BayBuzz Magazine - Jan/Feb 2013 by BayBuzz

CATCHING ANY

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JAN / FEB 2013 new zealand $5.00

HERITAGE

EARTH QUAKE READINESS

HB’S‘NATURAL’

EDGE IS

VOICES

Trubridge, Lloyd Jenkins, Thorp Hague, Newman, Paynter Bazzard, Tichinin, Russell Dunningham, Webb, Vile

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25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Fresh aspirations and expectations for Hawke’s Bay

by tom belford & the baybuzz team

THE THE ÜBER ÜBER DIFFERENT DIFFERENT V40 V40

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FROM THE EDITOR

Beating the odds. BY ~ tom belford

If you want a warm bath in fluffy features, BayBuzz isn’t the magazine for you.

I hope you are reading this edition of BayBuzz with grand ambitions for the year ahead – for yourselves, your families, businesses, and the community organisations so many of you support. To help ‘inspire you to greatness’, our lead feature profiles 25 people to watch in 2013 – individuals, most of them not typically in the headlines, who will be taking on new, important or uniquely interesting challenges over the year. Stretching themselves and those around them. Making a difference. BayBuzz faces a big challenge in 2013 too … one that requires beating the odds.

Last month, APN, owner of Hawke’s Bay Today, among other New Zealand publications, indicated it would suffer a 30% profit slump. Their chief executive said, “Our publishing businesses have felt the full force of the market downturn in both Australia and New Zealand.” APN expects advertising revenues in NZ will be 9% lower for the year, mostly due to a drop in display and job ads. BayBuzz has been reasonably successful in winning advertisers in a tough, recession-stung marketplace. We are ever so grateful for those who have stepped up and judged our magazine to be a compelling platform for their messages. Readers, please pay attention to them.

This year we must prove that there is indeed an appetite for thoughtful, probing journalism focused on Hawke’s Bay issues and lifestyle, and an economic model to support it over the long haul.

But advertising won’t cover the costs. Even for a magazine that runs on an oily rag, with considerable volunteer support.

In short, BayBuzz is going pay-only.

We don’t aim to make our readers comfortable, bathing you in fluffy features and unadulterated boosterism. Instead, we challenge and provoke, even with our humour. I guarantee you’ll find something to disagree with in this issue!

Starting with our next edition in March, to receive BayBuzz you will need to either be a subscriber (and get copies delivered to your door!) or buy your copy at a variety of stores around the Bay. In our recent Reader Survey, fully 86% agreed strongly that BayBuzz “meets a need other publications do not.” And 75% believe “BayBuzz provides an important community service.” We appreciate that endorsement of what we are trying to accomplish and deliver for Hawke’s Bay. At the same time, 73% say they might subscribe “at a reasonable price” or purchase individual copies. Again, we appreciate the sentiment … but will our ‘consumers’ come through?

And the second reason BayBuzz is bucking the odds?

Making you uncomfortable (sometimes even unhappy), asking you to question the status quo and ‘powers that be’, talking about real problems, taking a stand – is this the path to winning you as a BayBuzz subscriber?! For many, the answer will be No. But hopefully, for many more, the answer will be Yes. If you think BayBuzz is a quality publication deserving of your support, please turn to the last page, right now, consider our value, name your price … And subscribe!

To make subscribing to BayBuzz as easy as possible, we’re making an unprecedented offer – we’re letting you, our reader, set your own subscription price. You decide how valuable BayBuzz is to you, and that’s what you pay as an annual subscription. Can you ask for a more “reasonable” price than that?! Our subscription offer is explained on the inside back cover. Even with this ‘name your own price’ subscription offer, BayBuzz is bucking the odds – for two reasons. First of all, we’re swimming against the tide of the entire publishing industry, where newspapers and magazines have been losing torrential amounts of revenue. “Are you nuts, Tom, it’s an online world now!”

Check out our

‘Name your own price’

Subscription offer on the last page!

ISSUE No.10 : JAN / FEB 2013

THIS MONTH We’d like to put stars in your eyes this issue – 25 in fact. People to watch doing great things in 2013 … many, not in the headlines. Plus the state of fishing in Hawke’s Bay, business incubating, marketing the Bay’s ‘natural’ edge, Chinese ‘knockoffs’, new earthquake standards and lifting the bar for ‘regional’ art. ISSN 2253-2625 (Print) ISSN 2253-2633 (Online)

FEATURES 42 JUST LIKE CHILDREN & SNUFFLES By Phyllis Tichinin Why are we ignoring science-based, internationally-lauded, regenerative farming practices that are right in front of us?

46 SHAKE RATTLE & ROLL By Anthony Vile Given recent official reports, what must we do to improve the earthquake readiness of our commercial and public buildings, while protecting heritage sites?

This publication uses vegetable based inks and environmentally responsible papers. The document is printed throughout on Sumo K Matt, which is FSC® certified and from responsible souces, manufactured under ISO 14001 Environmental management Systems.

25 Stars to Watch in 2013

People we think will make a difference in the coming year. By the BayBuzz team.

FISHY BUSINESS By Mark Sweet

What’s the story behind declining numbers in the Hawke’s Bay fishery? What needs to be done?

ICEHOUSE

Challenge for Hawke’s Bay Businesses

By Keith Newman Business growth guru comes to the Bay, backed by the region’s leading entrepreneurs. What’s the magic?

IDEAS & OPINIONS 32

FOCUSING ON THE PREMIUM OF ‘NATURAL’ Kim Thorp

LOW PRICES AT ANY COST? David Trubridge

8 CULTURE & LIFESTYLE 44

BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES Kay Bazzard

PLAYERS AND FANS WIN WITH SPORTSGROUND TECHNOLOGY

Keith Newman

Paul Paynter

DIVERSIONS: LET'S DANCE

EILEEN

EIT 'CRUSADERS' HELP REBUILD CHRISTCHURCH

Kay Bazzard

TAONGA MÃORI

Claire Hague

Lizzie Russell

AFTERNOONS IN THE SUN Douglas Lloyd Jenkins

ECCENTRIC, ECLECTIC & EGALITARIAN Roy Dunningham

GIVING A DAM Brendan Webb

THE BAYBUZZ TEAM > EDITOR Tom Belford Senior writers Jessica Soutar Barron, Keith Newman, Mark Sweet,Tom Belford columnists Brendan Webb, Claire Hague, David Trubridge, Des Ratima, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Elizabeth Sisson, Kay Bazzard, Lizzie Russell, Paul Paynter, Phyllis Tichinin, Roy Dunningham, Tim Gilbertson editor’s right hand Brooks Belford photographyTim Whittaker creative, design & production Steff @ Ed art assistant Julia Jameson advertising sales & distribution Tessa Tylee & Trevor Howes Online Mogul business manager Silke Whittaker printing Format Print

jan/feb 2013

contributors > JESS SOUTAR BARRON Jess is a wordsmith and project manager whose past gigs have included time with Sky TV, Hastings District Council and Band, as well as three years as a communications manager with the Metropolitan Police Service. She also produces Fruit Bowl Craft Jam and Pecha Kucha in the Bay. KEITH NEWMAN Keith is a journo with nearly 40-years’ experience across mainstream and trade media. He’s won awards for writing about hi-tech, produces Musical Chairs programmes for Radio NZ and has published four books, one on the internet in New Zealand and three others on New Zealand history. LIZZIE RUSSELL Lizzie grew up in Hawke’s Bay, and returned in 2010 after stints in Christchurch, Palmerston North, Wellington, Te Awamutu and Tokyo. She works at Hastings City Art Gallery and as a freelance writer, and is co-organiser of the Wildflower Sculpture Exhibition and the HB Readers and Writers Festival. MARK SWEET Napier-born, Mark worked overseas in Hong Kong and Scotland, but returned to Hawke’s Bay, launching Pacifica restaurant. Selected for the Mãori Literature Trust’s Te Papa Tupu programme where he was mentored in refining his just-released novel, Zhu Mao. He’s published Portrait & Opinion with Richard Brimmer. TOM BELFORD Tom’s past includes the Carter White House, building Ted Turner’s first philanthropic organization, doing heaps of marketing consulting for major nonprofits and corporates. Tom publishes BayBuzz and writes an acclaimed blog for professional NGO fundraisers and communicators in North America and Europe.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letters to the Editor We encourage readers to criticize, expand upon or applaud our articles as you see fit. Each of our magazine articles is published online – www.baybuzz.co.nz – where you can always comment … at any length and as often as you like. But we are also happy to publish a limited number of readers’ letters here. You can email us at editors@baybuzz.co.nz or mail us at BayBuzz, PO Box 8322, Havelock North.

Announcing the Napier/ Gisborne Railway Party

Will a Dam Bring Them Back to the Bay?

The real reason the rail has been closed, is once the new dam in Central Hawke’s Bay is built all of Gisborne’s produce will be able to be grown cheaper there and transported much more easily to Napier Port.

As a significant employer of RSE workers there are a couple of points to make.

A simple glance around some of the nicer neighbourhoods in Hawke’s Bay would lead many people to the conclusion that there is, contrary to statistical assumptions, quite a large amount of wealth resident here.

Gisborne, not just the rail has been abandoned. Haven’t you noticed there’s still cracked buildings in their main street from their last big earthquake? No big Govt rebuild there aye. Brian Drury

Local Lifestyle, Global Dominion for Bay’s Hi-tech Ambassador Hawke’s Bay needs more people like Mr Drury and I support his efforts to revamp the Marine Parade.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

HOWEVER, I do not support his efforts to put a cable ski concept on the Marineland site. There is plenty of room further south. The cable ski concept puts the Marineland animals in great peril of being euthanised. A revamped Marineland would also be a great drawcard like it has been in the past, with a new educational focus. We do not need to destroy the past to have a new future. Marineland was and could be again a focal point for this kids’ capital, especially for domestic tourists. Hey Mr Drury, you would have a huge amount of support in HB if you engaged with locals for a Marineland project. Sue Macdonald

Firstly, they make up about a third of our seasonal workforce. We work closely with WINZ and the quality of staff we’re getting from them now is better than it has been for years. With higher unemployment NZ people have been and will continue to be the biggest component of our staff. The RSE workers seem to dominate the workforce only because they are more conspicuous. Secondly, Mr Nash states that very little of their earnings are spent here in HB. That is not our experience. The RSE workers can only take home their savings. Most of their income is spent on costs of living. Beyond that they spend a great deal on goods to take home, rather than money. We’ve coordinated shipping containers for them, which they once filled with endless mod cons. Our staff come from tsunami ravaged villages and in recent years their spending has been more focused on tools and materials for reconstruction. These workers appear to take little money home, on the basis that there are few shops in their villages in which to spend it. I suspect 80% of the money stays right here in the Bay.

I believe the key to this region’s future lies in redistributing that wealth. How we do that can and should be debated but it will not come from a publiclyfinanced scheme to maintain the current level of exploitation in, and dominance of, primary industry (which is what the dam project is essentially proposing). To assume that stimulating primary industry is going to somehow have a drip-down effect on the populace is about as constructive as proposing to sell our orchards to Chinese or Korean agricultural conglomerates. If the outcome of a dam is increased dairy farming (or any farming), in agreeing to it the Hawke’s Bay has surely rubber-stamped one of the worst possible sectors for job creation relative to size. Indeed, if Mr Nash wants highskilled, high-waged jobs to be created in the Hawke’s Bay even he must know a dam is utterly the wrong direction to take (unless, perhaps, we refer to the architects and engineers that build it). Oliver Styles

(Abridged)

Paul Paynter

A great day to be in the Bay … Obama back in the White House, sun shining and the latest edition of BayBuzz in the letter box … afternoon taken care of! Mark Cleary

Tom … Thank you to you and your committed team for all the hard work you are doing. I feel I can trust your view on our local issues and when I am confronted with a decision to make I seek you views before doing so. Keep up the hard work that most of us find excuses not to get on board and help out with. Paula van der Meer

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25 Stars to Watch in 2013

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Desna Whaanga-Schollum

Hamish White

Desna Whaanga-Schollum Having returned home to the Bay this year to take up the newly-created role of Designer, Taonga Mãori at Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Desna WhaangaSchollum has found herself with little time to sit still. Her job at the museum is a big one, using her design talent to help bring about a new direction for the taonga Mãori collection and exhibition. And what she brings to that assignment is a wide breadth of design and creative excellence. Desna has been based in Auckland for many years, her time there interspersed with significant periods overseas for travel and work. While in Auckland, she’s been working nationwide on design, marketing and branding through her company DWS Creative. A highlight of her CV is her involvement in 2011’s Rugby World Cup. Desna managed Mãori-focussed design contracts for Mastercard (Man of the Match) and worked on the tournament’s Māori merchandise. Big-name projects have sat alongside closer-to-home work such as the rebranding of Hastings City Art Gallery in 2009. She’s also Co-Chair of Ngã Aho Society of Mãori Design Professionals, a national network which works to further the professional interests of practitioners and promote design within Mãori communities. Recently she’s been photographing sites of significance for the Mahia-Wairoa treaty claim, work that is representative of Desna’s keenness to immerse herself in the local scene and the issues faced here. On top of all this, Desna somehow finds time to continue her own artistic practice, with work included in the regional showcase exhibition EAST 2012.

