Kāpiti can share the business workload from Wellington

Kāpiti mayor K Gurunathan. Photo / Jack Penman

Opinion

The Hon Grant Robertson
Deputy Prime Minister
Minister of Finance
MP for Wellington Central

Minister, thank you for including the Kāpiti Coast in your journey across the country to personally present the Government's Wellbeing Budget 2021 to local communities.

We appreciate your presentation scheduled for tomorrow at the Electra Business Breakfast. Let me firstly thank your Government and its administrative services that have worked hard and effectively, with our communities, to keep Aotearoa New Zealand safe and our economy pumping.

I would like to note that a significant number of Kāpiti's 10,800 workers who commute to work outside the Kāpiti district work in Wellington city. Most of them work for government departments and agencies. They also work as professionals in the technical sector that supports the government. Data for 2020, captured by our regional economic development agency, WellingtonNZ, indicate that these twin sectors pump $10.4 billion into the Wellington region's GDP.

Minister, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown that workers, including civil servants, can work productively from remote locations. That they don't have to be permanently based at a centralised location like Wellington city.

Infometrics latest Quarterly Economic Monitor Report has shown Kāpiti's economic development over the year to March 2021 has, together with the Wairarapa, been leading the region. A significant contribution to this growth has been identified as the impact of people working from home and spending money locally.

The Covid pandemic has shown that we need to develop a different relationship between Wellington city and its regional urban centres like Kāpiti. To help develop that transition to a new relationship, here in Kāpiti, we are ready to respond to that announcement by the Minister of Public Services, the Hon Chris Hopkins. His announcement on the need to create regional hubs outside of Wellington city where civil servants can work closer to home instead of commuting every day to Wellington city.

We have developers in Kāpiti, like the owners of Coastlands, who are ready to put up a $30 million building customised to cater for your government workers, resident in our beautiful Kāpiti Coast, if the Government can sign up to be anchor tenants.

Minister, there is a longstanding mantra that states: What is good for Wellington city is good for the region. In the spirit of a symbiotic relationship, we would like to extend that mantra to state that what is good for the region is good for Wellington city.

Sincerely yours,
Mayor K. Gurunathan