Wayne's World

THE HARD WORK STARTS NOW...but first

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 19:02:00 +0000

....an enormous thank you to all who chose to vote for me and for all those who worked hard to get the message out there.
Again, I thank you.

Brownie

The Wayne Brown That I Know

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 00:29:00 +0000

Wayne came to Kerikeri about 30 years ago. He was poor, then, and hasn't forgotten what that was like. He set up an engineering business, and it grew steadily.

I taught his children. They were polite, intelligent, and well mannered. Wayne checked occasionally, to ensure that his children were getting the best education we could offer. He portrayed as a loving and caring father, with his childrens interests at heart. Their schooling began and finished at Kerikeri schools. No flash Auckland schools for his kids, although by this time his business had grown enough that he could probably have afforded it.

As his business grew, so did his questioning of local bodies, their functions, and their accountability. By now, he was able to invest in land and buildings. Around this time, incredibly untrue rumours began, about his motives and daring, in questioning local bodies. I firmly believe that this was encouraged by members of local bodies that were having the utmost difficulty with accountability of themselves at the time.Not unlike what is happening now, if the truths known.He would have been blamed for the sun coming up in the East if that were possible. While this was going on, he was supporting young people at University, horticultural students, surfboarders, rugby players, and anything else where he could see a vital need. Finally, he tired of the harrassment, and moved to Mangonui.

In the 1990,s governments of the time recognised a man with outstanding intellect, and business acumen. He was asked to work with failing government organisations. His success in this field can only be gauged and remembered by the times he has been recalled to repeat the exercises.

Wayne does not need the financial reward of being our Mayor. He could live in any part of the World, and be successful. He has chosen to offer himself for this job because of his passion for Northland, his desire to turn our prosperity around, and provide a place where our young people can find jobs, and look forward to their future with confidence. No one could question his ability to do so.

We cannot afford to let this chance go. A man with humble beginnings, a huge success rate, respected by Government, a loving husband and father with boundless energy and enthusiasm. He can turn Northland back into not just a place, but a way of life.

Noelene Starr
Kerikeri

WOULDN’T IT BE GREAT IF THEY ELIMINATED THE REAL RISKS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:59:00 +0000

Anyone who has applied to FNDC for permission to do anything up here recently will have noted a hardening attitude to information. The demands for paper are now legendary for any application and you have to wonder what is driving this.

Well it has been explained to me (sort of) that council is toughening up to reduce the risk of it being sued. On the face of it that sounds sensible but as usual that’s not what is happening and those of you who have luckily restricted your council involvement to paying rates probably haven’t heard too many complaints so think things are OK.

Well they’re not and the reason you don’t hear is that there is a climate of fear developing where folk are scared to complain in case their case gets held up even longer and becomes even more difficult to comply with.

Individual coastal dwellers now face the need for engineering reports on the possibility of damage in the distant future from global warming super-storms accompanied with violent wave action. Nobody wants to face this, but also any engineer that writes reports about such an unknown future isn’t worth hiring. If council are worried about such things they should commission such reports as they won’t just affect an individual’s property, they will affect large areas.

In the meantime council continue to approve subdivisions without sewerage treatment when there are plenty of sections on the market already and there is endless evidence that on site effluent systems, no matter how sophisticated just don’t work.

FNDC grill developers endlessly over traffic movements requiring passing bays in 50kph areas when the rest of the world is slowing urban traffic down with speed bumps and other traffic management furniture. FNDC write reports on cycle-ways yet there isn’t even a footpath linking tightly knit communities like Mangonui and Coopers Beach.

Our approval systems need to be simplified and the standards of what developers put in need to be improved. All new roads should be hot-mix sealed and have footpaths as well as cycle-ways all leading to sewered sections. This will stop law-suits and save ratepayers paying for stuff that should have been there in the first place.

When does tongue in cheek become stick in the eye?

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:58:00 +0000

I am quite keen on light-hearted banter and criticism of privilege and power of organizations that sometimes take themselves too seriously. I like to support the underdog in their battles with bureaucracy and as a person who has some experience of being in charge of large bureaucracies, I like to remind staff that they are there for those on the outside, not for themselves.

I don’t like personal attacks on people, particularly those who cannot answer and although I criticise silliness and pomposity of organizations I avoid personal attacks, the worst of which are those carried out either behind someone’s back or from a hidden position such as a nom de plume. This type of action is cowardly and indefensible.

There are times for nom de plumes where they protect a writer from a hierarchy that may be in a position to penalise the unidentified writer. This could occur if someone felt worried that criticising an organization like a planning authority might mean that the authority would turn down their application.

Last week a nasty cowardly letter from a writer under the nom de plume Jude was printed in the Age. The first bit of the letter picked on views I had aired in this column and that’s fine. The last bit was a series of completely untrue personal assertions about me which unfortunately I have to use this column to deny, just in case there is anyone out there who thinks that I did anything other than support the local health services during my term as Chair of Northland Health.

As Peter Dryburgh would attest, I had several minor surgical operations carried out on me by him in the Kaitaia Hospital during the period when the board spent some very scarce millions on updating the hospital. Did anyone think that a local board member would move against his local hospital?

With regard to Auckland Hospital, the new hospital which serves many in Northland was completed on time and on budget, the $100 million annual operating loss has all but disappeared with no services being reduced and in fact more work and productivity than before, and in a sector where this is not generally the case.

