Richard Healey on Facebook, 20/05/20
99% of people will not be able to read between the lines here, including Aurora's board and the council.
Aurora's spending from 2016 until now has been completely without commerce commission agreement. Aurora have consistently tried to make out that they have partnered with the Commerce Commission through all of this. They have not. The WSP report for instance was entirely an Aurora excercise. The only input from the commission was for them to suggest changes to the terms of reference. Aurora selected WSP, Aurora paid WSP, Aurora reviewed the report before it went public.
The laughable Toby Stevenson repeatedly told me that both the commission and Aurora regarded that exercise as a definitive, comprehensive and accurate review of the condition of the network but never blinked when, during a meeting with GM network Glenn Coates, Coates admitted it was a largely desktop exercise that was a first attempt to get a condition assessment of the network and nothing more.
The key thing to understand is the difference between shareholder support for the company, the council injecting money to prop it up, and the company borrowing the money to support itself. Aurora has been insolvent now for years. Every year it has spent its total income - and borrowed that much money again to keep operating. It was Aurora's choice to do that - the commission took no part in that decision. The CPP process looks only at what revenue is needed to maintain a safe, reliable network going forward. The question of how the massive debt that Aurora has racked up will ever be repaid is not one that can, or should, be addressed via a CPP.
Aurora's spending from 2016 until now has been completely without commerce commission agreement. Aurora have consistently tried to make out that they have partnered with the Commerce Commission through all of this. They have not. The WSP report for instance was entirely an Aurora excercise. The only input from the commission was for them to suggest changes to the terms of reference. Aurora selected WSP, Aurora paid WSP, Aurora reviewed the report before it went public.
The laughable Toby Stevenson repeatedly told me that both the commission and Aurora regarded that exercise as a definitive, comprehensive and accurate review of the condition of the network but never blinked when, during a meeting with GM network Glenn Coates, Coates admitted it was a largely desktop exercise that was a first attempt to get a condition assessment of the network and nothing more.
The key thing to understand is the difference between shareholder support for the company, the council injecting money to prop it up, and the company borrowing the money to support itself. Aurora has been insolvent now for years. Every year it has spent its total income - and borrowed that much money again to keep operating. It was Aurora's choice to do that - the commission took no part in that decision. The CPP process looks only at what revenue is needed to maintain a safe, reliable network going forward. The question of how the massive debt that Aurora has racked up will ever be repaid is not one that can, or should, be addressed via a CPP.
[emphasis added by editor]
