Sustainable Tarras (ST) supports today’s commitment from the new Christchurch City Holdings (CCHL) board seeking increased transparency and community engagement on the Tarras airport, as debated with Christchurch City Council (CCC) at today’s Finance and Performance Committee meeting.

ST wrote to Councillors on Monday seeking that at a minimum they ask Christchurch International Airport to produce the following information as part of their Statement of Intent for 2023-2024:

1. a fully transparent business case, including the average annual flight and passenger forecasts, projected revenue and profitability forecasts for Tarras Airport up to, and beyond, the time of break-even and payback on the initial development costs;
2. the projected impact of Tarras development activities on CIAL dividend payment over the next 30 years;
3. an update on the social licence development including a summary of national and local public sentiment and media coverage;
4. an analysis of the impact of flight diversions away from Christchurch to Tarras on the Christchurch tourism economy, and,
5. an estimation of carbon emissions generated by Tarras Airport, including embodied construction and scope 3 flight emissions and detailed mechanisms to offset these.

We are encouraged by CCC seeking more detailed oversight into the business case for Tarras and for taking our concerns seriously. Today Mayor Mauger was the only council member to vote against increasing the reporting requirements of CIAL. However we are deeply concerned with the suggestion by CCHL Chair, Abby Foote, that a detailed business case will only be provided after a resource consent is secured. Promises of transparency are only worthwhile if a business case, detailing the demand for and costs and benefits of the proposal, are made public well ahead of any consenting process.

It is extremely unusual for public organisations to invest upward of $60 million ratepayer and taxpayer capital on land, design and consenting costs - when that same organisation has yet to confirm it is a good idea.

Consenting programmes for large scale infrastructure can be in excess of four years. Given yet more money was recently invested in land that CIAL previously said it didn’t require, once more without informing their shareholders, we wonder how much all of this is going to cost, before those shareholders can have a clear decision point and have the opportunity to seek out independent advice, such as that offer by the Informed Leaders group to CCC last month.

How a commercial organisation cannot have a business case, when it has finalised a proposal for $1-2 billion dollar infrastructure investment and associated resource consent submission, is unclear to us. And we would certainly question the business governance around such an approach.

Accordingly, we urge the CCHL board and CCC to insist on a business case before any resource consent is sought.

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