White, credited as the marketing man behind the creation of $10 unlimited text in Telecom’s battle with Vodafone in 2002, gave up on commuting to Wellington from Napier and formed his own marketing company Tank, a couple of years later. When local wireless Internet provider Airnet began making serious inroads as a full-service telco and winning market share in neighbouring regions, he stepped up as CEO, ahead of the name change to NOW. The company, now offering fixed line broadband, fibre, wireless and mobile services is seriously investing in back-up and storage technology with a view to taking 20% of the telco business in other regions. “2013 will see us entering neighboring provinces, with Rotorua being the first cab off the rank.” Hamish makes a tantalizing but mysterious further promise: “In March, we will revolutionize telecommunications for businesses – we’re going to bring you stuff that the other telcos are too scared to talk about because it threatens established revenue streams.” We’ll need to watch that space. White believes he can grow the company from a staff of 21 currently to 150, including a call centre, within five years. But quality counts. “We’re only ever as good as our people, so building and growing as a team will be a significant area of emphasis – to deliver against our claim of being awesome, we need to be awesome!” He believes a successful telecommunications company will attract other software and technology-based businesses to the Bay, forming the basis for a technology hub.

The new year brings us fresh aspirations and expectations for ourselves, our families and our community. Hawke’s Bay will be carried forward in the coming year by many familiar, longstanding leaders in our various sectors, many of whom we’ve featured in the past as ‘Buzzmakers’. However we decided to focus at the onset of 2013 on individuals who will be taking on new opportunities, wearing new hats, or facing unique challenges.

Most are fresh ‘unheralded’ faces. Some are individuals well-known, but who are assuming new roles of special significance or facing new tests. Here are BayBuzz’s 25 stars to watch in 2013. Hopefully many will succeed in their goals for the coming year; some might not. Given their reputations, we can expect that all will make a difference.

Hamish White Hamish White, CEO of local telco NOW, believes greater innovation in food, beverage and technology and luring the head offices of large service-sector giants, is the key to a business boom in the Bay.

Dr Suzette Major Since arriving here in 2010 Dr Suzette Major has turned arts education in the Bay on its head, not just for artists, but for arts advocates, audiences and ambassadors. She’s rethought EIT’s School of Arts and Design relaunching it as Ideaschool. She’s rewritten its degree in Visual Arts and Design to become project-based, a shift Continued on Page 10

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

We asked BayBuzz’s network of writers and stalwart supporters to recommend people who fit that description. Thanks to those folks for their many great suggestions, from which we made the final selections.

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Dr Suzette Major

» that’s happening internationally in arts

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

education but is only now reaching New Zealand. Sitting on the board of Creative Hawke’s Bay, she’s helped introduce Pecha Kucha here and begun planning the inaugural ‘State of the Arts’, a creative communities hui set for early 2013. Driven by a belief that the arts are vital to the wellbeing of society in general, even more so in times of change, Major has embedded herself in the fabric of HB’s arts and culture scene. “On a regional level, the arts strengthen our sense of belonging; at a national level, they help us hang on to who we are - as globalisation continues, localisation becomes more and more important.” In 2013 Major wants to consolidate the progress she has made since arriving in Hawke’s Bay. With other tertiary institutions in New Zealand struggling she is well aware of the need for strength and stability. “Other arts degrees are really suffering, but we’ve adapted ahead of the wave. We have other people looking at our degree and using it as an example of how to teach the arts in the future.” Also in the cards for 2013 are a trip to Colombia to speak at the 12th International Conference on Arts and Culture Management in June, and the early stages of penning a book on arts education. Michael Whittaker Like so many before him, native son Michael Whittaker finished his schooling here in Havelock North, went off to Uni (Massey) to get a business degree, then to Auckland to make his way in the world of commerce. Twenty years then spent building, buying and selling diverse businesses, most notably Atlantis Health Care. But spending 200 nights away from home; making the Auckland-London trip monthly. The benefit of that travel: “I’ve had a lot more time than most people to think about my businesses.” That thinking paid off, enabling

Michael Whittaker

Phil King

Whittaker to return to the Bay for good in 2008. Then he began to look for HB ventures to channel his energy. Two of those have gained media attention lately. Whittaker acquired Havelock North’s Te Mata Mushrooms, at 25 tonnes per week of product and 110 employees, NZ’s secondlargest producer of mushrooms. “I wanted to be in the food-producing business.” The 46-year-old company was on the market. He assiduously studied mushrooms and the mushroom business, saw opportunity for significant growth, and is now a mushroom evangelist! What’s in store for 2013? Soon to be implemented is an innovation Michael discovered at a US university that will unlock more nutritional value in the mushroom. Watch this space. Speaking of space, Whittaker also wears the hat of urban developer. He’s purchased the landmark Albert Hotel, the oldest wooden building in Hastings, but a building deteriorated “past the point of no return”. Officialdom permitting, Whittaker has imaginative – and fast-moving – ideas for that space, planning an inner-city green space – Albert Square – centered around food, entertainment, water features. He believes this concept can help attract people and buzz to the section of Heretaunga Street between the hotel’s current location and the Opera House. How soon? Whittaker wants to see people enjoying the park by next Christmas!

yet Phil knew Dorset wool had unrealized potential: it was an ideal filler for quality duvets. “I’d been hankering to go in this direction for a long time, but just couldn’t manage the logistics,” he said. Until his daughter, a chartered accountant, launched her own business selling high-end linens over the internet. From there, it was only a matter of time to the creation of Purely Dorset premium wool duvets. Available through www.crisphome. co.nz., the duvets caught the eye of a group of American MBA students, who agreed to market and distribute them in the US where the first container load arrived this past November. To say Phil is stoked about his new business venture would be an understatement. He’s thrilled with the new product that is natural, sustainable, longlasting, hypo-allergenic, flame retardant, and has great insulating properties. “And it’s beautifully made,” he says, sounding the born-salesman. “It really ticks all the boxes,” including being a family business. Full steam ahead in 2013. Phil wants to buy all the Dorset wool in New Zealand. “Suppliers are lining up to supports us,” he says. “We can only take small steps at the moment until demand grows. But when it starts to rumble, I’ll be on their tails.”

Phil King Little did Tikokino farmer Phil King know he’d one day become a player in the luxury linens business. But he has, thanks to an eye for opportunity, an enterprising daughter, and the Ruataha Poll Dorset stud he’s been running for about 30 years. “Pressing Dorset wool is like trying to put froth back into a beer glass” because it’s so fluffy and lightweight says Phil. For years, this meant bales of only 130kg compared to the 180kg standard for Romney wool. And

Migoto Eria Schooled in total immersion Mãori in Hawke’s Bay, Migoto Eria is a ‘returnee’, recently taking the position of Curator Taonga Mãori at the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery. She comes to us from Wellington, where she has spent the last three years working at state-owned enterprise Learning Media. There, her focus was on writing and editing educational books in te reo Mãori for the education market. Before Learning Media, Migoto worked at the Mãori Language Commission for two years. Having stepped away from books and publishing and into the museum sphere, Migoto has remained involved and

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Migoto Eria

Graeme Hansen

“We’re only ever as good as our people, so building and growing as a team will be a significant area of emphasis.” hamish white

invested in language and culture. She currently has her hands full researching, planning and writing exhibition material, publications and presentations for the opening taonga Mãori show, Ukaipõ at Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery. The museum will re-open after a major redevelopment project in September. So what excites Migoto most about the upcoming show, and her role in bringing it to the public? “Seeing how our Mãori community, particularly, respond to the opening taonga exhibition,” Migoto says. And as for right now? Migoto comments that real excitement and pleasure comes frequently in her job when she gets to show significant collection items that she’s discovered and learned about to individuals

in the Mãori community. Migoto and the team are the access point for the taonga collection, meaning that if they need to, people are still able to interact with the treasures housed at the museum, even while it’s officially closed. We’re looking forward to seeing the finished product come September, though probably not as much as Migoto is! Graeme Hansen There are routine building projects … and then there are the Big Ones. Graeme Hansen, trained as a civil engineer, hopes to bring to fruition construction of the Ruataniwha water storage dam, whose direct cost will tally in the $250 million range.

Continued on Page 12

» Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

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For an engineer like Graeme, who has laboured over Hawke’s Bay’s flood control and drainage schemes as a Regional Council manager for 30 years, his current assignment is the brass ring … a “once in a career opportunity”. And 2013 will be a pivotal year in determining whether Graeme eventually gets to break ground. As group manager of Water Initiatives since January 2011, Graeme supervised the multi-faceted feasibility analysis that Council argues confirms the viability of the dam and storage scheme. Now he is the Council’s point man for driving the project through the consenting process, as well as coming up with the final

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25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Nicole Masters

» engineering plans and costings.

Officially, Graeme and his team are accountable to the Hawke’s Bay Regional Investment Company, a HBRCcontrolled business entity that will apply for the necessary resource consent and hold the Regional Council’s financial stake in the project. If all goes to plan (from HBRC’s perspective), the engineering preparations, which will involve two short-listed firms competing with final design and costings, are targeted for completion in July. A key milestone for Graeme. However, the consenting process, presumed to involve a special Board of Inquiry, won’t be completed until early 2014. And might or might not yield the decision sought by HBRC. So, no popping the champagne this year. Still, for dam supporters and skeptics alike, given all the heavy lifting required to progress the project in the coming critical year, Graeme Hansen is the man to watch.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Nicole Masters Nicole Masters entered university wanting to become a great white shark researcher. First they made her study earth worms. She’s never looked back. Now soil is the primary focus of her company Integrity Soils, which advises on biological farming methods and practices.

Rebecca Turner “Everything comes back to soil and how we treat it,” says Masters. “Biological farming is about proactively managing systems, it’s preventative medicine for the land.” Rather than being solely focused on ecological drivers Masters is well aware of the need for viable practices in terms of economics. She maintains that moving to biological farming has strong economic benefits. Masters observes that farmers often feel disempowered and uninformed about what they’re putting on to their land, and independent advice is hard to come by. “We have to ask where does information come from? Chemical suppliers, vets, fertilizer companies. Is that in the best interests of farmers?” Masters asks. She advocates tapping in to farmers’ innate knowledge and building their own confidence around land use. While assisting others with their land, she also works her own – 50 acres in Waipukurau she manages with her husband, a horsebreaker. They frequently run workshops to show people ways they can reduce the chemicals they put into their soil. In 2013 Masters hopes to get a soil health programme running nationwide whereby farmers receive free support through regional councils. Although she has considerable sciencebased knowledge, Masters’ work is also deeply personal. “What I’m learning is it is an emotional response that shifts people. Not being afraid to talk about your passion, lightening up and enjoying the process. It’s not simply about hard science, you’ve got to connect, because we are all social beings.” Nominated for Rural Business Woman of the Year in 2012, Masters will in part spend 2013 completing her Masters in Ag Science. Rebecca Turner A dozen years ago, with Graeme Avery of Sileni and Kim Thorp of Black Barn, Rebecca Turner helped conceive and eventually chaired Hawke’s Bay’s first effort to establish a regional brand.

