They’ve built it...for you to get behind it
IT’S A BIT LIKE THAT LINE FROM THAT KEVIN COSTNER movie FieldofDreams – mangled a bit over the years to: “Build it and they will come.” (In truth, the actual line was: “Build it and he will come,” but never mind: Popular misuse rules).
In this case, it’s a matter of “Create it – and they will get behind it.” Well that’s the critical, much-hoped-for response to the Road Transport Forum’s development of a truck driver traineeship.
And at the late April launch of TearakituaRoadtosuccess – held, appropriately enough, in “a little tin shed” at longtime Auckland road transport operator Carr & Haslam’s Mt Wellington base – it looks like a matter of so far, so good.
There’s Government acknowledgment that this is a good idea in the form of Cabinet ministers Michael Wood (Minister of Transport and Workplace Relations and Safety) and Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni, both attending.
There’s a pretty good turnout of transport operators who’ve turned up to show their support, joined by reps from industry associations and plenty of the organisations that have actively helped get the traineeship up and running – as Michael Wood puts it an “alphabet soup list of groups” that includes MITO, MSD (Ministry of Social Development), Waka Kotahi NZTA, MSD’s Kiwi Can Do training programme, the Tertiary Education Commission… and more.
But most of important of all, as everyone – including the two Cabinet Ministers – acknowledges, there are three of New Zealand’s first 11 trainees present: Betty Heremaia Sola – a 21-year-old who’s chosen trucking over teaching…
Plus Liana Manu, a 24-year-old mother of two who just “loves driving.” And Shaun Tomai, 19, who decided he wanted to be a truck driver “because you get to work by yourself – you don’t have to rely on a team.”
Wood tells this trio they are “really the stars of the show…..this day is all about you. And it’s about celebrating the steps that you have taken both for yourselves and also in terms of playing a really critical role in what is an exciting and important industry for our country.”
The reason it’s appropriate that the launch is held here is because these three trainees have all gone to work for Carr & Haslam. And because, as RTF CEO Nick Leggett puts it, the company’s boss, Chris Carr, “is an industry champion like no other.”