Gisborne councillor quits to take up role within council

Tony Robinson resigned as a Gisborne district councillor to take up a role on the council staff as key account manager.

Gisborne District Council will be short of a councillor for the remaining seven months of the term.

However, its staff will be gaining a key accounts manager.

Tony Robinson resigned from his position of councillor yesterday and takes up his new position on Monday.

The former lawyer had been in his second term as a councillor since being elected in 2019.

“I’m super-buzzing about it...I want to see business done better,” he said of his new role.

As key account manager, he said he would liaise with businesses, iwi, stakeholders and Trust Tairāwhiti to identify and address obstacles and barriers to resource consent - “getting stuff through the regulatory hurdles and hoops”.

No byelection would be necessary as there was less than a year left of the term, he said.

Local body elections are in October.

“I would not have taken up the position if it had triggered a byelection as I would not want to cost the council 50 to 60 grand.”

Robinson formally resigned yesterday morning by advising chief executive Nadine Thatcher Swann and Mayor Rehette Stoltz, who then emailed the other councillors.

“I applied, I was shortlisted and had my job interview earlier this week,” Robinson said.

“It’s a challenging area and we just want to get business done better.”

Through the role he hoped to “give life” to the council’s economic strategies and regional aspirations.

“People often say there is often missing connectivity between key stakeholders...that there should be a Tairāwhiti Inc. In other words, there should be joint ventures or joint capital or joint effort on various things. Particularly since Cyclone Gabrielle, everyone has struggled to do business as usual as well as recovery.

“But some of this business-as-usual stuff...for example, our water, waste management, forestry sector, energy...there’s a whole lot of opportunities. If the parties can get together with assistance...then we might make some traction.

“Sometimes you sit in the governance room and go, ‘far out, you just need the right hand to talk to the left hand’.

“You’ve got that bird’s-eye view of what’s going on and sometimes you just want to jump in and do the action stuff. Now I get to do the action stuff.”

His experience as a councillor would be invaluable for his new job as he had a good understanding of what governance wanted to achieve and how the council worked, he said.

With the election coming up, different reviews (including The Tairāwhiti Resource Management Plan) and the different standards the Government was bringing in, it was “a really difficult time for businesses to know where they are going to land with their applications because the regulatory environment is changing so significantly”.

“My legal training is really helpful in my understanding and helping businesses navigate through it.”

Mayor Stoltz said Robinson had been a valuable member of the councillor team and they would miss his contribution.

“He has always had the community at the centre of his decision-making and has been an active member of our community.

“We wish him and his family all the best. Luckily we will still see him around council.”