Presumably Jude finds fault in having the power restored to Auckland as occurred after my appointment to chair Vector out of that mess. Such letters demean both this paper and our local population for showing that we harbour such persons within.

WHAT WE ALL SAID LAST THURSDAY

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:58:00 +0000

I have not yet commented on any of the articles that surround me each week but last Thursday my fellow commentators covered fields in which I probably have had more experience than the writers themselves.

This is in no ways a means of picking on them as I enjoy friendly relationships with both John Carter and the Mayor and it is quite well known that Shane Jones has been a cobber of mine for a long time.

Jonesy chose to comment on the Mercury Energy power disconnection and the unfortunate consequences that followed. John’s piece was probably not even written by him, as it appeared to be the usual National Party line that my party is better than your party on health delivery and the Mayor chose to highlight council’s belated acceptance that something is very wrong with their consents department and announced very laudable goals to fix it.

With regard to electricity supply, I was called in to chair Vector after they disconnected the entire central business district of Auckland for a period of six weeks. It is hard to even put into context the level of disruption, inconvenience, economic loss, let alone the human misery inflicted on city residents and workers throughout this period. Our whole country was held up to ridicule in the world’s press for being unable to power up our biggest city.

This has made me very concerned over the fragility of the Transpower electricity transmission network limitations to Northland. I have already commented on the bottleneck through Auckland City and that council’s interference in our wellbeing. Ngawha extension will help but we need to keep pressure on to fix the supply constraint.

For fifteen years I have chaired various health boards under both parties and know well that glib generalisations such as John’s are meaningless. Administration numbers and their pay packets have fallen dramatically at ADHB at the same time that doctor and nurse salaries have climbed by around 23% in the last three years. The increased money goes to health practitioners, not only in hospitals but also in primary care but the pressure from growing numbers of elderly is hard to manage. Tony Ryall, National Health spokesperson is renowned for his negativity but has offered no solution at all. The main paper shuffling is answers to his parliamentary questions!

Lastly, readers will have noticed me banging on about how hard it is to get progressive projects approved up here so I am pleased at the change at the council, but hope that it is more than just an election year ploy to calm angry ratepayers, as the problem of processing building permits and resource consents has been around for ages.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM MELBOURNE?

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:57:00 +0000

I have just had the great pleasure of a trip to Melbourne with some business mates and our wives to indulge in some fun and noise at the Melbourne Grand Prix and, boy can Melbourne put on a show!

OK, I know its way bigger than here, but they just love to show their city off and to make the absolute most of any event both for the enjoyment of locals and visitors, and also to wring every dollar out of the opportunity to further grow their economy.

From the moment you leave the plane, easy to read brochures and maps ensure every visitor is exposed to every opportunity for fun and interest that Melbourne has to offer. Downtown, well-informed volunteers, (often elderly who otherwise would be short of company and things to do) offer advice to visitors on places to go and how to get there. Their bright jackets add to the colour and make them easy to find and they are real ambassadors.

Not to miss any opportunity each map asks the reader, “Love Melbourne, then why not live here?” and goes on to detail help offered by local government to professionals, tradespeople, business owners and investors and how to obtain free visa sponsorship and other aids to starting up there.

Although the scale is bigger than here, it is the attitude and intention to help that characterises this approach. Compare that with what is on offer here. A quick visit to our local council information centre will inform visitors of the need to bilk them out of every possible penny for development contributions, complex town planning rules, resource consents and so on all designed cunningly to grow the economies of other parts of NZ at our expense.

And, by the way it was such fun to be involved in some petrol burning fun just for once in these carbon-saving days. The big local news was the massive increase in CO2 from the bush fires made worse by the green lobby stopping undergrowth clean ups in the State Parks and preventing bulldozers from getting in and creating firebreaks!

Come on Northland!

Think now, avoid panic later

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:57:00 +0000

I’m not even into local body politics yet but already the misquotations have started. In the last week I have been reported to be standing as Mayor of Auckland (I’m not), for the Auckland Regional Council (no again), I’ve chosen the deputy mayor (wrong), I’m strongly in favour of fluoridation or bitterly opposed to it, depending on who is talking (I’ve not expressed any opinion on this issue) and I opposed the Declaration of an Emergency in last week’s flood, (I didn’t).

With regard to the flood, I have great sympathy for those who suffered losses recently but I’m not sure that they needed to face all that devastation, if we had had better planning before rather than hand wringing and states of Emergency after. All that does is bring in the TV cameras and the impression that we can’t handle things ourselves. TVNZ was still showing Kaeo to be under water days after floodwaters had cleared.

Any Dutch engineer will tell you that there are solutions for protecting low lying land. The inundation of Switzer Home and the Oxford Pensioner homes demands answers to serious questions. Was there a sudden surge just before and if so was this as a result of an action or inaction? Who is responsible for maintenance of banks and removal of vegetation from the waterways, Regional Council, FNDC, DoC, anyone? Did the computer modelling of the flood flow indicate a weak bank at the failure point? Is there a computer model?

Experience with our subdivision at the northern end of Kaitaia raised questions, first being that the Whangatane Floodway, so necessary for the town’s safety is not in public hands but we own it. Bizarrely there doesn’t seem to be any legal impediment to us just filling it in. That’s being fixed, however the experience of achieving good stormwater design involving our engineers, Regional Council engineers in Whangarei and FNDC engineers, (who turn out to be junior consultants in an office in Manukau City) does not build confidence.