‘Hawke’s Bay Wine Country’ bottled and sold well a most attractive aspect of the Bay’s ambiance and lifestyle. Then her focus shifted more to family business, investment and philanthropy outside the Bay. More recently, she and husband Lyn Williams have been developing the award-winning Parkhill Farm in Haumoana. However 2012 saw Turner intensify her community involvements, taking the leadership of two initiatives holding the potential to shape the future of Hawke’s Bay. First, she became chair of the Hawke’s Bay Foundation, revitalizing what had operated as The Community Foundation. This has meant quickly gaining over $1 million in new funding commitments from local benefactors. The Foundation will amass a growing permanent capital base, often through bequests, protect that capital through prudent investment, and then distribute only the earned income for strategic projects in the region. Right now, the Foundation is exploring a major ‘catalyst’ project to underscore the leadership role a community foundation can play both as a funder and mobilizer. As it builds, the Foundation will award nearly $200,000 in 2013. But Rebecca’s goal is to see the Hawke’s Bay Foundation grow a fund of at least $10 million over the next

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25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Mike Purchas

ten years. At the same time, Rebecca chairs A Better Hawke’s Bay, the broad-based community group that advocates reorganisation of the region’s five councils. Her goal there? “To see a community working unselfishly together towards a shared vision, embracing the benefits of reorganisation in a referendum in 2013.”

Business Hawke’s Bay. He’s passionate about the smart use of technology but also believes the Bay needs to be made more accessible for tourism and business. The best place to start getting that right, he says, is more competitive domestic airfares and direct flights to Australia. Purchas has long argued that the Hastings and Napier Councils, as 50% co-owners of the airport (with the Crown owning 50%), should take a more ambitious role in the strategic direction of the facility. As a regular presenter to our councils, he’s been pressing for lengthening of the airport runway and opportunities to get ticket prices down. His personal wish for 2013? Seeing HB Airport issue to carriers a RFP for a 3 - 5 year exclusive on trans-Tasman services from Napier, possibly with intermittent legs through Auckland to introduce some domestic competition at the same time. Anyone flying in and out of the Hawke’s Bay Airport – or promoting tourism – should wish Purchas success!

To the Rescue ... When Helen Blaxland and Annie Dundas assumed their respective posts in 2010, Blaxland as general manger at Cranford and Dundas as general manager at Hawke’s Bay Inc (now HB Tourism), both institutions were in turmoil, with key stakeholders displeased. Significant positive changes have occurred since then in both cases. According to an oft-cited management maxim, a new leader should be hitting full stride in their third year at the helm. So what do Blaxland and Dundas have in store? Helen Blaxland “Cranford is fixed,” says Blaxland. “We’re at the place where we can call ourselves a healthy organization.” She quickly adds that all sorts of improvements in service can still be made. The “service is not a building,” she emphasizes.

Blaxland believes that the role of palliative care needs to be better understood in the community. “Death and dying force each of us to think about our responsibilities as members of the community.” Steadily, more palliative care will be given outside the hospice itself. “We need to provide our service at whatever bed the patient is in,” says Blaxland. In the year to June 2012, Cranford cared for 595 patients, with an average monthly caseload of 134. In that period, there were 372 deaths, only 22% of those in the hospice, compared to 30% at home. Meanwhile, 5,760 community home nurse visits were provided. It’s Cranford’s reach into the community that most challenges Blaxland. One objective is to better support GPs. Blaxland wants to create a ‘register’ of individuals likely to need palliative care, whatever the setting. This would involve more support to GPs, asking them to signal patients in their care who might be approaching the need for palliative service. That would enable the Cranford team to engage earlier with patients and their families, especially caretakers. We need to “start more conversations about death and dying … how do they want to be cared for?” Other areas Blaxland will focus on in 2013 include extending Cranford’s Continued on Page 14

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Mike Purchas After running a group of multinational companies supplying online and mobile financial market data to banks and private traders around the world, Mike Purchas returned to Hawke’s Bay in 2002, determined that his children would not grow up as “big city shopping mall kids”. Leveraging his knowledge of setting up databases and internet content aggregation he formed Sportsground.co.nz, an online publishing system which has grown to be the largest single provider to the country’s sports clubs and organisations. The business, based on the outskirts of Havelock North and with a sales office in Auckland, is rated among the top three online sports publishing sites in the country. Like many other successful ex-pats, Purchas wants to contribute to “a sustainable improvement” in the local economy. Apart from growing his own business, Mike serves on the board of

Helen Blaxland

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Annie Dundas

Angela Hair

Adri Isbister

referrals, now 18%, have been growing); maintaining a strong volunteer base; more service integration with the hospital; and expanding the new “Day Hospice” programme, which offers social support and counseling services to Cranford patients who are otherwise out in the community.

providers, as the main drawing card for Hawke’s Bay. She adds to that the distinction of Napier itself as a destination. Her key goal for 2013? More, new events in Hawke’s Bay. Clearly events drive visiting. A regional event strategy has been prepared, but implementation funding is still required.

an opportunity not only for people to take a stand against exposure to toxic chemicals, but also to grow their confidence for tackling the even bigger issues – like climate change – that are shaping our futures. Let’s see what happens in October.

Annie Dundas As Annie Dundas enters her third year as the tourism champion for our region, she battles with global factors affecting travel, over which Hawke’s Bay Tourism has no influence, and still incomplete visitor data with which to measure her efforts. Many visitors to Hawke’s Bay stay in private or otherwise unrecorded accommodations. Dundas hopes a new regional tourism indicator launched nationwide will better measure of performance, not simply regarding visitor numbers, but more importantly, visitor spend. Meantime, Dundas says, the organization itself has been rebuilt and established credibility. The Hawke’s Bay brand has been refined, is well-used within the region, and better advanced outside. Rugby World Cup represented both a distraction from bedding-in and normal planning, and a unique opportunity that she believes Hawke’s Bay capitalized upon well. And cruise ship visitors are better catered to, including exposure by tour operators to more of the Bay than nearby Napier. Dundas says the focus going forward needs to be on visitor spend. “We need a more realistic view of what our visitor economy is all about.” “We also need to take stock of the product we deliver” as a region, she says. “There’s so much competition for those visitors.” So, we need to “be realistic about what we offer” – asking what our core products are and just how good are they to attract a given market, like families. Dundas leans toward the food and wine experience, backed by very capable

Angela Hair Among the many choices facing local voters next October is whether or not to continue adding fluoride to Hastings District drinking water. For Havelock North resident and environmental activist Angela Hair, the correct decision is a resounding “No!” “Fluoride is added to the water to have a medical effect yet people are not asked if they want this drug in their water. The chemical is classed as a ‘dangerous poison’ and yet its long term impacts on human health have never been properly monitored,” she says. Angela led the charge pressuring Council to take action on the issue and prompting the upcoming public referendum. And, leading up to the vote, she’ll continue mobilizing anti-fluoride public education efforts in conjunction with citizen-action group Fluoride Free Hastings. But for this founding member of Bay Watch, removing fluoride from the water supply is just one step along the path toward sustainable community development. That goal has motivated her passionate involvement over the years with key public initiatives including the cycle-ways and other low-carbon transit projects, regional water issues, and now the anti-fracking campaign. And it is integral also to her well-established homeopathy practice based in Havelock. “I have to think in terms of ‘what action am I taking’ rather than just talking about it,” she says, “If we don’t take action we can’t change anything.” That’s a message more people need to take to heart, says Angela. As she sees it, the debate on fluoride – like fracking – offers

» reach into the Mãori community (Mãori

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Adri Isbister Resilience, good fortune and “quite a bit of drive” have seen Adri Isbister go from teen mother to seasoned CEO of Radius Medical Group, which provides services and support to medical clinics around New Zealand. Although she does consider herself lucky, she also says that she has “made her own breaks” along the way. Isbister began her working life at age nine in a florist. By the time she was 16 she’d saved enough for a house deposit. In her late teens she set up and ran a drug and alcohol rehab centre and trained as a counsellor before moving on to insurance brokering, and, in her 30s, senior management roles. She holds an MBA from Massey. Isbister believes good leadership is more than just setting strategic direction. “It’s about providing clear expectations, role modelling expected behaviours, and working from a place of understanding what’s happening at a practical level,” says Isbister. With Radius for two years, and in Hawke’s Bay for five, Isbister now has her feet firmly under the desk. Her vision for 2013 focuses on growing the talent of her team. “If you surround yourself with good people, you can do anything,” she says. Isbister has a set a target to double the size of the company by 2015. Rethinking inequalities in the health system, investing back into the community and becoming smarter in the way the company works are also all on the table for the new year. Plus her service as a board member of Health Hawke’s Bay. “It’s a challenge but a great challenge. And fancy being able to do it from Hawke’s Bay!” She says.

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Adele Rose

Adele Rose 3R is one of Hawke’s Bay’s business successes. In 2012 it was listed as one of the top 50 NZ companies making money improving the environment. Just appointed to the helm is Adele Rose, who began with the company in 2007. As General Manager she is leading 3R on a mission to enable solutions for waste at every point of the supply chain, specifically in the areas of paint and agri waste. “We focus on some of the nastiest waste and resource problems in New Zealand,” Rose explains. Although the company has a nationwide presence, it is firmly based in Hawke’s Bay , “3R invests heavily in the Bay. We keep 3R here because of lifestyle, but also

John Cheyne the Bay is attracting back into it people who have done time overseas and bring with them a global knowledge and perspective,” Rose says. With an understanding that New Zealand is unique in many ways 3R does look at local responses to waste issues. “However, the problems we are having are global problems and so we often look offshore at best practice solutions,” says Rose. As General Manager, “I am particularly focused on upskilling our senior team so we can grow the business,” says Rose. Two new areas of growth are pinpointed for 3R in 2013: end-of life tyres and vehicles. With a recent change in 3R’s company structure comes Rose’s personal motivation to add to her experience on the HB Chamber of Commerce board by undertaking professional development in good governance. “My long term goal is to work towards directorships of businesses of this size in all sorts of spaces.” John Cheyne Since childhood John Cheyne has been in and around rivers. A recreational user of waterways, now with his children and his grandchildren, Cheyne has seen them deteriorate considerably over the 25 years he’s lived in Hawke’s Bay. With decades of conservation experience under his belt, Cheyne, a wildlife biologist and biodiversity officer at

Fish and Game, advocates better outcomes for our rivers, lakes, streams and estuaries. He is coordinating a key new initiative, Te Taiao Hawke’s Bay Environment Forum, bringing together environmental groups and Mãori to share knowledge and collectively lobby councils. “The umbrella group doesn’t usurp the opinions or objectives of the individual parts,” Cheyne is careful to point out. “And Te Taiao will not take over the responsibilities of its member groups. You can get caught up in ‘talk fests’ but working in a collaborative way is important,” says Cheyne. Over the past year, Te Taiao has been a forum for sharing information and Continued on Page 16

» Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

AT THE END OF THE DAY WHEN THEY’RE TIRED AND VULNERABLE. LARRY’S READY FOR THEM. LARRY WILLIAMS, WEEKDAYS 4-7PM KEEP UP WITH NEWSTALKZB.CO.NZ

90.3FM

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Katja Williams

» educating member groups on biodiversity

and water issues in the Bay. Te Taiao itself has lobbied on those issues and supported members to make submissions, predominantly to Regional Council. An early win for Te Taiao has been speeding up preparation of the longoverdue regional biodiversity strategy from three years to 18 months. In 2013 Cheyne would like to see improved protection of indigenous biodiversity both on the land and in the water, improved river flows and water quality, and improved sustainable land management. “Big decisions will be made on water in 2013, both positive and negative, including the Tukituki plan change and the Ruataniwha water storage project,” says Cheyne. “I am a positive person. I do want to see a vibrant Hawke’s Bay economy. But it needs to be achieved within a sustainable environmental framework.”

