Jonathan Milne

I understand that they have quite recently delivered a new proposal to the ministers.

So initially they'd sort of agreed to some solutions around their assets, around their airport and other assets.

But ministers came back and said, no, not good enough.

We want a merger.

We want the council and the trust fully merged so that all of those assets that the trust has are available to support and maintain public assets, public infrastructure on the islands.

The council, I understand, has now gone back to ministers with a proposal that will...

give the government a lot of what it wants.

So basically it would create a new governance entity from the trust and the council that would be responsible for all the public infrastructure on the island pretty much, the port, the airport, the wind farm, the roads, the water, maybe not power but most of the others.

What they want to carve out is the key revenue-earning assets, the fisheries and the forestry, which they say should still be managed separately.

This new entity, this new governance entity, I understand they are proposing would have a ministerial representative on the board,

but it wouldn't have as previously proposed a taxpayer shareholding.

So the government wouldn't own a stake in it, but would have a say in how it's run.

So we're yet to hear back.

We're yet to find out what Shane Jones and Mark Patterson think of this idea.

I don't think this one's over yet.

I think that the Minister Jones in particular is going to want basically some means for the government to have a share in it, to have a stakeholding in this.

Some of them have been there.

Their families have been there generations and generations and generations.

It's home.

They love it.