The other culprit with regard to flooding is Transit NZ, who own State Hiways 1 and 10, which cross large tracts of low lying land interfering with natural floodpaths. Every year they raise these roads, yet no additional culverts seems to go in to reduce the ponding caused by the hiways. I’m sure that this was a major contributor to problems at Kaingaroa and Waipapa. By the way Transit think that Donald’s Lane is a major east/west traffic route for Kaitaia, yet it’s just a narrow road with speed humps leading to a restricted weight bridge!

The separate catchments of the Far North

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:56:00 +0000

The Far North is an unusual district, sprawling, as it does, across hundreds of kilometres and unlike most NZ provinces it is made up of many small towns without a dominant main city.

This has resulted in quite separate catchments for all sorts of things, notably our print media. The Northland Age (or News of the World as our editor thinks) maintains such strong readership in its core territory of North of the Mangamukas, that it can still command a payment from its readers. The other local newspapers have long since become freebies, surviving and in some cases prospering on advertising revenue alone.

The result of this is quite fragmented local news coverage in our papers and anyone wanting to get a picture of the whole of the Far North has to supplement the Age with the Bay Chronicle from Kerikeri, the very similar Northern News from Kaikohe, newcomer the Bay Report also from Kerikeri and others including the well presented Doubtless Bay Times.

Few of our citizens are well known across the whole district and occasionally some very controversial local issues ignite their local catchment without any reporting in other areas. Such an issue is the future of the Kerikeri Domain which is under threat from a few councillors lead by the Mayor, determined to heave the Rugby Club out of town and off the very ground that early settlers set aside for just such an activity.

Locally held surveys indicate over 95% of folk want the central domain left as it is, but a group of recent arrivals including a wealthy absentee have determined that the sports fields will become home to a large sculpture and the Farmers Market (currently happily operating one morning per week in the carpark). This is to allow for passive recreation, whatever that is!

One of our problems is that our district attracts quite a few retirees, which is fine, but as they haven’t battled here to get their businesses going, raise their kids, be on school committees and play and support sports clubs, they forget about the interests of those who are still doing these things. Worse still a number of them get a bit bored and decide they should be on the council and tell the rest of us how to live.

We’ve got a few of those now, with more offering themselves without any real experience of how things are up here, and wanting to get it back to how it was where they came from. Most of us want it to be how it is in the progressive, positive and prosperous places.

The Gissy Bros have got a thing or two to show us.

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:55:00 +0000

Kordia is a company that I lead that does a range of fun technical things like providing the delivery platform for most free to air radio and TV programs in NZ, and in Australia it also operates and maintains the Vodafone network and the Broadcast Australia network.

Sometimes we get involved in celebrating some of the achievements of those industries that use our services and so I found myself in Gisborne last weekend as a part sponsor of the Maori Media Awards. The usual bad weather forecast turned out to be quite wrong (like at Easter) and Gisborne put on blue skies, sunny days and great surf which I shared with kids from all over NZ attending the National Scholastic Surf championships with our own Northland team coached by the Far North’s Billy Hale.

Gisborne is another town that has done great things with its main street, palms, cobbled paving and street furniture designed to slow traffic and encourage pedestrian activity without those annoying bays that prevent you turning where you want to (like we had inflicted on us in Kaitaia). Why can’t we get our street upgrades to look as cool as they do in Gisborne, New Plymouth or even little towns like Ohakune? Beats me, but we seem to hire the most expensive useless Auckland designers for everything that happens up here.

Anyhow we went to the Maori Media Awards that evening and what a great show it was, celebrating the saving and renewal of Te Reo, the Maori language, with a stream of bright, confident, and talented young Maori raised in the Kura Kaupapa system from Kohanga Reo schools all over the country and now making names for themselves in many Maori radio stations and on Maori TV.

It was great to be able to korero enough to make a small contribution while handing out an award and to really feel what it is that makes each of us Kiwis and not just another Australian (the new JAFAs).

It was also great to see the respect that Maori of all ages have for their elders whose long speeches were not only indulged but given great support with following waiata. In one case a truly memorable off the cuff version of the Ngati Porou haka started by one elderly chap whose call was answered by many from the floor who dropped what they were doing to join him on stage in a stirring rendition.

We can learn from this with a bit more respect where it is due and with young people full of confidence and positive.

TARANAKI GOES FOR IT AND SO COULD WE.

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:55:00 +0000

Any of you who have recently visited Taranaki, or the “Naki” as locals love to call it couldn’t help but have noticed the positive vibes running through the place. There is a sense of pride and enthusiasm which pervades the province radiating from New Plymouth where the council have put in a wonderful coastal walkway linking suburbs formerly separated and suddenly offering an attractive way to get both exercise and access to the centre of town.

On the back of this a new Arts Centre, “Puhe Ariki” has been built, (not beside a plumbing supplier like in Kerikeri), but facing the foreshore with lovely outdoor café space. New Plymouth also features large mobile sculptures in celebration of Len Lye, a locally born sculptor.

Their Council have supported the Surf Coast Highway 45 tourism project featuring the local beaches around the coast and have closely linked with the South Taranaki Council at Opunake to maximise the enjoyment of tourists and the amount of money that they contribute to the local economy.

Young locals are seen wearing “Taranaki Hard Core” branded Tee shirts and a lively arts culture is evident even to sports minded folk like me.

On the face of it Taranaki would seem to have less to celebrate than we do up here. Their weather is often dreary, the beaches are stoney, hard to get to and the black sand could be seen as a negative but even that has been used as a local clothing brand, “Black Sand”. Their economy is based on dairy industry, which is battling but they do have an energy sector that receives support from the local regional council who see that undue opposition to mineral extraction would cost many local jobs.