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Katja Williams The HB Chamber of Commerce has seen significant change over the past six months. In September it announced a new CEO when Murray Douglas resigned from the role. By November the new CEO had resigned. A few months earlier changes at the Chamber had already begun when president Stuart McLauchlan stood down and Katja Williams took up that role. In many ways thoughout the changes Williams has been the single constant. A board member since 2008 and vice president for three of those years, Chamber business is not new territory for Williams, who balances her role with that of Relationship Manager Agri/Commercial for ANZ. Throughout her working life Williams has volunteered time to community organisations, from Books on Wheels to the Starship Foundation. So when she first came to Hawke’s Bay from Auckland (although originally from Germany)

Louis Chambers

Pauline Elliot

Williams investigated becoming a volunteer fire fighter, but instead turned her mind to business and joined the Chamber. She sees her role as bringing together many varied voices, getting an understanding of wants and needs, and lobbying for better outcomes for business in the Bay. “My role is also to chair meetings and that is about encouraging collaboration. The job title enables me to draw people together and get them talking,” says Williams. In 2013 Williams would like to see Hawke’s Bay cement itself as a centre where businesses can grow and learn; and from there create employment opportunities and show evidence of businesses working together for the greater good of the Bay. After a tumultuous end to 2012, some regrouping is required at the Chamber, but in the long run Williams is confident the organisation will come out stronger. Surely the business community will be watching her leadership in the coming year.

advocacy group on that issue in the States. “I’m really concerned about the effects that climate change is having. I can see myself working for a large NGO encouraging people and governments to adopt lowcarbon practices and technologies.” The big news … Louis will carry his interest in climate change to Oxford University this year as Hawke’s Bay’s first Rhodes Scholar, doing studies in law and environmental management. “The legal work should teach me to think logically about tough questions, and the BSc lets me further my interest in environmental issues – it has a strong focus on energy and climate change.” Louis’ future is probably outside Hawke’s Bay. Asked if he will return: “If I had to guess, I would say it’s unlikely. The difficulty is that climate change is a huge problem, and there may be more valuable places that I can invest my efforts.”

Louis Chambers After winning a trolley-full of prizes upon graduating as Dux from Havelock North HS in 2007, Louis went on to complete a law degree at the University of Otago, where his lowest grade was a single A-. Saying simply that Louis ‘went to Uni’ would be misleading. During those years, he also tutored, won several mooting competitions, and played an organizing role in numerous environmental initiatives, one taking him to the Copenhagen climate negotiations. So, will he practice law? “At this stage it’s looking unlikely. My predominant concern is how I can make a useful contribution to society, and I’m not too concerned about whether that involves legal work, policy advice, business or campaigning at the grassroots.” The challenge that most occupies Louis is global warming – the focus of his internship at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC, perhaps the chief

Pauline Elliott Pauline Elliott is an unlikely rebel, but the gentle grandmother has, over the last 18 months, earned her place as Hawke’s Bay’s leading ‘fracktavist’. Having held senior management roles in education and labour, Elliott came to the Bay 15 years ago “on holiday”; she and her family settling here almost by accident. Two years ago Elliott put down roots, starting to connect with the place and taking on some of the big issues. One of the catalysts for Elliott’s activism came when Tag Apache was granted exploration rights in Hawke’s Bay with no community consultation and little understanding by HBRC councillors. Out of that came the group “Don’t Frack the Bay”. “I seeded the issue in people’s minds but it grew a huge body of interest at all levels of the spectrum,” says Elliott. She and a committed core group investigated the issues, compiling information and reporting it to HBRC. “The thing I feel strongest about is democracy,” says Elliott. “People’s right to

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Martin Genet

Bayden Barber

find out what’s going on and know how things will affect them.” A key goal for Don’t Frack the Bay was an independent report on fracking. Goal achieved when an interim report was issued in late 2012 by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment. The report will inform much of what happens next. “We have to absolutely demand transparency and that if fracking goes ahead it is in fact what Hawke’s Bay wants for its future.” Elliott’s vision for 2013 is to see a Hawke’s Bay that communicates; a place where there is greater transparency in decision making. She is also committed to ensuring there is no exploratory drilling in Hawke’s Bay until the Commissioner’s recommendations are completed and considered in June. Standing for elected office is also a possibility.

together a huge amount of skills. It’s exciting too and that’s motivating.” Genet came to Peterhead eight years ago from Palmerston North where he was an advisor to Massey University and head of Newbury School. He’s been in primary teaching for 30 years. “I enjoy the challenge of giving kids keys for success. It’s as much about motivating them as it is about celebrating them,” he says.

Continued on Page 18

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Martin Genet Martin Genet, Principal at Peterhead School, has been awarded a prestigious Woolf Fisher Fellowship 2013 and as a consequence will embark on ten weeks study leave in Europe and the USA, including two weeks at Harvard University. The award is recognition not just of Genet’s personal achievements in education, but also of the successes of the Flaxmerebased school, its parents, board and teachers as well as the support and encouragement of its surrounding community. Genet is proud of Peterhead, which he has led for eight years and considers it one of the best decile1 schools in the country. Aspirations for 2013 include making the most of his time at Harvard, and his visits to overseas schools and initiatives. “I’m looking forward to seeing schools that have done very innovative things. I want to go and have a look and bring those ideas back with me,” says Genet. At a school level, in 2013 Genet will rollout mobile technology, with teachers and children all using hand-held devices such as tablets. One project could involve moviemaking: “Making movies brings

Bayden Barber Bayden Barber, cites his grandmother Haumihia Tiakitai as his most formative influence. “She instilled a lot into me about whakapapa, language and history,” he says. It was to her in Waimarama that he went as a ten year old. “I was nudged into roles of leadership quite young.” At 39, Bayden is chairman of Waimarama Marae, Tiakitai Marae and Waimarama Sec 3 Block 2 Trust. He also sits on the Hastings District Council Mãori Joint Committee and is currently contracted to Ngã Kairauhii (funded by HBDHB and Te Puni Kokiri), six marae collectively taking charge of their own health programmes and sharing medical resources. “My goal has always been to be in positions of influence to support Mãori development, whether it’s about natural resources, health or language.” For Barber connectivity is all important. “We can’t talk about health without talking about resource management, we can’t talk about education without talking about health.” Inspiration for Barber comes from the people who have gone before. “Our ancestors had responsibilities over hapu and marae, and they took those responsibilities very seriously.” 2013 will see Barber continue existing projects including leadership camps, held at Waimarama Marae, for 14-18 year olds, and the rebuild of the 100 year-old Tiakitai Marae in Havelock North. In early 2013 Barber, as part of Te Rerenga Kotuku, will

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Gerard Hickey

Lyn Cheyne

“The thing I feel strongest about is democracy. People’s right to find out what’s going on and know how things will affect them.” pauline elliott

» travel to Rotorua to perform in the national

kapahaka competition Te Matatini. Later in the year he will see the Waimarama Marae Health Clinic open after three years of work. Another highlight will be the placing of pou from 18 Heretaunga marae into Hastings’ Civic Square, set for Matariki 2013.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Gerard Hickey An Auckland-based research firm, Coriolis, just published an investors guide to growth opportunities in NZ food and beverage exports. They tipped salmon, honey and distilled spirits as the hot opportunities. Why not grass-fed Wagyu beef? That’s a question Gerard Hickey, co-owner of HBbased Firstlight Foods might ask. While everyone in the ag biz is talking about developing added value products for premium niche markets, and escaping the price-taker commodity trap, Hickey and Firstlight are doing it. At present, Firstlight sources from its dedicated farmers/shareholders and markets two products – ethically–produced venison and grass-fed Wagyu beef. “We’re a value-chain link between some of New Zealand’s top farmers and some top global customers,” says Hickey. Customers in California, the Middle East, Russia and the UK seem to agree they’re marketing a quality product. Firstlight has grown 25% year-over–year in revenue over the last five years. The company’s venison and beef products consistently command a 12%-15% premium over the spot market. Not bad for a company founded only eight years ago. Together, the Firstlight team has decades of management experience in the meat industry, with Hickey doing stints at Richmond and Bernard Matthews Ltd (now Ovation). Ask him what limits Firstlight’s growth and it’s not demand, it’s finding beef farmers with the right long-term commitment to meeting the company’s quality standards and business ambition. Coming up in 2013?

Hickey lists: Begin implementing a $24 million project with Brownrigg Agriculture (with MPI’s Primary Growth Partnership support), aiming to expand fivefold the number of farmers growing premium Wagyu beef , continuing to grow our venison business, and launching a lamb product range. Lyn Cheyne Lyn Cheyne, formerly Bevin, heads into 2013 in a state of flux. After 10 years with Hawke’s Bay Wine Growers, Cheyne begins a new role with Business Hawke’s Bay as Food Facilitator. Alongside this she will be exploring growth opportunities for Central Hawke’s Bay as a member of the CHB Promotions Board, establishing her own marketing business, developing mobile apps following the launch of her first: Walk the History (a self-guided walking tour of historical Napier) and, in March running HB’s inaugural Start-Up Weekend (a 54-hour experience where aspiring entrepreneurs test their startup ideas). The constant theme in her enterprises is a passion for Hawke’s Bay and a love of entrepreneurship. “Opportunities exist in Hawke’s Bay and we need to make the most of them,” Cheyne says. “I love business and marketing, and the entrepreneur environment. It’s inspiring, motivating, re-energising.” As Food Facilitator, a role she takes up in February, Cheyne wants to see the food sector in Hawke’s Bay make the most of its growth potential, collectively securing Hawke’s Bay’s place as NZ’s premium food-producing region. “It’s all about helping our food businesses help themselves to be the best they can be,” she says. Part of this will be about navigating existing resources from the likes of the HB Food Network, the NZ Food Innovation Network, NZ Trade and Enterprise, and the Ministry of Science and Innovation. “There’s a range of collaboration

opportunities and the potential for achievement is huge. The key is working with others rather than in isolation,” Cheyne says. Martin Williams Martin Williams’ own history and the history of the Napier Pilot City Trust, of which he is Chair, have common roots. The trust was set up in 1983 out of a need to chart a course for a different vision of community empowerment. Also during this time, with the reforms of the 1980s as a backdrop, Williams began considering the nature of ‘community’ and what it meant to be part of one. “We can do more with less by looking after the people around us,” explains Williams, who became a trustee in 2009. The Trust, recently renamed Community Solutions: Whakakotahitanga, is run on a shoestring with a board of committed volunteers. “I’ve never worked with a more grassroots bunch of people in my life and they have extraordinary bandwidth in terms of issues,” says Williams. It encourages proactive rather than reactive communitybased solutions for addressing inequality; works to develop relationships and networks locally so communities aren’t so reliant on the state. Examples are Neighbourhood Watch, the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Pilot City Awards, now in its 20th year. A current project is a support group for women on release or currently incarcerated in Arohata Prison. The big project for 2013 will be an internet portal that gives online space to community groups in Napier; a place where the community can offer or find assistance. Currently 380 community groups are listed by Napier City Council, with some duplication and many gaps. “The portal will be a real-time resource for connecting people who are working in the community,” says Williams. Getting people engaged in Community Solutions is a key aspiration for 2013. “The

25 Stars to Watch in 2013 Martin Williams

Paul Fong

“I do want to see a vibrant Hawke’s Bay economy. But it needs to be achieved within a sustainable environmental framework.” john cheyne

more people we can get to share the task, the better.” Paul Fong Not many people can say they change lives for a living; but that’s Paul Fong’s stock and trade. Founder and Director of Youth Quest, Paul helps at-risk youth turn their lives around through a structured program of character development, practical training, and positive mentoring. Building on Youth Quest’s successful track record on the Kapiti Coast, Paul in 2012 opened Youth Quest Hawke’s Bay, taking over the sprawling Camp David outdoor education centre on Middle Road.

Quest to help kids that everyone else was giving up on. Soon enough, Kapiti law enforcement officials began crediting his program with reduced youth offending and recidivism. “There’s nothing like seeing the boys succeed,” says Paul. “Each one who makes it means one more good young man with a chance to break the intergenerational cycle that creates the problems in the first place.” By that measure, Paul himself deserves to be counted as one of Youth Quest’s shining stars. His organization has just been named one of ten world-wide winners of this year’s Graham Maher Award from Vodafone’s “World of Difference” fund.

