To our vulnerabilities
Southland Regional Development Strategy chairman Tom Campbell fleshes out a progress update. reports.
Expect only a light environmental impact from the Southland Economic Development Strategy’s favoured projects, chairman Tom Campbell has told business leaders.
When he took up his role last October he had expected to emerge with a strategy based on intensified land use, lignite mining and offshore oil.
But he indicated at the Chamber of Commerce meeting on Thursday that aquaculture, student numbers and tourism offered the three biggest economic opportunities ahead.
Environmentally they didn’t have zero impact – nothing did – but it would be ‘‘a relatively light touch’’.
The carbon footprint of aquaculture was one tenth that of red meat production, he said.
Diversifying the economy had, for him, become an equally important goal as what had previously been the strategy’s emphatic bottom line of population growth.
‘‘No sooner was the ink dry’’ on the initial strategy discussion document last October than Southland’s economic performance had tumbled.
Initial strategy talks
Commodity prices fell, taking the region’s GDP down from $5.5 billion to $5 billion.
A vulnerability in terms of economic stability was that the fortunes of aluminium and dairy tended to rise and fall together.
Campbell likened the region’s economy to a tripod. Those two industries each provided one leg and ‘‘everything else makes up the third’’.
He believed a fourth leg was needed, incorporating ‘‘new industries of real substance’’, like aquaculture, and potentially sheep and goat milk. Cough, cough As for recent discussion of the prospects of offshore oil drilling requiring massive development of SouthPort during his lifetime, Campbell – who is also a director of the Todd Corporation – gave his most pithy summary yet.
He turned his head from the audience and gave the bullshit cough.
Campbell had some bleak feedback from consultation and focus group to put before his chamber audience.
Easy or hard?
Far from being an easy place to do business, Southland was seen as one of the hardest.
The goal of making it the easiest would take years to complete but it was still possible to have meaningful improvements happen quickly.
The was mainly to be addressed through the councils and was a matter of mindsets as well as rules, he said.
Other chastening feedback: people coming to live here had found the locals only superficially friendly.
‘‘Courteous and helpful, but not inclusive. It goes no further than being pleasant.’’
And even that was just short-lived. The locals quickly moved on from polite introductions, leaving it hard for new arrivals to form the connections they needed to feel part of the Southland culture.
One proposal to increase the rate of migrants really becoming Southlanders was to establish a physical ‘‘centre for social inclusion’’.
Employers continued to find it difficult getting people to come and live in Southland.
Even if the targeted employee was willing, the spouse and children would say they didn’t want to come, even if they had never been here.
‘‘So we have a bad image. If we have any image at all.’’
New brand
The slogan ‘‘ Get a life in Southland’’ was almost certain to be settled on, and the campaign would contrast the benefits of living here with the likes of Auckland, where 60 per cent of a household’s combined salaries still didn’t pay the mortgage.
‘‘If you can afford one and aren’t living in a car’’.
Charging ahead
A goal of doubling tourist revenue to $1 billion only represented Southland getting its share of tourist spending which, at present, it didn’t.
And not because people didn’t want to come.
‘‘The reason is because there’s nothing to spend your money on. Everything’s free.’’
Developments like Bill Richardson Transport World already established in Tay St, and Classic Motorcycle Mecca, coming to the previous H & J Smith Outdoor World site, were examples of the way ahead.
So, hopefully, would be a new city art gallery, charging visitors not locals.
The broader project to upgrade the inner city would be given a theme: Skip a generation and create a contemporary regional city.
Campbell acknowledged that the implication was a generation’s opportunity had already been missed.
Though inner-city Invercargill’s building decay was widely acknowledged he had been surprised to learn the extent of it. It had been worsening rather than improving.
The strategy would come with priority projects and locations.
The heritage debate
Contemporary thinking did not mean neglecting the city’s heritage.
‘‘That’s very important. But we can’t protect everything.’’ What about the workers? On the present trajectory, during the next decade 5000 more Southlanders would retire than there would be young people to join the workforce.
That many more workers would be needed to maintain the economy at the size it was at the moment.
Increasing the number of international students in tertiary and secondary training offered a trifecta of benefits: increased population; vibrancy as they got out and about; and as an important source of potential employees.
Dave Kennedy, citing the recent city forum on the shortage of high quality low-cost housing, asked about implications of needing to house thousands of extra international students.
Campbell accepted that this was a critical issue.
‘‘They should not be competing in the general market,’’ he said.
‘‘It needs something a bit smarter than that. So one of the provisos with international students is that we provide student housing to avoid these people competing for houses.’’ Politicians await The draft strategy is scheduled to be reported in mid-September to the Southland mayoral forum [comprising mayors and their chief executives] which commissioned it.
Reaching targets
If the forum nodded in the right places, the work of the next few months would be to concentrate on how the targets would be achieved, whose tasks it would be, how much it would cost and how it would be funded.
Extensive public consultation would also be needed between the mayoral forum and the finalisation of the draft strategy, Campbell acknowledged. He saw this including town-hall type meetings.
Asked about the potential complication of the October local body elections raising questions about whether SoRDS should be consulting with outgoing or incoming mayors and councils, he said that while nobody wanted delay, he would be guided by the mayoral forum.
‘‘That’s politics — and that’s above my pay scale,’’ he said.
Candidates, one questioner added, could be asked to state their positions before the election. Do you like the slogan ‘Get a life in Southland’? Email news@stl.co.nz or letters@stl.co.nz