I returned thinking, “Why can’t we have the same effusive positive feeling throughout the Far North?” We have better weather, better beaches, forestry, farming, tourism, hordes of visitors and folk from all over the world seeking to live here for the lifestyle.

All it needs is a bit of leadership, some positive messages and slogans plus a few public projects that could be presented in a way to excite public interest. They need not be vast projects, but smaller local pathways and links would do the trick. The extension to the Kaitaia Centre is a good project but is presented as a fund raising project rather than a regional boost.

Somehow we have been conned into competing between our towns rather than uniting to compete against other provinces. Better coastal access and walkways will help all of the Far North and surely someone can come up with a uniting slogan to lift our aspirations.

Talking to communities

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:54:00 +0000

One of the surprise finds when I was sent down to Gisborne to fix their hospital was to discover that they have a single District Council down there that operates without Regional Council or Community Boards. The result is a district wide focus and signs of prosperity are everywhere from the wonderful main street upgrades to the steady spread of prosperous businesses and opportunities for young locals.
Nevertheless while it may be a good goal to have a single unitary authority up here, the fact remains that we don’t and hence our district council needs to make better use of its community boards and it needs to have a much clearer and more workable arrangement with the regional council.

If we are to have community boards we may as well use them as much as possible and that means giving them tasks that are meaningful and useful. There are plenty such tasks, including managing the local streets, rubbish collections, public toilets, pothole repairs, footpath extensions and minor local works such as clearing stormwater drains that just never seem to get done by a centrally managed bureaucracy.

In addition there is much of the consultation burden that can be handled by community boards in a manner better suited to the task than by central planners. Good examples are relatively small building improvements that may have some minor intrusion across a street boundary, such as a commercial canopy that may turn out to have been occupying public space for years without a problem, but once a planner gets their teeth into it the simple solution of a boundary adjustment gets biffed out.

Other subjects better handled at community board level include fluoridation, which may or may not be a popular choice in various parts of the district. We do not have a district wide water supply by council. Many residents are on tank supply and many, like me are supplied by private water companies. Community boards could get the majority view from each council supplied water network and we could have some areas with fluoride and some without, depending on what the majority of local ratepayers want.

With regards to the Regional Council, all ratepayers should be made aware of which organization is responsible for what. If stormwater in the roads is to be a district responsibility and within rivers is to be Regional then it should be clear as to where the change in responsibility occurs. Into this mix Transit needs also to be clear and locally represented. If governments are to generously supply all these busy body groups they should at least be made to have offices up here so ratepayers can meet with all bodies at one time to sort out what we want.

Simple eh!

TAI TOKERAU TERTIARY TECHNICAL TRAINING TRUST

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:53:00 +0000

The Trust is pleased to announce that it is granting scholarships to 21 young Northlanders to contribute to the cost of their fees for training in a variety of technical training courses covering such fields as electronics, forestry, computing, winemaking, mechatronics and various forms of engineering studies.

Trust chairman, Wayne Brown, stated that with a substantial donation kindly arranged by Mr Don Armitage from the Southern Regions Charitable Trust in conjunction with Rynoz on Cameron Street, the trust has been able to increase the expected number of scholarship recipients from 3 to 21. In addition generous support was received from Roger de Bray in the Mid North and Sean Kennedy in the Far North.

Successful applicants will receive between $4000 and $1500 towards their tuition fees and will also be able to call upon trust members for guidance during their study year.

The trust is very pleased with the level of response from applicants who wrote in to their local newspaper, the Northern Advocate in Whangarei, the Northern News in the Mid North and the Northland Age in the Far North.

Regional winners are:-

Whangarei - Reuben Rusk
- Brodie Wooler
- William Glen
- Nicholas van Beek
- Alan Hooper
- Barry Dahlberg
- James Carpe
- Rochelle Carter
- Michael Eke

Mid North - Dave Ness
- Ben Byrne
- Philip te Tai
- Dean te Tai
- Nicky Hayes
- Reuben Trainor

Far North - Adele Wedding
- Manu Berkhardt Macrae
- Joanne Urlich
- Angela Flood
- Fiona Saxton
- Kelly Marsters

The trust wishes all applicants well in their studies and thanks the local newspapers for their support in arranging to publicise the scholarships and hold a follow up presentation evening.

SURFING’S WORTH SAVING TOO

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:53:00 +0000

I had the recent privilege of chairing a hui on saving our surf breaks called by Surfing NZ and held on a Raglan marae.

What’s that got to do with you the reader?

Well Surfing is one of NZ’s most popular sports rating above all of our national sports for participation and having an economic impact way above what most of our political leaders understand. There are well over a hundred surf shops in NZ. How many rugby or cricket stores? Surfing pulls in tourists and affects lifestyles. Look at what the kids are wearing.

We in the Far North are blessed with two coasts, many fine beaches (albeit with progressively less public access – Wake up FNDC!) and we have at Ahipara one of the very best surf breaks on the planet, a fact probably unknown to most of our councillors.

To illustrate my point, I recall taking the NZ Surfing team through Brazil and Argentina in the nineties. Everyone there knew of only three places in NZ, being Auckland (where the plane lands), Raglan and Ahipara being our top two surf breaks widely publicised ever since the movie Endless Summer came out in 1964!