If there are stars you’d like to shine a light on, we hope you’ll use the ‘Comment’ feature on our online version of this article at www.baybuzz.co.nz to bring them to public attention. Thanks to Jessica Soutar Barron, Keith Newman, Lizzie Russell, and Brooks Belford for helping prepare these profiles. And to Tim Whittaker for shooting most of the photos.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Rising Stars

All told, Paul and his team have steered over 600 troubled boys through Youth Quest’s six-week training program followed by 12 months of active mentoring. “Most of what the boys are dealing with, I’ve dealt with myself,” says Paul who grew up as one of nine siblings in a household dominated by alcohol and violence. “But there came a time when I got an opportunity to change my life thanks to my Mum, the Army and the Police. And I want to make sure others can do the same.” That commitment led Paul in 2006 to chuck in his successful career in the police force and – with wife Tanya – put heart, soul and life’s savings into creating Youth

FISHY BUSINESS by ~ MARK SWEET

Rick Burch with his state-of-the-art net

FISHY BUSINESS

When in November 2012, the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) reported that New Zealand’s fisheries were ‘in good shape’, many people with intimate knowledge of Hawke’s Bay fishing shook their heads in disbelief.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

“How would they know?” says Wayne Bicknell. “Their stock reports are from 1997 data. And that data is from what was landed by commercial, and doesn’t include what was dumped.” Rick Burch is clear, “We don’t have the research. All we’ve got is this slogan, ‘We’ve got the best quota management system in the world,’ and it’s bullshit.” Rick has been commercial fishing out of Ahuriri for over 30 years, and Wayne is a member of the Hawke’s Bay Sport Fishing Club and Guardians of the Hawke Bay Fishery, a charitable trust promoting sustainable fishing. Both men are passionate in their endeavors to protect our fisheries. Their frustration with the Ministry and the politics out of Wellington is simmering as they can’t understand why successive governments have done little to remedy obvious holes in the Quota Management System (QMS). “We have to land every gurnard we catch, and the small fish end up in the dump or crayfish pots,” says Rick, “but when it comes to snapper, trevally, and tarakihi, we have to throw the small fish back, and those fish are not recorded, and most of them are dead.” Why the different treatment? Rick and Wayne don’t know. They’ve asked the Ministry, and they don’t know either. “Another hole in the system is deem value,” says Wayne. Deem value is paying for over catching. Rick explains. “Not long ago trevally was being caught over quota by 76%, and the Ministry made them pay a small fine per kilo for over-quota, but they sold it on for $8 to $9, so it’s worth it to catch what you want and pay the fine.” “What’s more,” says Wayne, “instead of taking the over-catch off the following year’s quota, you start off with a clean slate, but if they under-catch, it gets passed over to the next year.” Both men shake their heads, and I join them, because it doesn’t make sense. “In a sustainable fishery you need past data to look back on,” says Rick, “but

Dean Baigent, Director of Compliance, MPI

that hasn’t been available since the quota management system came in 1997. What they’ve done in other countries, like the UK, is they’ve been going up and down the same patch twice a year for 25 years, with the same net, at the same time, and after 25 years you see a trend. We haven’t done that so how do we know the fishery is sustainable.” New Zealand’s reputation for sustainable fishing was badly tarnished by mismanagement of the orange roughy fishery in the 80s and 90s. And according to Dean Baigent, Director of Compliance in MPI, “Orange roughy is a good example of where market perception (of unsustainability) has pushed down the price.” The consumer’s perception is in fact, a reality, and substantiated by the Supreme Court. In their 2008 decision, Elias CJ, Blanchard and Anderson JJ, ruled in favour of Antons Trawling Company Limited, who disputed the Minister of Fisheries right to reduce their Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of orange roughy. “Of relevance was the absence of any evidence that orange roughy is under immediate threat,” said the Judgment of the Court. The Fisheries Act required an accurate population assessment. The Ministry hadn’t done the research, and couldn’t produce data to convince the

Court. And this is a decade after the orange roughy boom collapsed. In 2010-11 the total allowable commercial catch of orange roughy was 6,941 tonnes. In 1988-89 the catch was 54,000 tonnes. Rick Burch fished for orange roughy. “We knew in 1987 it wasn’t going to last,” he says, “and we told the Ministry then, ‘You can’t keep pulling out 100 ton bags.’ They hadn’t done the research and assumed there were plenty of fish - then bang, gone. There was a 90% cut in quota.” A consequential effect of the orange roughy collapse was that the big trawlers changed their operation to in-shore fishing. 100,000 hooks a day “You can’t blame the fishermen,” says Rick. “But,” says Wayne, “Those bigger boats can fish in weather the smaller boats can’t, trawling bigger nets faster, setting more lines, and the Ministry don’t seem to appreciate that as fish stocks come down, size decreases, so you have to catch a lot more fish to make up the tonnage. That’s what’s happened with improved technology and trawler size.” “I’ll give you an example,” says Rick. “When I came here 30 years ago this was one of the richest fisheries I’d ever seen, and I’ve fished all over the world. I was invited to go to sea with Sparky on the old

FISHY BUSINESS

“Within the fishing sectors in the Bay, recreational and Mãoridom, very few people understand the life cycles of a lot of the fish. Gurnard for instance only live to three or four years old. John Dory was once believed to live to 35, 40 years but it’s actually only three years old.” chris robinson

“We don’t have the research. All we’ve got is this slogan, ‘We’ve got the best quota management system in the world,’ and it’s bullshit.” rick burch

happy. It has to do with prevailing wind, water temperature and conditions.” Chris Robinson’s explanation of why recreational fishers are finding it harder and harder to catch fish is not due to depletion, but sea conditions and weather. He says, “When we get poor weather the fish get dispersed. The fish are scattered, and commercial fishers wait for the fish to congregate into the areas where we know they should be. My observation is that when the fish are scattered it’s easier for the amateurs to catch them because they’re dispersed everywhere. Converse is when we’ve had long periods of settled weather, the fish congregate where the feed is massed, and unless the amateurs know where the fish are, they find it hard to catch them.” Chris Robinson’s theory is difficult to reconcile with the experience of long Continued on Page 24

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Patricia Jane. I looked at the boat and the gear, and thought, ‘my God, this is out of the ark.’ The droppers were anchored with railway iron and the lines had 60 hooks, yet when we fished out from Bare Island in about 240 fathoms, 60 hooks went down and most would come back with a fish on. We had 10 droppers, 600 hooks went down a day, and there were five boats fishing that area.”

That’s 3,000 baits. “But then,” says Rick, “The big boats came, with the capability of setting 100,000 hooks a day.” Not all the big boats came from the bust of the orange roughy boom. Some were specifically commissioned to maximize fish catch, like Chris Robinson’s 31 metre stern trawler Pacific Explorer. Chris has a science degree, and has been a commercial fisherman in Hawke’s Bay for 30 years. His commercial arrangement with Ngai Tahu and other partners went bust last year. He lost his boats, and $12 million. “What’s the state of the fishery?” he responds to my question. “I believe it’s very healthy within the bounds of the QMS.” Chris Robinson doesn’t accept there’s over-fishing. “Our quota management system allows a fishery to go into depletion and allows it, in time, to rebuild,” he says. “Quite a few of the major fisheries have undergone cycles of depletion. There are annual cycles in availability, and then there are major cycles of depletion, when for some unknown reason the fishery hasn’t been successful in recruitment. It may have spawned fine, but the conditions might not be right for the juveniles to feed, or the weather conditions, or currents are wrong, and the resulting year class from that recruitment might not be present, or small. This has happened to the gemfish, the hoki, and it’s happening now to the bluenose fishery.” To a layman that sounds like overfishing. But Chris assures me that, “Within the fishing sectors in the Bay, recreational and Mãoridom, very few people understand the life cycles of a lot of the fish. Gurnard for instance only live to three or four years old. John Dory was once believed to live to 35, 40 years but it’s actually only three years old. The significance of that is the fishery has an incredible capability of making benefit from the right spawning and growth conditions. When those significant year classes occur, everyone’s

FISHY BUSINESS

“How would they (Ministry for Primary Industries) know? Their stock reports are from 1997 data. And that data is from what was landed by commercial, and doesn’t include what was dumped.” wayne bicknell

» time recreational fishermen in Hawke

Bay. In a recent survey conducted by the Guardians of Hawke Bay Fishery, over 90% of respondents attested to a decrease in fin fish availability in the last five years, and 80% think that if current management continues the fin fish stocks will ‘have significant decrease’.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

The net makes a difference With overwhelming opinion that fish stocks in Hawke Bay are declining, the concern for our fisheries felt by Rick Burch and Wayne Bicknell is palpable, but rather than walk away, both men are determined to make changes. “Many trawl nets are the same as they were at the turn of the century,” says Wayne. And he means the 19th century. “We should be looking at using a trawl that’s like a spiders web; ultra thin, no resistance in the water, and that lets the small fish escape,” says Rick. A modest man, Rick Burch is hesitant to trumpet the qualities of a net he has designed, so I ask applied fisheries scientist Oliver Wade, who has been involved in the project. “I was on-board for the first trial in 2011,” says Oliver, “and the net performed brilliantly. It’s world-leading technology. Thing is, that when a net is under pressure the mesh closes off making it impossible for juvenile fish to escape, but with Rick’s net the mesh stays open allowing escape. It has less drag through the water which saves on fuel, and has less impact on the sea bed. It’s a fantastic net.” Further trials of Rick’s net are planned for the new year. Funding is always a problem. The latest trial is funded by Te Ohu Kaimoana - the Mãori Fisheries Trust, and in the past Guardians of the Sea Charitable Trust and Ngãti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated have contributed. Ngãti Kahungunu own quota and have a close relationship with Hawke’s Bay Seafoods, a major processor based in Ahuriri. The other major player in Hawke’s Bay commercial fisheries, Star Food Services, have already adopted elements of Rick’s net on their fleet. Dr Adele Whyte heads the Iwi Fisheries Unit at NKII, and says, “Yes, we’re involved in testing Rick Burch’s net design. We’re investing time and money. We’re serious. At the moment we want to establish that the net works, it does what it’s meant to do, and that it will be relatively easy to modify existing nets, and get out fishing the next day. Our intention is that all fishers in the Bay use the modified net, and then hopefully it will be picked up across New Zealand.” She continues, “If it’s catching fish of the sizes you want, and letting the rest go, that’s ideal. We want to know before and after, so we know for sure what’s being saved. If you want to get primary industries onside you need the data, so be it a scientist or a fisherman, they can see the data, see the results, and give it a go.”

Dr Adele Whyte, NKII, on the Mãori fisheries strategy “Our strategy is comprehensive. It’s from the mountains to the sea, recognizing we have to think about our waterways with all the sediments and so on flowing into the sea. And with the fish stocks, we have to manage them as a whole, because a fish doesn’t know if it’s a recreational fish, a commercial fish, or a customary fish. For iwi we’re in a unique position because we straddle all the interests, and our tikanga background teaches us we need to be sustainable, and we need to be forward thinking, so we’re always thinking generations in front. We’re thinking what’s been for a thousand years before, and what lies a thousand years ahead in terms of fishing. How we got here was on the sea, and gathering shellfish and fishing, is part of who we are. The whole thrust behind our strategy was to try and start reconnecting all the various components, commercial, customary and recreational, and how best to utilize the resource. Our approach is to think about the resource as a whole and how best to manage and utilize the resource sustainably for everybody. It involves our hapu, who are fiercely protective of their own resource, their own reefs and traditional gathering grounds, and we also have our asset company involved, who make the commercial decisions around our annual catch entitlements.”

FISHY BUSINESS

A Personal Perspective from Mark Sweet

““Everything isn’t perfect ... there are 4 million fishing experts in New Zealand. It’s a spatial issue ... People are very protective of their patch.” dean baigent

In 1988 I was working as a barman in a Glasgow restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip. One morning as I was setting up, the boss, Ronnie Clydesdale, threw his car keys on the bar, and said, “Do you mind going to the fish market for me? They forgot to deliver the cod. I need them for lunch.” Senga, the bar manager, wasn’t happy. But Senga was rarely happy. I’d discovered that my first day on the job when in all innocence I asked her about her unusual name. She looked at me savagely, and said, “Are you taking the pish?” Senga, it transpired, was an anagram of Agnes, the birth name she didn’t like.

The fish market in Blochairn Road was housed in an enormous factory building, and under its roof, fishmongers displayed their produce. The quantity and variety of fish for sale took my breath away. From European suppliers there were iced boxes of fresh red snapper, albacore tuna, sardines, and strawberry grouper, and from the Scottish coast there were bins of turbot, halibut, monkfish, mackerel, skate, and cod. There were shellfishes too; mussels, scallops, clams, and there were crabs, lobsters, shrimps, and prawns. I forgot about Senga as I wandered around, and when I found the fishmonger Ronnie had mentioned, his order of cod was ready; whole fish packed on ice in a poly box – big fish over a meter long. “Best line caught Scottish cod,” Jim Eddy, the fishmonger told me.

