meta_query custom post type not displaying result

I have a custom post type ‘news’ installed with a custom meta box ‘author-post-class’ which stores an id from a custom post type of ‘people’. (i could use authors but its a long story!)

I am using the query below for when you are on a user profile for it to display news items the person is an author of.

$args = array(
									'post_type' => 'news',
									'meta_query' => array(
						                array(
						                	'key' => 'author-post-class',
							                'value' => '$post->ID',
							                'compare' => '='
							                )
						            )

								);
								$new_query = new WP_Query( $args );

However, i can see the database has store the key / value correctly and the news item id. However, i cannot get it to produce a result.