Surfing has prompted the enormous development of Surfers Paradise in Queensland and has lead to rapid rises in the value of towns such as Whangamata, also blessed with an excellent left hand surf break. In spite of this economic and social impact there is no mention of the sport of Surfing in FNDC’s long term planning documents, let alone any funding set aside for the sport. Indeed such tiny sports as hockey look to be the beneficiaries of expensive developments in Kaikohe.

At the hui we were presented with a series of coastal photos taken by White’s Avaiation in the 1960’s and it was frightening to see the number of lost surf breaks that have disappeared under poorly thought through developments. A council carpark now covers up North Reef at Takapuna, groynes to save the beach at Omaha have ruined the old break at the northern end of the beach and many more are under threat.

Surfer, Paul Shanks fought a lonely battle to oppose the Whangamata Marina which Minister of Conservation, Chris Carter turned down, unfortunately in a clumsy way. Now a court has reopened this project in spite of a total lack of clear engineering reports stating that the famous surf break would not be affected.

Northlanders should be worried. We need to protect our surf breaks and the sport needs to be seen as one of our major tourist and sporting attractions.

SOME POSITIVE TRENDS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:52:00 +0000

I love spotting positive trends that lie below the horizon of most commentators and indeed the public at large. It is easy to join the rush to complain about perceived shortcomings of various segments of our society and there is no doubt that some folk are fair game for the moaners and bigots amongst us.

One group who have quietly been turning around their own lives and enriching both themselves and the rest of us are that often maligned group of single mothers, particularly the large inflows into that group around ten to fifteen years ago when the Domestic Purposes Benefit (DPB) first hit the newspapers at a time when attitudes had hardened and the benefits of contraception had not been supported by the worries of nasty sexually transmitted diseases.

Much was made of the high percentages of young Maori girls in this group and at the time it did not look good for their future participation in society.

Well now if you look quietly around you will find that there is a large and growing number of local organizations relying on these people, often now in their thirties, who have quietly become core links in the delivery of all sorts of professional and administrative services to the very society that criticised them back when they first became pregnant.

I totally support and congratulate these young mothers who have managed to handle the pressures of that early and often unexpected family and who have then tentatively entered the workplace, obtained skills, embarked on periods of study very often achieving skills in Information Technology not picked up by our older generation.\

Next time you are in the office of your lawyer, accountant, surveyor, or even at the regional or district offices of major suppliers or councils just note how important was the contribution of that nice young, often Maori, lady to a happy completion of whatever you set out to achieve.

Quite a few senior professionals have confided to me that it is very likely that their business will be handed on to one of these former single mothers whose efforts are making our ability to deal with a workforce that is rapidly ageing that much easier.

SOME LOCAL BOYS MAKE GOOD ROLE MODELS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:52:00 +0000

With all the rules and regulations, bureaucrats and other hangers-on these days there are times when any go-ahead person gets to feel that it’s all a bit much. If you’re not careful you can miss some of the really positive things that people are doing, so this week I’m talking about some of the relatively unsung heroes from up here.

I had a look around the Auckland waterfront where the footy stadium was being talked of and came across the redevelopment proposals for the Britomart area being carried out by Bluewater. So what, you might ask! Well Bluewater is owned by Kaitaia old boy and business phenomenon Peter Cooper who left town to become a lawyer and went on to develop multi million dollar townships in Texas before coming back home to tidy up Auckland and develop some impressive and environmentally aware coastal sections in outer Kerikeri.

That got me thinking about other Far North role models. While in Sydney on business recently I had a beer with Kaitaia old-boy, Garth Bray who has been appointed as Australian TV news stringer for TVNZ directly influencing how we get on with our big neighbours and showing how far our young people can go.

Back in Auckland one of my companies is negotiating with another Kaitaia boy made good, Thane Kirby, who together with his brother Richard has shaken the national radio scene since they launched George FM and has now branched out with Alt TV.

These examples are by no means a comprehensive list of success stories from here and I know there are no females in this list, it’s just these are the ones I’ve met in the last fortnight. My point is we need to celebrate success no matter where it happens and not let the negatives overwhelm us.

While I’m in this positive mood, I had the boat out at Mill Bay for its annual overhaul and what a stress free process that was, largely due to more unsung local heroes. WW2 fighter pilot Jimmy Osborne and his faithful Man Friday, Pedro have done a wonderful job in managing the hard standing there, which operates with very reasonable charges. The facilities are also a tribute to the Cruising Club members lead by Bruce Robertson and we are lucky to have them.

ROUND TWO OF THE DOOR STOP

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:51:00 +0000

Several months ago, my first column dealt with my efforts to get through and understand Volume 1 of the FNDC Far North Future Plan covering the period of 2006 to 2016.

Foolishly I promised to work through the rest of these vast tomes to report to you, the readers what these plans contain. Well, I’ve been reminded that I haven’t got back to either reading or reporting on them, so last weekend I dug them out to see just why I thought Volume 1 was such a depressing waste of ratepayer’s money and to advance on to Volume 2.

There are five volumes in total and there are 539 pages devoted to this exercise, which has clearly been taken seriously by the platoon of staff who have made their career out of producing these excellently presented volumes. Indeed the standard of graphics and print detail exceeds what many countries devote to the printing of their currency!

Volume 1 was entitled Our Community and dealt with lots of unmeasurable stuff. Volume 2 at 168 pages is the winner by weight and is called Council Activities. It also details lots more unmeasurable stuff that council does. Quite a lot of this stuff appears several times under different headings so either it is done several times or is trying to look like that.

