The Mayor’s call today for unity around everything we agree on, relationship building and the need to find new ways of thinking and working together is exactly what’s required for our region to overcome the challenges we face, and to help us build back better from the damage inflicted during severe weather events over the past year.
That this is what council leadership sees as a key building block for setting the direction we need to take could indicate they have had advice from economist Shamubeel Eaqub (which they haven’t). It seems like a prescription developed directly from his presentation to a small but attentive crowd at the Wainui Surf Lifesaving Club on Thursday called “Weathering the storms”, offering his perspectives on how we can approach regional economic development.
It’s common sense, too, of course. After what we’ve been through, we are well aware that things are different now and we need to change our approaches; we have also probably all experienced some of the fraying around the edges that has happened between people and organisations.
Eaqub provided the evidential basis for extra stresses in our region beyond the weather damage — from a housing crisis explained in large part by our population growth over the past 10 years continually beating updated expectations, as regional and international net migration turned strongly positive 10 years ago after a long period of migration having a strong negative impact on our population numbers; to the impact of rent hikes over the past four years, and inflation and interest rates more recently, squeezing household incomes.
Issues at the nationwide level that impact on our situation also, such as lack of effort so far on the adaptation side of our response to climate change; short-termism and a lack of systemic response to crises; falling insurance coverage that will fall further as insurance costs rise about 40 percent after by far the worst year for natural-disaster insured losses; government debt levels that haven’t been this high as a share of GDP since the 1980s and early ’90s; more short-termisim in politics as the major parties increasingly diverge on approaches to the economy, governance and migration; centralisation versus the localisation of responsibilities and costs; and reduced social cohesion.
