Time to stop asking questions and focus on solutions

The state of the Manawatu economy, and the reasons why it should be booming, but isn’t quite, has surely been analysed to within an inch of its life.

The Central Economic Development Agency has just released results of an independently-conducted business survey.

Although claimed to be unprecedented in terms of its thoroughness, it has rather confirmed familiar themes, rather than delivering blinding new insights.

A flick through the files shows that people have been saying much the same things about economic development and regional growth for at least the past 30 years.

Take this Manawatu Standard news clipping from 1987.

‘‘Nearly $100,000 will be needed to start the Palmerston North City janine.rankin@fairfaxmedia.co.nz

Council’s newly-formed economic committee off in its aims to stimulate the local economy and create jobs.’’

The first step was to be a study ‘‘to identify growth sectors in the economy, define barriers to the opportunities for local growth, and develop plans to improve the city’s performance’’.

And as a bit of a footnote, former deputy mayor Bernard Forde urged a more regional focus.

‘‘The local economy does not start and stop at the city boundary,’’ he said.

The initiative led to the establishment of the Enterprise Board, which started out purposefully, struggled to maintain momentum, lost council funding and eventually folded.

Moving right along to July, 1995, an economic forum reflected on issues of significance.

Toyota NZ national customer service centre manager Alan Simpson said the council’s past attempts at economic development had been fragmented and relatively ineffective.

Hortresearch chief executive James Mcwha said many of the city’s key organisations were here because of ‘‘habit or history’’, and bemoaned the fact Palmerston North did not feel like a university city.

Then, a clipping from February, 2007:

‘‘Vision Manawatu is set to launch an assault on a widespread skills shortage that continues to hold back the region’s economy.

‘‘The investigation comes on the back of a survey...’’

Its business confidence survey showed some 68 per cent of respondents believed the local economy would be the same or better in the next six months, and 77 per cent expected their own business to stay the same or improve.

By June that year, Vision Manawatu looked set to get an extra $100,000 – $75,000 from the city council and $25,000 from Manawatu District, to be spent on strategic imperatives, such as a regional labour strategy.

Later we brought in an international expert to tell us why the city wasn’t quite making it. Charles Landry found Palmerston North close to average comfortable rather than captivating - and in danger of slipping into ‘‘imperceptible, yet gentle decline’’.

And now we have Ceda’s business confidence survey.

Incidentally, that magic $100,000 figure comes up again as the price of a breakthrough.

It started with a series of 37 indepth interviews and 10 focus groups that helped shape the survey.

What people were saying in those sessions reflected something of the business mood (quite confident) throwing up some hardy perennials (the challenge of convincing skilled people they’ll like it once they get here), about doing business with councils, and the advantages of our location.

It’s an interesting, but not unfamiliar, mixture of optimism and frustration.

And then, the themes were worked into questions for the wider telephone survey.

With 350 participants, we’re told the scale of this survey is unprecedented.

And it actually revealed a stronger mood of ‘‘cautious optimism’’ than some of the original doubters suggested.

Some 58 per cent are confident about the growth prospects for their own businesses in the next year or two, and 45 per cent are confident the regional economy will also grow.

But that’s still rather a dip from those 2007 figures Vision Manawatu had to work with.

Is it over yet? Is it time to stop asking the questions and focusing on solutions?

Probably not, as Ceda will need to revisit the survey in some ongoing way to measure performance now that we seem to have proven where the goal posts are.

END NOTE:

A balance has been struck between people and their property rights, and what researchers and planners think is best.

Resource management commissioners have chucked out proposed District Plan rules that would have restricted how much high fencing Palmerston North homeowners could hide behind.

Evidence was heard, that the new regime would have ensured some better, safer community outcomes than leaving it all to individual choice.

But that information needs to be explained and shared in an educative way, rather than imposed in rules people dismiss as ‘‘silly’’ if they did not suit their particular taste and situation, or simply did not understand them.