Ka¯ piti open for business
Te Auaha, Wellington’s NZ Institute of Creativity, hosted another play by the Indian Ink Theatre Company.
Mrs Krishnan’s Party was a sequel to popular play Krishnan’s Dairy. And what a pleasant experience it was to meet Peka Peka residents, environmentalists and patron of the arts, Sir Roderick and Dame Gillian Dean. I was chuffed to be introduced to Malaysian Indian playwright/ actor, Jacob Rajan. His play, the critically acclaimed Krishnan’s Dairy, broke box office records. It re-framed and politicised the kiwi experience of the “Corner Dairy”. Interestingly, the sequel continued its relevance with Mrs Krishnan revealing she lost her husband through a violent robbery. How often do we see that on the news. Ka¯ piti dairies have, thankfully, been relatively safe. Stuff News did run a story in September 19 on the tough challenges ahead for convenience stores like dairies. Higher rents, changing customer demands, and competition from supermarkets has seen sales plunge by 18 per cent over 2012 to 2017.
A few years ago, Ka¯ piti resident and National Party dynamo within especially the Asian business community, Aashish Suri, was toying with the idea of having a chamber of commerce for Asian businesses in Ka¯ piti to give them a voice. While the need still exists it was thought that the existing organisation should be able to fulfil this function. It’s important, especially in relation to local government, for organisations to be representative of its catchment. Grey Power, for instance, has around 5000 members. A solid platform from which to declare their interests. Compare that to the local chamber of commerce which has 300 members, with around 200 being actual businesses. The chamber’s recent public statement on a survey they conducted amongst their members is revealing. Only 76 members responded and of the 76 respondents only 48 percent believed Council’s open for business strategy was not working. That’s less that 38 businesses. The minutiae of that figure becomes magnified when you note that Kapiti has around 4200 registered businesses.
This is not the first time I have raised the point that democracy is also a numbers game. At the recent mayoral event, for the Electra Business Awards entrants, I had invited the chamber to speak and was glad to see it take the opportunity to recruit for members.
The chamber has a dedicated, and perhaps over worked leadership committed to promoting local business interests.
It has worked well together with council in helping secure Air Chathams. Council is interested in the views of the businesses who had responded to the chamber’s survey with a negative view of council’s commitment to its open for business strategy. In defence of council, the strategy is a journey towards an end. It’s not a declaration of a perfect current reality. Council definitely needs to keep improving its ability to respond to the needs of business but it’s a fact that local authorities work within a regulatory framework created by central government. So really, there can be no perfect open for business status. Free enterprise works within a regulatory and businesses also depend on some of these very regulations to protected them from unfair competition. I welcome the chamber to this journey of imperfection while supporting their need to be relevant to Ka¯ piti’s 4200 registered businesses.