From the start cod was a regular item on the menu. I would buy them whole and cut them into steaks for chargrilling, or sometimes fillet for a dish baked in the oven with spinach and gruyere cheese. Their massive heads and thick bones made superb stock. By the time I was ready to leave Glasgow, seven years after picking up Ronnie Clydesdale’s box of cod, the Blochairn fish market no longer sold big cod. There were small fish, but the big fish were gone. Every so often over the years, I’d ask Jim Eddy, “Where’s the decent-sized cod?” Jim would say, “Getting harder to catch. Might have some Friday.” Friday would come, and in the end Jim’s cod were too small to cut into steaks.

Continued on Page 26

I’d witnessed, and contributed to, the collapse of the Scottish cod fishery. All those big fish I’d cut up were the last of the breeding stock. Critical depletion was reached and the replacement cycle destroyed by overfishing. And it happened so suddenly. A decade later, back in the kaimoana restaurant business, I saw a similar pattern happening in Hawke’s Bay. I’d see a catch of hapuka come into the fishmonger. Some of the fish would be enormous, over 75 kilograms. Then, as the days and weeks passed, the fish would become smaller and smaller, until the fishing boat moved on to another rocky habitat, where the biggest hapuka will have resided for over 70 years.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Little did I know, as I scooped up the keys with Senga moaning in my ear, what I was about to discover would change my life.

A seed was planted that day and a year later I opened my own seafood restaurant in the West End of Glasgow.

I ask Adele her opinion of Rick Burch’s contention that the Ministry doesn’t have the data to accurately assess the fish stocks. “They’re not calculating that juvenile bio-mass that’s effectively gone and won’t breed because they’re dead,” she says. “So how much more productivity could we have in the system if we were able to release the juveniles, so they never get caught in the first place. Most fishery scientists I’ve talked to say there’s flexibility in the system, even though they’re not counting every fish in the way they do the calculations. But discarding is a big issue. Apparently some of that is calculated, but it would be interesting to see what the calculations would show if you were able to factor that in. Would the Total Allowable Catch stay the same, or go up, or down?” I mention the concern of recreational fishers, and the deluge of letters to the paper in recent weeks. “The recreational sector doesn’t provide information of what they catch, so that’s a huge hole in the management. For some species, like crayfish and paua, the recreational

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FISHY BUSINESS

» take is as big as, if not bigger, than

commercial. Recreational point fingers but everyone has to do their bit. We’re all in the fishery together.” Ngãti Kahungunu is in a unique position as its interests encompass all sectors of fishing. Says Dr Whyte, “We equally defend our commercial rights, as we defend our customary, and recreational rights. So when there are lobby groups, we’re in all of them. There are definitely things we can do better but we’re working on those issues. Everyone needs to take responsibility.” The Ministry man, Dean Baigent, admits that, “Everything isn’t perfect,” and he says an element is, “that there are 4 million fishing experts in New Zealand. It’s a spatial issue,” he says,

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

“People are very protective of their patch.” As Director of Compliance, he’s at pains to point out that, “Compliance isn’t about what you can’t get away with. It’s about best practice, and we’re trying to achieve this through all sectors.” Of the future, Dean is optimistic. “Electronic technology, cameras on the boats monitoring the catches, is a possibility,” he says. With few exceptions, there seems to be willingness from all interested parties to address and remedy the issues facing our fishery. But as Rick Burch points out, “The Ministry has to recognize there’s a serious problem, and they have to put aside the politics if we’re to move forward.”

The Net That Rick Built ... its main advantages 1 The release of juvenile

and undersized fish: The new trawl system sees the mesh turned 90 degrees (‘T90’). This differs from traditional nets, which force the mesh to assume a diamond shape under drag. The result is that there is a huge reduction in unwanted by-catch, enabling the small fish to escape rather than be gilled or squashed in the net.

2 Minimising bottom impact:

This is due to Rick using modern lightweight synthetic Dynex rope,

with all steel warps and wires eliminated. This creates much lighter gear allowing the rig to just skim the bottom, rather than heavy gear dragging across it. 3 Reduced fuel consumption

and emissions: The new gear is virtually weightless in water. Notwithstanding the fact some weight has been added to make the net stay down, less weight – and therefore less drag – has reduced Rick’s fuel bill by an estimated 25-30%.

Some Facts about Fishing in New Zealand (2010) • New Zealand’s coastline is 15,000 kilometres • Our Territorial Sea is 4.4 million square kilometers (5th largest in the world) • Species commercially fished: 130 • Total catch: 441,000 tonnes • Total quota value: $4 billion • 1,644 quota owners • Iwi own approximately 30% of commercial quota • 1,277 fishing vessels • 61 fish processors and traders • 7,155 people directly employed • Estimated recreational catch: 25,000 tonnes

FISHY BUSINESS

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

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ICEHOUSE CHALLENGE FOR HAWKE’S BAY BUSINESSES

Wineworks

Keith Newman discovers that ‘busyness’ is not necessarily good for business and some management teams might need an ice cube down their back to shock them into working ‘on’ their business rather than ‘in’ it. tim.co.nz

ICEHOUSE CHALLENGE

Business growth centre ICEHOUSE had its genesis at Auckland University as a kind of incubator for startups where new ideas could be nurtured. However 90% of those engaging were established businesses, so it incubated itself into a business growth centre. One of the big picture objectives of ICEHOUSE is to improve New Zealand’s performance in the OECD top 30 by helping a thousand businesses ramp up their exports; its Hawke’s Bay foray is part of its think globally and act locally – or in this case regionally – approach. Wogan says ICEHOUSE is about passion,

drive, contacts and knowing what to look for at certain stages when you need help. Having a local presence will make courses and resources more accessible and affordable, although attendees will still be encouraged to spend time in Auckland, rubbing shoulders with business from other regions and ‘executives in residence’ for coaching and consulting. Part of the ICEHOUSE ethos is to hook people up with networks of local and international resources, export-focused experts, angel investors and to assist with developing and commercialising the best ideas. Hamish Whyte, the owner of Hastingsbased Furnware which manufactures ergonomic furniture for the global education market, was inspired to take the course after hearing how it had impacted other local businesspeople, including Robert Darroch of Future Products Group. He did a one day course and “the light went on” so he was back for more, taking the owner-manager programme, which tipped him out of his comfort zone giving him confidence to be more open about his strengths and weaknesses and “not to take things too personally”. Being in the same room with 15-22 other owner-managers was a great way to build a support and contact network and get focused. “People open up and discuss the good, bad and ugly and challenges they face and you learn a huge amount from those who are living it. It’s not about textbooks, it’s about action,” says Whyte. Similar but not the same One of the first revelations was that all businesses face similar challenges and threats. “A lot of people think the issues, concerns and constraints they face are unique, but you still need to do a swat analysis of your market, look at the people around you and how you structure your management, and have a clearly-defined business plan which can be as simple as a one-pager.” While Furnware had a business plan that everyone agreed on, it basically got put away after being reviewed every two years. That’s all changed and now it’s a living document. To ensure his management team were on the same page he sent his accountant, marketing and operational managers to Auckland for separate leadership development programmes over a three month period. “They came back knowing that we had an outstanding business but that we could do better and as a result we have changed the way we do business.” Since then, he claims they’ve “easily doubled” the size of the business.

“People open up and discuss the good, bad and ugly and challenges they face and you learn a huge amount from those who are living it. It’s not about textbooks, it’s about action” hamish whyte

Of course, if the ICEHOUSE had a base in Hawke’s Bay he could have saved himself thousands of dollars in airfares alone. But that’s not the only reason he’s keen to see the business development programme have a local presence. “I know through living in Hawke’s Bay that it would open the floodgates for so many businesses here. Currently there isn’t a forum that would help owners open up to each other like this.” ICEHOUSE representative Peter Wogan, in completing his Hawke’s Bay evaluation, was stunned to learn Bay employment and tourism numbers have been going backwards for a decade but encouraged at the “incredible amount of innovative people doing cool things in the region and overseas”. Co-ordinated collaboration To compensate for the fact there’s no large business or corporate infrastructure in the region, he sees the ICEHOUSE taking a strategic role in bringing some cohesion to the resources that are here. “There’s innovation, enough capital that can be invested, but not the glue to bring it all together.” Being ‘the glue’ means not only working with businesses and Business HB but Continued on Page 30

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Having their management styles and business practices placed under close scrutiny in a room full of their peers, was the wake-up call a number of Hawke’s Bay business owners needed to bust them out of their comfort zone and back on to the growth curve. About 30 local owners and managers now consider themselves part of the 3,000 strong ICEHOUSE ‘family’ of alumni who, having completed one of a series of business growth programmes, came away with fresh thinking that helped transform their companies. The local graduates get together for an annual dinner to keep up with the play and encourage one another, and are hopeful their network is about to hit a growth curve of its own as Auckland-based ICEHOUSE begins to run local courses and consider the logistics of establishing a physical presence here. Business Hawke’s Bay is committed to bringing the ICEHOUSE and its network of business growth gurus to Hawke’s Bay and is working closely with past graduates, a new generation of owners and managers and Peter Wogan, the man who will spearhead the move. Wogan, who grew up at Awanui, half an hour north of Napier and attended Napier Boys’ High School, has been a business coach and resident executive with ICEHOUSE for three years. His company, Fresh Perspective Leadership, is a partner, delivering tailored ICEHOUSE programmes to the regions. The plan for a physical presence in Hawke’s Bay will be a first. Wogan says owners and business managers often need to get out of their own space and interact with a broader network of businesses to pick up fresh ideas and inspiration. “They might just need to talk things through with someone to validate their ideas; others may need a rocket up their butt. They come along to be challenged and test the gaps in their business.”

ICEHOUSE CHALLENGE

» liaising with other regional consultants

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

and agencies. “I still have a lot of contacts in the Bay and am absolutely passionate about helping the business environment,” says Wogan. The great need is around leadership development, strategic planning, business readiness to export, governance and how to embed new learning into businesses and management teams. In terms of governance, he says the strong ‘Back to the Bay’ campaign has seen many who’ve had success overseas returning and wanting to help the Bay lift its game. Wogan says Kiwis generally do this badly and there needs to be a smart process around making the best use of these resources. “There are few of these people in the country and there’s a lot of demand on their time, so we need to clarify specifically what the business needs are.” If they haven’t done their homework, “it can take up a lot of unnecessary time from these passionate, skilled people who want to give something back”. Tim Nowell-Usticke, owner of Hastingbased Wineworks, New Zealand’s largest bottling operation, is a self-confessed ICEHOUSE fan. He completed the owner-manager’s course and says he’ll be sending his managers to attend the Hawke’s Bay courses. He says, getting alongside other businesses and hearing how they solved their problems is inspiring and prevents you from making the same mistakes. “It’s a real world training organisation that uses not only commercially-experienced lecturers but helps you bounce off the stories and experiences of others.” Nowell-Usticke realised he needed to pay more attention to his planning process and wasn’t fully focused on customer experience. He’s now aware that even at senior level, ongoing training is important. His ICEHOUSE training further cemented his view that Hawke’s Bay needs to keep focused on what already sets it apart, and that’s growing and processing

Peter Wogan, ICEHOUSE

food and beverages. “We have the right temperature, lots of water and the factories and processing skills to turn crops of low value into something of high value.” He says our processing capabilities could handle tonnes more produce and deliver a greater variety of products; our efficient processes and good export port are ideal for other regions to have their food and beverages processed here. He reckons one of the problems in Hawke’s Bay is that businesses tend to forget what they can do. “It’s not a problem with the processing industry, it’s just that not enough people believe they can sell food and beverage from Hawke’s Bay to the rest of the world. We need more entrepreneurs, more people prepared to say, ‘let’s take those pumpkins and turn them into baby food and export to China’.” Ok, but entrepreneurs take risks and many managers are risk averse, so how do you change that? Nowell-Usticke suggests that after doing an ICEHOUSE course, managers may be more open to entrepreneurs driving things forward. Hamish Whyte believes ICEHOUSE, with its focused network that can offer

structured workshops and brainstorming sessions, goes well beyond anything the Chamber of Commerce or mentors or individual consultants can deliver. He sees about six local ICEHOUSE alumni regularly in social situations where they talk about business issues and he recently assisted one company with distribution and business contacts in Australia. The challenge for Hawke’s Bay, he says, is whether we really need to hunt down and lobby other businesses to come here, or get those already here doing better. The easiest place to start would be to get existing businesses to produce 20% more; increase their turnover by 10%, employ one more person or start exporting. “You don’t want regulation or constraints; you need to show direction and if you do it right then others will follow.” For those looking to make export inroads there’s an international network of expertise to call on, including access to the Beachheads programme, with assistance from New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), a key provider of funding to ICEHOUSE. Rob Adams from the US, part of the ICEHOUSE market validation programme, throws out scary statements like: only 35% of new products launched by established companies succeed, and in the start-up world that drops dramatically to 10%. His methodology as part of the ICEHOUSE programme is to improve those odds and reduce the risks. Wogan says one of the obstacles many have to get past is the cultural resistance many New Zealand business owners have to sharing details … for fear they’ll lose competitive edge or have someone pinch their ideas. In the end he says the real challenge is, how serious are you about growing your business or perhaps going international? “The fact that they are in these programmes in the first place means they are looking for help.”

