Michael Barnett: Make Auckland a world-class city

Michael Barnett

Auckland matters, not just to the 1.2 million people who live here, but the nation. It is nearly a third of the national economy and more than the combined size of Wellington and Canterbury.

It has the biggest concentration of large and small businesses, the largest local authorities, and has major infrastructure investment with the biggest airport and the biggest seaport.

But it is widely agreed that Auckland is not performing as strongly as it could. Paradoxically, part of the reason for these pressures is that Auckland has not been ambitious enough.

Our vision needs to shift from being comfortable as New Zealand's dominant region to matching ourselves with the world's best cities.

Indeed, it has been suggested that most - if not all - of the gap in performance between New Zealand and Australia in recent years can be attributed to that of Australia's leading cities - Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Those cities have moved ahead under ambitious programmes to become vibrant and culturally rich and offer a great lifestyle. The clear message is that Auckland has to become more proactive.

In my view the traditional excuse that Auckland is distant and isolated from world markets doesn't cut ice any more. Instead, our opportunity - others would say challenge - is to take hold of our region's strengths and weaknesses and raise our ambition to become a world city.

What we need to do to lift our success has been well identified by work undertaken by a number of Auckland bodies and government agencies over the past 10 years.

The litany of "gaps" in Auckland's performance identified by innumerable exercises and studies spans everything from soft to hard infrastructure - a lack of facilities for hosting world-class events, our incomplete roading and poor public transport; our vulnerable electricity supply problem; the emergence of a benefit-dependent social underclass in parts of the region, and many thousands of school leavers without formal qualifications.

Adding to these is that on the one hand employers can't find enough skilled people - for example, around 1400 information technology job vacancies exist in Auckland at present - but on the other hand scores of small-to-medium businesses in sectors such as metal components and clothing are facing closure or relocation to Asia because they cannot compete with the low wages in places like China and India.

But knowing what is wrong with Auckland is not the same as taking action.

For example, to avoid Auckland losing more businesses to Asia because we can't - and don't want to - end up with low-wage jobs will require more than simply encouraging our schools to introduce technology as a compulsory subject, even though that would be a good move.

This is because, unless we also build Auckland into a vibrant city that attracts investors and businesses to move here, our efforts to lift education standards will simply result in more qualified school leavers heading overseas as fast as they graduate.

Look at any employment website in any attractive and vibrant city - Belfast, Toronto, Sydney, Brisbane, Bristol, London or Paris - and jobs galore can be found for teachers, nurses, computer programmers and service skills, truck drivers and software engineers.

I bet that among recent recruits in all those cities and employment fields you will find a cluster of energised Aucklanders and other Kiwis having the time of their lives and contributing to the vibrancy and cultural diversity of those cities as well.

The point: it is businesses that create a city's wealth and employment opportunities and, increasingly, they are becoming more mobile and global in seeking to locate where there is a good lifestyle, not just where they can afford to cover their costs.

On this scale of performance, a great city is one that has a business community that attracts a class of creative citizens, who are involved in high technology and innovative enterprises and are offered a diverse lifestyle.

Auckland has much going for it, and the new Auckland Regional Economic Development Unit based at the Regional Council has set itself the challenge to manage our opportunities better than we have done in recent years.

We enjoy comparative advantages in our marine, food and technology, and in screen production through our magnificent scenery and multi-skilled and adaptive workforce.

Through collaborative partnerships between industry sector groups and local councils, initiatives are under way to strengthen the attractiveness of these sectors for new investment and businesses.

The World Bank has identified New Zealand as the world's easiest place for doing business. That accolade must be an opportunity for Auckland to brand and promote itself internationally as not simply the "easiest" but the "best" city in the world for doing business.

By lifting our sights we send a message to the rest of New Zealand that Auckland matters and shouldn't be written off as a basket case, as even some Wellington politicians who should know better have tried to do.

In a political environment in which MMP in a number of countries - and now, possibly, New Zealand - has resulted in tentative government, well-led and managed cities offer hope.

Certainly, in Europe, it is city-states that generate the lion's share of many nations' wealth. Auckland is poised to take on this kind of role.

Fixing Auckland is up to Aucklanders, and that's what the new Economic Development Unit at the Auckland Regional Council is about.

* Michael Barnett is chief executive of the Auckland Regional Chamber of Commerce and chairman of the Auckland Regional Council's economic development unit.