Stormwater, for instance appears under the heading Water and Waste Group as one might expect but makes at least one other appearance under Safety and Environment Group. I note that I found inked markings that I had made in the margins during a previous effort to get through this volume. Typically these notes read “crap” and other such common terms for what they pass off as Customer Service.

Quaintly, complaints are now termed “requests for service” by council. I’ll bet they get a few if you can get past the recorded propaganda and actually talk to someone at the other end of the phone line. There are some spurious measures for phone calls to council with the suggestion that in 2006, 80% of calls were answered in 60 seconds and 100% in 2007. It fails to point out that most of us want to be answered by a person and the recorded message that I have actually listened to for 11 minutes does not meet my expectation of a call being responded to in 60 seconds.

Volume 2 is full of graphs plotting heroic increases in everything over coming years but sadly no graph plots what FNDC’s performance for any of these measures has been over the past 5 years so there is conveniently no base information to compare the future with.

One can’t help feeling that the money and effort put into these volumes could have been better spent on one or two pages of a clear executive summary of the really big things. Three more volumes to go!!

RECKON YOU HAD A TOUGH WEEK AT THE OFFICE?

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:50:00 +0000

I normally like to write about things up here as this is where I live, however many of you would have noted the media uproar last week when good people who had worked hard to cut medical costs got a shock legal decision, followed by political point scoring from low profile MPs out to impress their new leader.

The three DHBs in the Auckland area set about reducing laboratory testing costs so that more money could go into other pressing areas of health. A new contractor offered to provide an improved service for around $20million less per year. Audit NZ approved the tender process, but the losing incumbents hired lawyers and managed to persuade a judge that they were disadvantaged because they didn’t realise that innovative delivery methods were desired, nor amazingly that lower prices were very important.

They managed to link a former board member in as a conflict, when I can assure readers his involvement meant nothing to the boards, who were solely interested in saving money. Anyone attending any of the DHB board meetings would have known how important price was but things do go wrong in the justice sector. That is why we have courts of appeal.

I can’t say it is fun being hounded by press who in the normal course of events can’t be bothered to attend our board meetings and it gets worse when National party MPs call you a left wing Labour party flunky, especially when the Nats call you in to sort out their problems like digital driver license schemes that don’t work or power failures in Auckland.

How do they think they are going to reduce our taxes if they yell at people trying to save money. The stuff they put out about waiting lists is also rubbish. At ADHB the cancer treatment wait times were 6 weeks for all of last year but grew to 11 weeks (not 16) as a result of a strike by workers. These will be back to MoH guidelines of 4-8 weeks soon. ADHB is currently approaching GPs pointing out that there is more capacity for hip replacements than suitable candidates at present!

Don’t believe all you read in the national papers, trust your local.

PERMIT TIME

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:50:00 +0000

Talk to any builder, new home-owner, engineer, architect or developer and see how they feel about the Resource Management Act. They don’t see a wonderful tool for saving the environment. What they see is a long winded process designed to maximise frustration, grow the employment of plodders in a myriad of government and council organizations all seemingly there to increase costs and force us into confrontation with people who appear to have no direct interest in what is proposed in the first place.

You have to be a brave risk taker to even contemplate entering this mine-field, yet we open the national newspaper and there on the front page are our politicians attempting to build the biggest sports arena in the most prominent position in our biggest city on the edge of our best harbour and all without having to advertise publicly for submissions or even start the long dreary trudge that faces the rest of us.

A new footy field for the World Cup might possibly be a great idea and those in power have known it was coming for sometime, but to be able to just do what no other developer or citizen can do on the spur of the moment seems wrong to me.

Politicians have been calling the building industry cowboys for years and instituting all sorts of registration processes requiring those in the industry to demonstrate their skill and experience (which is fine) but a quick look around parliament and there are no builders, developers or engineers, so who’s a cowboy?

Remember it was politicians acting in the interests of large building supply firms who changed the rules to allow untreated timber that caused the leaky rotting buildings syndrome. Not the builders who had no say in that decision.

Countries where the powerful elite can behave in a way denied to the citizens going about their legitimate business are usually frowned upon. We think they are to be found in Africa or old communist countries. By all means get on with the Rugby stadium in a quick decisive way but make these same prompt processes available to those of us for whom a building permit normally takes months and a resource consent often runs to years.

More Skills up here you probably aren’t aware of.

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:49:00 +0000

It’s nice to write about positive go-ahead people. Takes your mind off the things that really hassle you, like opening 42 separate letters from the council covering 42 separate rate demands for 42 titles in the one subdivision. The concept of a statement on the front showing what the invoices behind add up to has yet to arrive in Kaikohe. Imagine receiving a separate letter for each item that one buys as a builder each month from Placemekers!

Anyhow, I just had the pleasure of a chat in the street with satellite TV guru, Bob Cooper who owns the local cable TV network, plus Doubtless Bay Community Radio on 100.0 FM. We were discussing the major cock-up on Optus D1, the recently launched satellite supposed to fix up Sky TV coverage and be one of the delivery platforms for Free to Air Digital TV next year using the transponder booked by Kordia, a company that I chair.

There are probably only a handful of Kiwis who would like to chat about the wiring mistake on this expensive satellite where the vertical and horizontal polarities have accidentally been reversed and it’s a long way to send a serviceman, however it actually affects almost every Aussie and Kiwi household. Optus technicians are busy working to patch up a fix so that our Kiwi programs actually show here and the Aussie ones there, so we can get the Free to Air digital TV service expected next year.

