[Cross-posted] The Fairfax Press has been talking about how Wellingtonians are expected to bail out some loss-makers, such as the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. And that the decision to do this has been made behind closed doors. The city’s debt is over $200 million—we were looking at very similar numbers at the time of the 2007 local body elections.
   I’m curious now that it is election year why most of my opponents have not talked about job creation. There has, instead, been some easy talk about pedestrianizing, which might give a short-term boost to contractors. That’s all well and good, but we need bigger change.
   It’s why I’ve talked about free wifi for some time. It’s not a whim. Open it up and creative and tech businesses will come here. There is plenty of evidence to show that if you can create industry clusters, you can find success. And what are Wellington’s most likely clusters that we can build quickly and create jobs with? Creative and tech.
   It doesn’t take a genius to work out that if we attract more new businesses here, we will collect more rates, which means the burden on ratepayers is spread more fairly.
   Clusters can be created easily if there’s a will—and Sir Peter Jackson and his work in the film industry have reminded us this much.
   As to funding our loss-makers, it incenses me that this was all done behind closed doors, in what the Fairfax Press calls secret meetings.
   No more. My term, if you elect me, will be about transparency. Decisions like this will be put, openly, on to a city blog—the prototype of which is Your Wellington. You can’t make a council meeting? No worries: you can comment online and have your say.
   By being transparent about everything, we’ll force the groups that want city aid to put up a heck of a business case, and convince us that they won’t repeat the same mistakes and come cap-in-hand to us again in a few years’ time.
   The 2010 mayoral election is not about the same old élites, but about understanding that Wellington is on the cusp of something great. The best person for the job is someone who represents us and realizes our potential—not someone who will land us in the same old funk again.

PS.: There are some more campaign graphics over at my personal blog which you can download.

creative sector · employment · finance · industry clusters · job creation · mayoralty · rates · technology · transparency · Wellington · Whanganui-a-Tara

When Lucire first broke news yesterday about Peter Jackson’s knighthood in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours’ List—before any New Zealand media did—I was particularly delighted.
   Peter Jackson deserves a knighthood not just because he makes marvellous films. Peter Jackson deserves a knighthood because he continues to believe in New Zealand even after certain bodies and their bureaucrats gave him grief.
   Before he was a big name internationally, there was reported tension between Jackson and the New Zealand Film Commission in the 1990s.
   Because Jackson believed in this country so much, he got over it. A lesser man would have thought, ‘If the establishment won’t accept me, I’ll leave.’
   Many of the big Kiwi names in movies are based in California, because when they left there was no centre for movie production in New Zealand. And they wanted somewhere that could understand their vision for making movies.
   Instead, Jackson fought to make his Lord of the Rings trilogy in New Zealand—setting up a world-class hub for film in Wellington.
   While some politicians would like to give credit to the Tourism New Zealand 100 Per Cent Pure campaign for lifting the national image, I’ve always argued it was the effort of one man—Jackson—for bringing the country to the world stage.
   Destination branding can be ignored, passed over as just another tourism ad in a travel magazine. Peter Jackson alone gave it that hook, and if any one man can take credit for the first decade’s economic boosts, it is him.
   Through Jackson not only did the films become nice earners for New Zealand, the tourist industry boomed because of the trilogy. And the Film Commission came right in the end.
   And in many respects, Peter Jackson kicked the tall poppy syndrome idea out of the country’s psyche where it could only be entertained by a few foreign companies who use it to keep Kiwis down. Peter Jackson changed our culture, and helped make Wellington great.
   This knighthood is long overdue, but I applaud this honour for Jackson. He is a patriot, a word that should not have politically incorrect shades. His level of pride is just what New Zealand needs. Sir Peter Jackson is an inspirational figure and one hopes many others will have faith in their own beliefs, in the way that he does.

arts · creative sector · creativity · culture · film · Peter Jackson · Wellington · Whanganui-a-Tara

In the second week of November, I attended two functions for Global Entrepreneurship Week. The first was Wellington to the World 2009, where numerous local businesses, who had made it big worldwide, got a chance to talk about how they leveraged the internet. Solutions such as social media, virtual working and licensing were among the topics raised.
   This year, Richard McManus of ReadWriteWeb was the keynote speaker. I had heard of ReadWriteWeb before but—and this is terrible for someone who went through the same thing with Lucire—thought it was foreign. Admittedly, I tune in to ReadWriteWeb when there’s a news headline that intrigues me, and sometimes, those are from one of its overseas bureaux.
   It was a great wake-up call—that there are many world-class businesses right here in Wellington—and I enjoyed listening to Richard, who is going through many of the same phases as we had in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I remember the days when I had not met some of my team members in person, judging them by the quality of their work. It works quite well in the dot-com sphere. And for most of my 22 years in business, many people did not make the connection between our properties and New Zealand—including New Zealanders. (I still hear people think that my businesses have some foreign ownership or overseas partners, which is untrue.)
   We need to change the mindset of New Zealanders, myself included, toward thinking the best comes from this country. And if you look around the country, Wellington is the most creative city. We have as much capability of creating world-class businesses as anyone else. In fact, the Kiwi can-do mentality suggests we have a greater capability of doing this.
   This is one of the reasons behind the free wifi that I would like to see implemented if I am elected as mayor in October 2010. It is about job creation, and it is about civic pride. Weta, Sidhe and ReadWriteWeb have already shown that it is possible—and I would love to see more entrepreneurs get the right breaks to make Wellington even more vibrant.

Photographed by Jo Mangee, http://www.flickr.com/photos/mangee//CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Aotearoa · creative sector · creativity · entrepreneurship · free wifi · Global Entrepreneurship Week · growth · ICT · Jack Yan · Lucire · New Zealand · opinion · ReadWriteWeb · Richard McManus · tech sector · technology · Unlimited Potential · W2W · Wellington · Wellington to the World · Whanganui-a-Tara · wifi