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HOMEGROWN and proudly independent

Facts and figures to get you thinking, prepare you for party conversations, or simply provoke shock and awe!

Melting Ice

Cranford Care

A team of no fewer than 47 scientists from 36 laboratories, looking at data from 10 different satellites, has come up with numbers everyone is on board with: between 1992 and 2011, Greenland has lost an average of 152 billion metric tonnes of ice per year, while Antarctica has shed 71 billion, contributing 11 millimeters to the rise in sea level over that period — about a fifth of the total (the rest has come from seawater expanding as it warms and from melting mountain glaciers).

In the year to June 2012, Cranford cared for 595 patients, with an average monthly caseload of 134. In that period, there were 372 deaths, 22% of those in the hospice, compared to 30% at home. Meanwhile, 5,760 community home nurse visits were provided.

Close to home, the continent of Antarctica has been losing more than 100 cubic kilometers (24 cubic miles) of ice per year since 2002.

Child Poverty & Health According to the new Children’s Social Health Monitor, one in five New Zealand children are reliant on a benefit as the main source of their family’s income. More than 36,000 children are admitted to hospital every year for illness linked to poverty.

New Products Fail Experts at business incubator ICEHOUSE note that only 35% of new products launched by established companies succeed, and in the start-up world that drops dramatically to 10%.

Elections & Social Media With local body elections later this year, we might contemplate the possible role of social media. In the recent US elections, 30% of registered voters were encouraged to vote for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney by family and friends via posts on social media such as Facebook or Twitter. And 20% of registered voters encouraged others to vote by posting on a social networking site.

Something’s Fishy In a recent survey conducted by the Guardians of Hawke Bay Fishery, over 90% of respondents attested to a decrease in fin fish availability in the last five years, and 80% think that if current management continues the fin fish stocks will ‘have significant decrease’. Meantime, in all of New Zealand, we caught 441,000 tonnes of fish in 2010, including 130 commerciallyfished species. And how many fishing experts in NZ? About four million!

Chinese Welcome? Not in our past. In the early days of New Zealand’s colonial development Chinese immigrants were seen as ‘undesirables’ and thumped with a poll tax. Initially the poll tax was set at £10, but when that seemed an inadequate ‘deterrent’ it was raised to £100 in 1896. In today’s terms £100 equates to more than $18,000.

Newspapers Suffer Media Group APN, owner of Hawke’s Bay Today, expects that its full year profit will be slashed by almost a third following a major weakening in newspaper advertising markets. In New Zealand, APN fears advertising revenues will be down 9% for 2012, mainly because of a decline in display and job advertisements.

Cornucopia – food with attitude

tim.co.nz

Focusing on the premium of ‘natural’ Kim Thorp addressed the marketing opportunity available to a GE-Free Hawke’s Bay at the Genetic Modification Forum sponsored by the Hastings District Council in October. Here are his remarks.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Let’s pick off a number of givens first. It is a given that the world requires an increasing amount of food. It is also acknowledged that a vast amount of that food to a large chunk of the global population needs to be provided as cheaply as possible and as efficiently as possible in as much bulk as possible. It is also acknowledged that increasingly the seeds of those crops and feed that provide those big bulk volumes will probably involve genetic modification. While I am not sure that this is such a great thing for the planet, I believe it is potentially a very good thing for Hawke’s Bay. It is also hopefully widely accepted that – with genetic modification or not – New Zealand cannot be a bulk supplier of the world’s food. We don’t have the land, our labour costs are too high, our land is too valuable and we are too far away. Therefore, perhaps with the exception of powdered milk solids, whether we want to be or not, we are a niche contributor to the world’s food basket. And because of those cost factors mentioned, again whether we like it or not, we need to be at the premium niche end of the food supply spectrum rather than the bargain basement niche end. So that is the reality of where we fit. It is not the result of clever marketing or positioning or competitive analysis – it is thrust upon us and now we need to make some decisions.

The premium of natural If you look at premium food trends globally you can broadly break them into two territories. At the extreme at one end there is the exquisitely packaged, beautifully labeled and impeccably produced – which goes back centuries to the chocolatiers of Europe, the champagne houses of France and the bento boxes of Japan amongst others. Design and food magazines and websites globally are bulging with recent iterations of this same desire to seduce the eyeballs before the tastebuds. Then there is another and much faster growing trend that we are becoming increasingly aware of at the premium end. It is almost a rejection of the previous description of over-packaging and overdesign. It’s all about simple and honest, back to basics and wholesome. It’s not about ultra-premium for the sake of it. It is about good value for money with a practical understanding that something grown naturally outdoors in the sunshine can cost a little more. It is not necessarily about the premium of price – it is about the rapidly increasing premium of natural. It has seen the global proliferation of chains like Wholefoods in the US, farmers markets globally, a rapidly growing Asian professional middle class looking for purity and authenticity when often surrounded by the opposite, and major supermarket chains like Tesco and Sainsbury demanding authentic, fair trade, chemical-free provenance.

To quote Sainsbury’s: “At Sainsbury’s we do not permit the use of genetically modified crops, ingredients, additives or derivatives in our own-brand food, drink, pet food, dietary supplements or floral products.” Many of our food producers and exporters are carving out new and very exciting and successful relationships in all parts of the world with distributors, wholesalers and retailers who are riding this wave – and naturally a number of those growers and producers who I have talked with and work with are based here in Hawke’s Bay. And perhaps ‘wave’ isn’t quite the right word, as many are now saying this is no longer a trend. It is becoming embedded for the long term as a significant alternative to the other rapidly growing food trend – processed additive-laden food. Even the once processed and additiveladen fast food industry is picking up on this and wanting to use and be associated with healthier, more natural alternatives. So even if New Zealand didn’t exist this trend would be rocketing. We’re hardly leading it and in fact in some ways we’re struggling to catch up with it. Yet surely we’re made for it. As a country we’re still grappling with exactly how to transfer some of our 100% Pure tourism attributes across to primary sector exports. Everything tells us there’s a vital link – it is just difficult to put it in to words that satisfy all interested parties back here while still creating a compelling story for the customer out there. Another attempt is underway at the moment. So where does Hawke’s Bay fit? If it is agreed that a big part of Hawke’s Bay’s future is about food production, then there is enormous sense in building a premium around that. At times that

GE-FREE HAWKE’S BAY

premium might take on the chocolatiers of Paris, but most often I would suggest it will be the premium of sunshine, wonderful soils, open grasslands, naturally ripening fruit and produce grown in an environment that is the envy of many of the vast genetically-modified grain growing square miles of the planet. So again, it is more about a ‘nature’ premium than simply a price premium – although more often than not, one will follow the other. So is a GE Free Hawke’s Bay the silver bullet that rides this wave and takes us straight into the hearts and minds and shopping trolleys of the world’s wholesome food buyers? No. Because there’s no such thing any more. ‘Brands’ can no longer simply say one thing and say it consistently and spend Kim Thorp

tescos than simply putting a 10-year moratorium on outdoor field trials. I think we need to incorporate the fact in to our Hawke’s Bay story and see it as a huge regional benefit, not an agricultural handbrake. It says a lot, not only about what it means to buy food from here but also what it means to visit, live and work here. Somehow our GE Free attributes need to sit alongside and support our Hawke’s Bay brand. So my argument would be, it’s not necessarily about the potential scientific attributes of this genetically-modified apple versus this one that is not. It is about this apple being from Hawke’s Bay – and what that means. We know what that means. But in California or Shanghai or London or even Sydney – they probably don’t. But if I know this apple comes from a region in New Zealand that has made a stand to be free of genetic modification – then that tells me a lot. It’s a short cut to telling me that this is a place that prides itself on producing wholesome natural food and is standing up and saying so. And for an increasing number of consumers, supermarket chains, global distributors and even fast food companies, that is a story – and therefore potentially a region – they definitely want to be associated with and will be proud to spread the word about. Just a final word and a complete aside, back to my vast scientific knowledge. It has always bugged me how there’s a perception that genetic modification is portrayed as pro science, progress, productivity and profitability while anything against genetic modification is accused of being ‘head in the sand’ and anti-progress and anti-science. But what if we embraced being a GE Free region not just from a food or plant point of view, but also from a scientific and productive point of view? What if we put the region’s scientific focus on becoming world leaders in understanding and progressing the natural science of food and crop production and nutrition? GE Free Hawke’s Bay. World leaders in the science of natural food. That would provide some food for thought.

From a BayBuzz reader:

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

heaps of money on it to beat people over the head with it until it gets in. Even if we could, we haven’t got the money anyway. What we need now is proof of what we mean and the stories to back it up. Marketing is no longer so much about what we say – it’s about what we do – and how we equip those who like what we do, with the tools to spread the word. And that’s where I think the GE Free story fits in. What we do needs to be interesting enough, newsworthy enough, authentic enough and bold enough to attract the ears and eyeballs of those who we want to attract. At the moment one of the short cut alarm bells that suggests food is not natural, wholesome or healthy is if it has been genetically modified. To quote Tescos: “Our policy on Genetically Modified (GM) foods is based on what you, our customers, have told us you want. And our research shows that UK customers don’t want GM foods in our stores.” Hawke’s Bay’s food isn’t genetically modified. We just don’t say so. So why wouldn’t we? I would like to suggest you [Ed: Hawke’s Bay’s councils] consider going a step further

“Our policy on Genetically Modified foods is based on what you, our customers, have told us you want. And our research shows that UK customers don’t want GM foods in our stores.”

Rip-offs of Trubridge lights captured on mobile camera

Low Prices At Any Cost? BY ~ david trubridge

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Last year I fulfilled one of my dreams and went on a five day trek in the Himalayas. At the start, my guide noticed my walking poles and asked where I bought them. I told him in New Zealand – why? He said, don’t buy them here, they are Chinese copies, which are badly made and dangerous; some people have broken bones when the poles have failed on rough ground. I had noticed them in Pokhara in the rows of shops all selling identical hiking gear, and wondered (naively) why all the well-known brands could be so much cheaper. This safety factor is a lesser known aspect of the global scourge of Chinese manufacturing rip-offs. The phenomenon is more generally seen as theft of intellectual property, which

unfortunately is sometimes accepted as a way of making goods cheaper and more widely available to those that can’t afford the branded version. It is even justified by saying the brand is making too much profit, though no one has shown that those making the rip-offs make any less profit. A store here that sells copied furniture defended their action to me by saying all New Zealanders have a right to be able to buy well-known designs at ‘affordable prices’. The problem is that they are disingenuously reducing the issue to the immediate price tag; the Chinese manufacturing success is entirely based on low prices at any cost. But what is the cost? Safety is one issue, as I have shown. Are we really aware of all the dangers of cheap goods? Would you favour the cheap plastic Chinese toy for your child over the more expensive German wooden one, if you knew that the plastic

contained carcinogenic toxins and that German regulations forbade the use of any such toxins in plastic or paint? I would have liked to have said New Zealand, but sadly our regulators lack the rigour of the Germans. When I export to Japan I have to show that my plywood goods contain zero formaldehyde (E0) in the glue, but there are no such measures protecting us from Chinese imports, or even from our own home-made materials. My company pays more for special orders of E0 MDF (only for machining base-boards; we don’t make anything with it) that virtually no one else uses in New Zealand – this responsible material is made here for export to more caring societies. And what about the safety of the people working in China? In New Zealand we have a reasonable standard of workplace health and safety (except in coal mining), but there are no such regulations in China.