We are lucky to have Bob here among us and few are aware of his input into satellite TV as the inventor of the home dish and the editor of Sat Facts, his well informed monthly, serving the Pacific ring satellite TV technical industry participants. Sat Facts is really worthy a read for the technologically minded among us. We are often bombarded with bunkum from various political leaders waffling on about broadband, yet without any local techno experience to base their opinions on, yet here we have Bob telling the world!

This week Wellington’s Dominion newspaper featured Kaitaia entrepreneur Sean Kennedy who has driven the surf-clothing brand, Coastlines, that he founded and that some of us are lucky enough to be supporting shareholders in. Sean stepped out of long-term ownership of Kaitaia’s surf shop, Aquapulse about three years ago with the vision of creating a global brand from Kaitaia.

Now the brand covers men’s and women’s, summer and winter clothing, surfboards, wetsuits, snowboards, shoes, accessories, bags and is being sold in over 65 Kiwi surf shops and a growing number off-shore in Australia, USA and Europe. It has been a privilege to support this runaway workaholic and it is with some pride that a brand born here is now attracting business interest for its rapid growth and global reach.

The Far North does count!

LOCAL ISSUES DESERVE LOCAL RESPONSES FROM LOCAL LEADERS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:48:00 +0000

So who is a local? Is it someone who lives in your village, community council, council area or Northland?

How long before you become a local? Months, years or only from birth?

Depends on the issue, I think. Why is this interesting?

Well, we’ve developed the habit of thinking that experts must come from somewhere else.

I’ve always believed that the people who will fix some problem are the people who own the problem, and the locals are the ones best placed to own, understand and fix things.

My definition of a local is one who is wholly committed to the community that is affected by the discussion, whether it’s small and very local or district wide.

A real local has put the time in to know the community, helped with sports, kids, schools, housing, clubs and businesses. This takes time. While I welcome recent arrivals, I expect them to know and respect the way we do things. Understand that our communities are growing and changing and they’re not to be set in concrete forever to be exactly the way they were on the day that person arrived.

We need to develop our own skills here to use for the benefit of our people and to pass them on within our communities.

Look at the recent appointment of yet another out of towner to join the rest on the board of Top Energy. This board should be dominated by locals. The consumer trust together with our MPs carried out what they called a robust process to find trustees and directors for Top Energy (which we all own) yet they couldn’t find any locals capable. Yeah right! Lotto winners are chosen by a robust process!

The same week that Top Energy couldn’t find anyone here capable, I was approached to be deputy chair of Transpower, sort of like Top Energy only 20 times bigger. And there are plenty of others up here capable of directing Top Energy or at least learning how to. Right now we should decide that unless absolutely impossible all of our Far North entities need to be lead by locals. That goes for council LATEs, like Far North Holdings, Top Energy and all the development committees, Tourism boards and so on. If our rates are to be used for these things then spend it with the best locals.

At least they care and we can get to them when they get it wrong.

LOCAL ISSUES DESERVE LOCAL RESPONSES FROM LOCAL LEADERS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:16:00 +0000

Local impacts of international trends

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:15:00 +0000

A couple of weeks back I suggested in my Sunday Star Times business article that Reserve Bank governor Bollard should think about reducing our interest rates to match Australian rates so that offshore investors in our currency would have an alternative option to the NZ$ to earn the same returns, thus easing pressure on our dollar. Two days later Radio NZ lead its news with an item that economic forecasters BERL were suggesting exactly the same thing.

Nice to know that we can lead economic thinking from up here, and we will need to as we face the challenges of funding the much needed catch up in our infrastructure so the Far North can offer similar standards of roading and sewerage to the rest of NZ.

By the time you read this Bollard will have made his moves on interest rates and we will have to get on. Fonterra are indicating boosted payments to dairy farmers which will have benefits to rural economies, although a fair bit of the payout will no doubt go in debt reduction. Prudent financial management is at the core of any improvement to local services and this will be a real focus at FNDC in the next few years.

Councils have enjoyed the bumper times associated with rate growth from not only the steady increases in percentage costs of fees and rates but also the spin off from the large rises in land values on which these rates are based. This steady income growth coupled with dramatic rises in development charges has lifted financial pressure from council expenditure and allowed the rocketing bureaucracy to occur.

This waste needs to end and there needs to be serious investigation of the costs of doing everything both within council and more importantly on citizens suffering delays and expense as a result of the ponderous ways things get done up here.

Councillor Byers has kindly looked into why it has taken so long for a permit to be granted for some simple buildings in Ahipara. Staff have assured him that it is the applicant’s fault. (It always is!). Long lists of additional information are always produced just before the time limit to reply to the applicant. On inspection most of these are rubbish and typically include requests for information that they already have (in this case calculations for water tank reinforcing) or such life and death requirements as an extractor fan in the kitchen in order to prevent anyone in the buildings from dieing of exposure to the rather nice aroma of bacon and eggs.

Another supposedlly needed piece of information is the excavation permit for a house that requires no excavation other than the pole holes for the pole platform and the edge strip for the slab footings. No allowance for the weeks that drift by waiting for staff to return phone calls is made in the system, nor for the time wasted listening to recorded messages as busy ratepayers try and get through to staff whose unique direct dial numbers remain closely guarded secrets. This has to change and soon.

WHO’S NOT LISTENING TO HARD WORKING NORTHLANDERS?

