Editorial: Let our region play to its strengths

Anna Wallis PHOTO/FILE

Tourism, sheep and beef farming, manuka honey and affordable aged-care. Those are Wanganui's strengths to be plundered, says the Regional Growth Study released last month.

The report has prompted many questions.

Just a couple are: where to from here? And where is any mention of Wanganui's natural advantages - arts and heritage?

As to what happens next, the Government's involvement cannot stop now.

While subsidies have been anathema to successive governments since the reforms of the 1980s, it was noteworthy that Wanganui apiarist John Brandon actually started his business in 1982 with a suspensory loan from the government.

Does the market forces' domination of the past 30 years also need to be suspended for the regions to share the prosperity they still largely generate?

At the very least, government departments could be decentralised to share that huge business around more evenly.

While the development of IT may have seen the need for government branches to disappear, it also means something such as a call centre can be located anywhere in New Zealand.

And where were the arts in the discussion?

While the "practicality" of arts as an earner may be sniffed at, Peter Jackson's Miramar empire is proof enough how valuable creativity can be to an economy.

The visual arts are alive here, and there is plenty of potential for Wanganui to become a hub for music.

On another tangent, what about a research hub for preserving historic buildings and mitigating earthquake risk? Fanciful? Possibly. But the thinking being encouraged around regional growth needs to be uninhibited - and that includes loosening up political doctrine.