Invercargill City Council will no longer do business with companies the United Nations has linked to Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory, after councillors voted 8-3 on Tuesday to change the council's procurement policy.
The decision reverses the outcome of a vote last year, when a similar proposal was defeated on the casting vote of then-mayor Nobby Clark.
The change ties the council's purchasing rules to a UN Human Rights Council database of companies involved in building or maintaining settlements. That list has grown from 97 companies when the council last considered the issue to 158 today, and includes Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor.
Listed companies can still be used in exceptional circumstances, but only with the approval of the chief executive.
Group manager Patricia Christie told the meeting that accommodation suppliers on the list had been used three times in the past 12 to 18 months. Her report noted that both the UN list and the council's procurement policy had been updated since the proposal was last considered.
How the vote fell
Councillors Lisa Tou-McNaughton, Andrea de Vries, Steve Broad, Marcus Lush, Darren Ludlow, Alex Crackett, Ian Pottinger and Ria Bond voted in favour. Mayor Tom Campbell and councillors Barry Stewart and Trish Boyle voted against. Councillors Grant Dermody and Alan Arnold were absent.
The matter came back before the council through a notice of motion signed by Tou-McNaughton, de Vries, Broad, Lush and Ludlow, which asked for the earlier agenda item to be re-presented. Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa had presented a 270-signature petition to the council last month.
Campbell argued for leaving the procurement policy unchanged. He said international affairs were the responsibility of central government, which had repeatedly chosen not to impose sanctions, and that the council had no staff with expertise in foreign relations.
He also warned that groups with grievances about places such as Ukraine or Tibet could bring similar requests, and that a lengthening UN list would carry a cost for the council.
Tou-McNaughton urged colleagues to "be on the right side of history". Broad said the council could not remain neutral in the face of what the UN had concluded was genocide, and that silence amounted to complicity.
Crackett rejected the mayor's view that foreign affairs sat outside the council's role, pointing out that councillors would travel to China with the mayor next month on a trip focused on international relations.
Pottinger, who became emotional while speaking, said the issue was about humanity and the right of Palestinians to live freely. "And this should be the concern of everybody, including the New Zealand government," he said.
Members of the public gallery cheered when the result was announced.
Invercargill joins a small group of New Zealand local bodies to have adopted such a stance. Environment Southland already excludes companies involved in West Bank settlements from its contracts.
