Promoting region as a living laboratory

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

A briefing document for the Tairāwhiti Tomorrow Together summit yesterday, titled “2023 and Beyond”, promotes the region as having characteristices that make it “an ideal area for the Government to build partnerships which are focused on piloting new solutions and programmes to tackle difficult and seemingly intractable challenges” — calling this “our pilotability”.

It lists these as the advantage of a unitary authority, “simplifying the central/local government interface challenge”; having four strong, capable iwi with a track record of working together to develop innovative solutions; and the region’s size, about 52,000 people (along with having a natural boundary), “lending itself to the effective development and trialling of solutions”.

It also notes the proposal in the recent Outrage to Optimism report of the Ministerial Inquiry into Land Use, that Tairāwhiti should be a living laboratory — “our size, isolation, the challenges that we face and the courage, resilience and resourcefulness we possess lends itself to this opportunity”.

The briefing is described as being for the incoming Government and the whole 54th Parliament, those who work in the machinery of government at all levels, “and for our iwi, civic and community leaders, and for our people”.

Naturally it starts with an outline of the extreme weather the region has been exposed to — 16 significant events since 2017, and nine in 2023 alone — and the heavy impacts of this on the economic and social wellbeing of the region.

It provides a profile of Tairāwhiti and an overview of both the challenges and opportunities we face — itemised under subheadings of roading, waters infrastructure reform, climate change, housing, economic development, and forestry and land use.

And it makes clear its purpose: to introduce the Tairāwhiti Tomorrow Together process and prepare for the first step — the summit held yesterday bringing together regional iwi, civic, community, business and social leaders, along with key government and national body decision-makers.

The briefing concludes: “Tairāwhiti — beautiful, cohesive, strong, and proud — faces significant challenges, but also very real and transformational opportunities. As the new Government takes office, the same can be said of it — no shortage of challenges and opportunity. We face exciting and exacting times.” It says the briefing has illustrated some of the pathways “through which innovative solutions and models can be developed and implemented, in a manner that is beneficial to both Tairāwhiti, and due to our pilotability advantages, New Zealand as a whole”.