Rebooting the Regions by Paul Spoonley

Author:Paul Spoonley [Paul Spoonley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780994132567
Publisher: Massey University Press
Published: 2016-04-08T04:00:00+00:00

Fostering regional innovation

Regional innovation led by local government working in conjunction with iwi, business, central government and other key stakeholders is clearly capable of delivering economic prosperity and reducing uneven regional development. It requires support and resourcing (in particular, research and funding) from central government. Planning for the shift to service-sector economies and harnessing opportunities associated with technological change are critical for regional economic development. MBIE’s Regional Growth Programme is a tentative start to providing the necessary support for regions from the centre. Its focus is on identifying current regional sectoral specialisations that have the most potential to contribute to growth in jobs and incomes, fostering associated sectors that add value to these regional specialisations, and identifying new or emerging sectoral specialisations. The key deliverable for each region is a report that outlines the region’s significant future economic opportunities and identifies the actions that would most effectively stimulate economic development and increase incomes and jobs in the region over a short- to medium-term horizon (up to 10 years).

MBIE and MPI acknowledge that achieving the economic aspirations of a region is dependent on collaboration and the ability to attract investment. Collaboration, in turn, requires inclusive processes encompassing a broad range of regional economic and social actors. However, where regional economic actors favour sectoral specialisations that are at variance with the policies of central government, there needs to be much more constructive engagement by central government than has occurred on some occasions.

For example, several regions have identified as a specialisation the global interest in food and other products that are free of genetically modified (GM) organisms. Hastings District Council became the first local authority in the country to ban GM crops and animals under its District Plan. This was strongly supported by many Hawke’s Bay food producers, who had formed an organisation, Pure Hawke’s Bay, to advocate for environmental regulation to ban GM organisms in crops and animals in the district.

The rule was seen as significant for economic development because of the premium attached to non-GM food by global consumers. Hastings District accounts for a large part of Hawke’s Bay’s food production and the council’s District Plan was amended to prohibit the release and field trials of GM crops and animals. Pure Hawke’s Bay drew comparisons with other high-value food-producing regions such as Burgundy, Champagne and Provence in France, and Tuscany in Italy, that had also sought to protect their GM-free status in response to consumer demand.

Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule acknowledged the argument underpinning the District Plan rule that being able to claim GM-free status created a competitive advantage, asserting that ‘[w]e produce some of the best food in the world. There is a premium for GM-free food and we think that for the 10-year life of the District Plan we should use that to our advantage in terms of a market opportunity’ (cited in Hendery, 2015). This was also recognised by a multi-million-dollar produce exporter, John Bostock: ‘Returns for premium products are strong and growing. This added value for our producers

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