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:09:00 +0000

The Far North is well placed to benefit from a number of long run world-wide trends such as movement of people towards the equator seeking to escape harsh winter temperatures, and a shift away from large cities by technically savvy folk able to utilise the advantages of broadband access.

Our levels of construction activity, steady at around 125 building permits and 35 resource consents per month reflect these trends and show this is the stable level which council should be able to handle. The sad statistic is that every one of those 125 building consents would have been issued late and outside the mandated times of twenty working days.

Even worse, at least half of the extremely stressful resource consents would not have been needed in the first place if we had a more enlightened approach to citizen’s wishes..

The Mayor suggests that we, the public are not listening to economic warnings, but in my view it is the Council that is not listening and gearing up to meet the economic activities of its citizens in a timely and helpful fashion.

Anyone who has had a building permit application in recently, will tell you that the first information you receive is a statement that the council cannot meet its statutory timeline requirements. This is at least open and honest and is an improvement on the normal behaviour of waiting the twenty working days, having a glance at the plans and sending out a letter by snail mail asking for more information.

This has been used as a regular delaying tactic by councils all over NZ and is deceitful. Examples of recently received 20 day letters include a demand for an excavation resource consent for a pole house. Pole houses are all out of the ground with no excavation!

Senior Council staff members, Patrick Schofield and Pat Killalea, who are responsible for building permits and resource consents are aware of the pressures and acknowledge difficulties with staff recruitment probably reflecting years of low public esteem for FNDC.

I am sure they know of difficulties with overpaid underqualified planning consultants that they are forced to employ to harass our citizens, but the problem will not be fixed while the Mayor and other councillors deceive themselves into thinking all is well. It is not!

The call centre is appalling, most of logged calls are people ringing again to get past idiotic welcoming messages, no staff ring back to answer messages and in this modern day staff do not contact customers by email.
Start Listening!

KEY ASSUMPTIONS

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:08:00 +0000

I joined 150 other locals to listen to Opposition Leader John Key at the Community Centre last Friday and found it most interesting. I have known John from business circles before and found him to be intelligent, practical and down to earth in his approach, so I was keen to see how he was as a politician in front of an audience.

Those same aspects of his character came across in his address, which included possibly the most coherent assessment that I have heard of the Kyoto Protocol and its impact on NZ’s economy. He skirted neatly around the extremist views of some in the audience and dwelt on the vexed issue of NZ’s continuing under performance as an economy, giving the overall impression of a leader who will be much more of a challenge to the proven, strong leadership skills of our PM than the hapless Brash ever did.

John Key’s main points about our economy were that in spite of continued good world wide trading conditions we have still slipped down the rankings and were losing too many good citizens to the better wages on offer in Australia, and that there had been insufficient investment in infrastructure, coupled with too much growth of our central bureaucracy in remote Wellington.

As a merchant banker he explained that he is used to looking at companies and deciding whether to invest in them or sell, and investors looked for under performing assets that they could buy and then change the management to get growth and value from them. If NZ was a company he felt that although under performing, it had a lot to offer but it needed a change in management and that is obviously what his party is setting out to convince people before the next election.

That seemed like a good analogy to me, then I thought about the Far North and the same thing applies in a smaller scale. In spite of our climate, beaches, nice towns and attractive lifestyle we also are under performing as an economy losing out to Coromandel, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki and so on in the competition for resources, people and opportunities.

We also have failed to attract the right people including retaining our own bright young ones, failed to invest enough in infrastructure such as sewerage and roading, and lastly we have spent too much on a remote bloated bureaucracy at Kaikohe.

We get our chance to change the management this coming October at the local body elections. I think we should!

KEEPING THE FAR NORTH’S WONDERFUL NATURAL ATTRACTION

noreply@blogger.com (Wayne Brown) — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 08:07:00 +0000

What a great weekend that was! Long overdue hot windless weather and clear skies just made for reminding us how lucky we are to live up here. If you didn’t get out on the boat, go to the beach or at least be outside then bad luck or perhaps you might as well shift to the deep-south and take advantage of the cheap housing down there.

A huge pod of dolphins came up the Mangonui harbour on Saturday morning herding smaller fish and bringing the Dolphin charter boats back to where they were moored before they headed out with tourists.

I have the fishing skills of a desert camel and still managed to catch a variety of legally sized fish, so the predictions of no more fish seemed wrong, at least during last weekend as we saw hundreds that didn’t take my bait. Big stingrays were easily seen both in the harbour and among many other species in the clear, clear waters off the Northern coast of the Whatuwhiwhi peninsula where any boatie lucky enough to be there enjoyed the wide empty expanses of blue sea under blue sky.

For those of you lucky enough to follow our coastline from the sea, I can report that long strips of the coastline still remain undeveloped and visually fairly natural, (if one considers open grasslands natural). The built up areas are not nearly as obtrusive as we are lead to believe by various planners whose efforts to keep the built environment contained have been moderately successful.

The preservation of this open unspoilt coastal look of the Far North deserves our consideration. It competes directly with the wishes of rich foreign investors seeking privacy and keen to buy and lock up chunks of our coastal heritage. It also competes with the average Kiwi’s dream of the bach at the seaside.

These two seemingly opposite desires can be managed by policies that promote further development of areas that are already compromised by quarter acre sections by concentrating coastal living into existing residential areas. More intensive subdivision with the necessary sewerage and stormwater services is preferable and allows the currently empty areas to be zoned so they still remain empty looking and real.