earlier decision to sell.
Nine councillors have put their signatures to a move to stop the sale, three months after a vote in May came out in favour, with four councillors changing their minds.
Councillor Nureddin Abdurahman, the mover of the notice of motion opposing the sale, said it ordered a halt on all work to progress the sale, and all work to set up the fund which would have stored the proceeds.
It had been signed by Ben McNulty, Nīkau Wi Neera, Teri O'Neill, Diane Calvert, Ray Chung, Iona Pannett, Nicola Young and Tony Randle.
The notice asked council officers to report back to elected members with advice on the best way to undo the decision, and removed power from council committees to make decisions on the issue, forcing it to be dealt with by the entire council.
"Some polls show 74 percent of Wellingtonians don't support this," Abdurahman said.
"Now we have the number, the majority of councillors are saying, 'We don't want the airport to be sold'."
Councillor Tony Randle said three centre-right councillors had originally voted in favour of selling the shares, as it came with a promise from the council not to spend its rainy day fund of $272 million.
But since then, the money had been spent anyway, with the plan being to replace it with the proceeds from the sale of the shares.
Randle said that was not good enough, and he, Nicola Young and Diane Calvert were now changing their vote as a matter of principle.
"We had one condition to get our votes - make the money put aside for Wellington get bigger, not just change the shape."
The decision would now go back to a vote of the whole council.