Canterbury business leaders are warning against complacency by decision-makers on infrastructure. Photo / Alyse Wright
The South Island’s biggest challenge is not a lack of opportunity. It’s our ability to make decisions fast enough to seize it.
For most of my career, the major conversations about Canterbury’s future have been driven by crisis.
The Canterbury earthquakes forced us to rethink how a city is built, how infrastructure is delivered, and what can be achieved with urgency and a view to the future. The result is a city and region with relatively new infrastructure, great public spaces and assets that many communities around New Zealand would envy.
When there is a burning platform, we know we can move at pace and deliver great outcomes.
Yet the challenge facing Canterbury and the South Island right now is that we don’t have a crisis demanding action, we have opportunity. I worry that might lead to some complacency about locking in future growth.
Across Canterbury and the South Island, businesses are growing, investing and innovating. Food producers, energy providers, technology companies, manufacturers, logistics firms, educators, professional services, exporters and tourism operators all form part of a highly integrated supply chain that contributes enormously to New Zealand’s economic story.
Yet despite the momentum we are seeing, we continue to struggle to gain traction on some of the projects and policy settings that would help lock in long-term growth.
Our infrastructure, regulation and decision-making processes are not growing with us – and if you look at some of the current challenges we have around bridges, state highways and the lack of investment over many years, we have to question whether our current settings are fit for our future.
For example, it took 21 years to achieve meaningful progress on the second Ashburton Bridge. Right now there is a proposal on the table for the Port of Lyttelton to support future growth – one of a large handful of proposals over the past half decade that risk going nowhere if decision-makers revert to a steady-as-she-goes mindset, using the same methodologies, funding and financing methods we have in the past.
Alternative options for enabling growth across infrastructure and regulation must be explored if we don’t want to be in a position where it hinders our growth.
So rather than wait for the Government or councils to drive some of those conversations, which can take decades, businesses want to step into the arena more and help influence and shape the future operating environment they do business in.
This is exactly why Business Canterbury initiated the Canterbury Ambition.
We recognised that while there were plenty of conversations happening about individual projects and issues, there was no shared conversation about where the region is heading and what will be required to get there.
Business has a unique perspective to offer here. We connect across industries, supply chains and communities. We see the opportunities emerging across the region and the constraints that could hold us back.
The Canterbury Ambition is our attempt to bring those insights together, align around a common vision for the future and help create the conditions for better decisions around shaping the future of our city and region we all choose to live, work and invest in.
And it is also why we are bringing together business, political leaders and local government decision-makers at an inaugural South Island Election Conference in August, the largest pre-election gathering of business and political leadership in the South Island.
We will have deliberate and focused conversations about what will deliver the infrastructure we need, and make a clear case for the policy settings that make more sense here in the South Island than in Wellington.
Our message will be clear from across the South Island business community – that failure to embrace new thinking and make bold decisions at pace risks stalling the progress we are experiencing, and will hamper our ability to grow the South Island’s contribution to the New Zealand economy.
Those in decision-making roles must be bold in their thinking, and those in our community who are quick to come out fighting against any form of change must be more open-minded to embrace it and recognise that if we don’t, we are simply waiting for another burning platform.
We may discover we have missed the opportunity that was right in front of us.