MADE IN CHINA

“At a stand at the recent Hong Kong Lighting Fair, a Chinese company exhibited shameless rip-offs of David Trubridge (and others’) lighting. They even stole the promotion images from the DT website. Legal proceedings are under way.” david trubridge also environmental issues. When you eye up the cheap Chinese leather sofa, the salesman does not tell you that the skins have been split into three layers. All you see is the price difference with the branded version. But the thin leather will not last long and you will soon throw it out onto the landfill, with all its incumbent toxins, and have to buy a new one. In the long run the expensive single skin sofa is not only cheaper, but it is also responsible for less carbon emissions, pollution, resource depletion and human exploitation. Buy local People’s usual defence for not buying quality is that they can’t afford it. I understand this and also sometimes baulk at high prices. But we can only ‘not afford’ it because we want too much too soon. It is hard to resist the constant commercial barrage that makes you feel a failure if you don’t have the latest everything. But life is richer when we have fewer, beautiful things of quality that will age gracefully with us, things that are made with love and care from clean, sustainable materials, maybe even by someone you have met locally. Recently when I was giving a talk in Australia on environmentalism I was

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asked afterwards … What do you drink your tea from? I was proud to be able to say that I use treasured mugs made by Barry Doyle from Palmerston North (though I have to confess that all my ceramics are not yet local). Instead of buying lots of cheap stuff from China which are often unscrupulously made for quick profit, why not save up and buy one really special thing made by a New Zealand craftsperson? Of course not everything we need is made in New Zealand, but the more we support our local industry and our local communities, the more they will grow and the stronger they will be. In the long run it is cheaper and probably safer for you, as well as being much better for the planet and all the people who live on it.

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

While researching our bamboo plywood there, we visited a factory where we saw a laser engraving plywood trinkets. The machine had no safety devices: the laser was far above the workpiece and the laser beam was fully exposed to the worker who could have put her hand underneath it. A fan blew the fumes across to the next workstation. That machine would cost four or five times as much in a developed country which requires full safety protection and an extraction system with extensive carbon filters. Such unregulated workplaces are one of the reasons why they can make such cheap products. Unfiltered fumes in China have created one of the worst polluted atmospheres in the world. A friend of mine who recently visited the industrial south saw newlycleaned cars covered in brown grime within one hour. He was forced to retreat to his hotel with a hacking cough. I have been there too and seen the sun while still high in the sky, turn a sickly red. There will a serious epidemic of respiratory disease in children growing up in this atmosphere, and it is all because we want cheap goods and are prepared to turn a blind eye to the consequences. Quality goods are made to last, which is enough reason to buy them, but there

Ken Gee, Havelock North market gardener

Eileen by ~ PAUL PAYNTER

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Behind the bright, inquisitive eyes is Eileen Wing. She is a minority of a minority – Chinese and somewhere beyond her 90th year. She is the stereotypical Chinese nonagenarian: fit, diminutive and eternally youthful. Her teeth are her own and her walking stick an optional accessory. She still lives in her family home, cooking her own meals and quietly tending her garden, much as she has for decades. Eileen is intensely private and makes me feel like my questions are nonsense. “Gosh, is that relevant?” is her formidable retort. “I’m happy to be anonymous – one of the little people.” Eileen’s story is typical. “My father arrived in New Zealand in the early 1900s and moved straight to Ohakune. His uncle grew vegetables there. My father couldn’t speak a word of English, but he was willing to work.” The Chinese have always been willing to work. “For us there is no 40 hour week,” she declares. The old Chinese In the early days of New Zealand’s colonial development Chinese immigrants were seen as ‘undesirables’ and thumped with a poll tax. Initially the poll tax was set at £10, but when that seemed an inadequate ‘deterrent’ it was raised to £100 in 1896. In today’s terms £100 equates to more than $18,000. This tax was particularly severe as many immigrants initially thought their stay in NZ would be temporary. They thought they’d make

their fortunes in the gold fields and return to China wealthy men. The fortunes proved elusive. The poll tax meant that for two generations the Chinese community was made up almost exclusively of men. They couldn’t afford to bring their wives to New Zealand. This suited policy makers of the time who sought to control Chinese population growth. A year apart from their wives, became a decade quite quickly. So it was for Eileen’s parents. As was commonly the case, her father’s fare and poll tax was sponsored by his uncle. It was a long road to repaying the debt. “My mother came in after the war started”. By then the poll tax had gone and a flood of wives entered the country on two-year permits. War prevented them from returning to China when their permits expired. The great policy concession on family immigration didn’t arrive until 1948, when men who had been resident in NZ for 20 years were allowed to bring in their wives and children. After the gold rush days the Chinese moved on to dominate three businesses: laundries, market gardens and greengrocers. The laundries died with the evolution of washing machines and, more recently, the Chinese greengrocers have become scarce. Chinese market gardens have proved more durable. On the land neither technology nor large scale corporates have been able to squeeze them

out. The reasons are simple – the work is still hard, the hours long and the profits modest. There are no market gardeners that have grown rich from leeks or lettuces. Eileen followed in her father’s footsteps. With her husband Alan, they grew vegetables their whole lives and ran a small shop in Eskdale. In the days before supermarkets, Alan’s father, then his uncle, ran Ah Wing greengrocers in Heretaunga Street. These were the days of 1950s prosperity. On Friday nights families shopped for groceries at Willie Matt’s or Charlie Lusher’s, then they stopped to get vegetables from Ah Wing or Loo Kee and then to Bott’s bookstore for a copy of the Auckland weekly. If children were well behaved they might even get an icecream from the characters at the XL Dairy – Mario and Olga Cessarini. The best restaurants were grandly named ‘The Empire’, ‘The Dominion’ and ‘The Queen Mary’. They were Greek-owned fish’n’chips shops, albeit with the option of dining in-house. The Chinese market gardeners are one of the few surviving relics of this bygone era. As it is for many third and fourth generation Chinese, Eileen’s generation will be the last to farm the land. The Chinese community recognise their market gardening fame will soon be consigned to the annals of history. Earlier this year, Sons of the Soil, a book commemorating Chinese

CHINESE MARKET GARDENERS

market gardening history, was released. Authors Lily Lee and Ruth Lam took six years to write the book, meticulously researching the historic records. The ‘old Chinese’ deserve our respect. Like many new immigrants, they did the jobs no one else wanted to do, usually for less money than they deserved. They had to overcome a myriad of anti-Chinese policies. Such sentiment still exists in New Zealand today, but not like it did in our past. Given the Chinese have always been underrepresented in the dole queues, prisons and heart bypass waiting lists, I’m not sure why pastey New Zealand doesn’t warm to them. Fears of ethnocentricity in Auckland are well-founded, but Aucklanders are surprised to hear you can go for days in Hawke’s Bay without seeing anyone Chinese.

preservation mode, keeping the old ways that might not have endured otherwise. There is also a gulf between the two cultures in terms of language and lifestyle. “The young people can’t even speak Chinese,” says Eileen. “They eat McDonalds and have become very westernised.” These New Zealand Chinese are sometimes called ‘bananas’ – yellow on the outside, but white in the middle. Albert Young (right) and his nephew Ken Young (centre) and their trucks loaded with vegetables from the Loo Kee market garden in Bay View, c1960. Photo courtesy of Brian Young.

The new Chinese Now there is a new wave of Chinese immigration. They have little in common with the old brigade as three generations have passed since the last peak of Chinese immigration. “The Chinese festivals here are funny” one young man said to me. “The old people here celebrate their culture like my grandfather used to. We don’t do that in China anymore.” And so it is. When a culture is threatened it goes into

When a fourth generation Chinese and a new urban immigrant meet in the streets it must be an odd occasion indeed. The old ways are certainly ending as far as the Chinese market gardeners are concerned. You can still see older Chinese men in the fields, but their numbers grow few. They stoop and cut and breathe deeply; the air infused with the scent of sweet loam and bitter herbs. “The young people don’t want to do it anymore,” says Eileen as I leave. They are now obstetricians and lawyers and living better lives. But the absence of young Chinese market gardeners doesn’t seem to bother Eileen greatly. There is no sadness in her voice. “Good luck to them” she says warmly. “It’s nice to see them doing so well.” “Can I send someone around to take a photo of you?” I ask when leaving. “Certainly not!” she replies emphatically. “I don’t want a photograph taken. Please thank the photographer for leaving me alone.” Eileen’s philosophy is simple … “When I’m gone my friends and family will remember me. The opinions of other people don’t really matter.” Eileen might avoid the camera, but not so fellow master gardener Ken Gee, the familiar face of the industry on Havelock Road.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

horse of the year 2013 presents

church road winery • 10th march 2013

EIT ‘Crusaders’ Help Rebuild Christchurch by ~ claire hague, EIT Deputy Chief Executive

I’ve visited family in Christchurch a few times since the devastating earthquakes of 2011, and it has been heartening recently to see the small seeds of new life beginning to appear on the landscape.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

The colourful temporary town centre, the increasing number of spaces cleared of rubble and debris, and the community-building activities springing up in pockets throughout the city all signal the start of something significant – and Hawke’s Bay has a great opportunity to be part of that. Here in the Bay we have of course major common ground with the people of Christchurch. Two of the most devastating natural disasters in recent New Zealand history have been earthquakes in our respective regions. Napier and Hastings arose from the rubble as Art Deco and Spanish Mission jewels. Christchurch is about to rise and become another iconic city in which New Zealanders can take pride. And we have young people here in Hawke’s Bay who are helping to make that happen. Hawke’s Bay Today recently featured on its front page some distressing statistics about unemployment in the Bay, particularly amongst young people, with Mãori and Pacific Islanders disproportionately represented. We can either keep wringing our hands about that or we can do something about it.

Long term, there are all sorts of economic initiatives that need to happen to pull our regional economy out of its current slump. Those things will happen, but if we’ve learned anything from the last few years of recession it’s that economic recovery takes time. Our young people don’t have time to sit around waiting for that. They are here now, trained and ready in the kinds of trades and other disciplines that Christchurch needs for its rebuild, and it would be a waste to let them become yet another youth statistic when they could be finding their place in the world by reconstructing one of New Zealand’s major cities. EIT trades graduates to Christchurch With that in mind, the trades team at EIT this year launched a “Trades Crusade” to assist trades ‘graduates’ into jobs that will help rebuild Christchurch with the help of partners such as MSD, the YMCA, a Christchurch Mãori trust and Christchurch employers themselves. With the Christchurch rebuild looming, the government funded extra places at tertiary organisations last year and as a result, the first graduates are now ready and willing

to do what they were trained to do. Michael Burne, who trained in engineering at EIT, was the first to fly out – to a job with Elliott Scaffolding. He was closely followed by Ngatoko Fraser, Presley Ratima and Hale Tuari – all EIT Certificate in Carpentry graduates. Hale is working for a painting company, the other two for building firms. EIT and the Ministry of Social Development have jointly created the position of a Youth Link employment advisor to transition young people from study to work, and the appointee Aayden Clark is overseeing the crusade, and closely follows the progress of the young men. After initially staying with relations, Michael is now set up to go flatting, and his employer will be putting him through the relevant training programmes so he can gain qualifications specific to scaffolding. Four weeks after Hale started at Paintworx, the company offered him an apprenticeship – which he is happy to take. “They love him,” says Aayden. Hale is staying at the YMCA with several others who have since travelled down to Christchurch. Sharon Eade of Paintworx says: “If you can send us more like Hale...we will employ the lot of them.” The other two original crusaders are working as building labourers. They had an initial hiccup with transport. They were working on the outskirts of the city and, without cars, there was no easy way

EIT Crusaders in Christchurch

they could get to their jobs. Supported by EIT, they’ve moved to new positions with another company where public transport isn’t an issue. A further five crusaders, the youngest aged 17, have now joined the group in Christchurch. They completed EIT’s Level 3 carpentry programme and are working for construction companies in Christchurch. Aayden is finalising placements for another six and is confident three of these will be in Christchurch before Christmas. “It’s awesome, very awesome,” he says of the scheme’s success. “The boys are loving it – their jobs, a new city and the things they are doing besides work.”

“The boys are loving it – their jobs, a new city and the things they are doing besides work.” aayden clark

We’ve got some young men in Christchurch who could have been struggling on a benefit in Hawke’s Bay. They’re now clearing land, erecting scaffolding, designing, welding and constructing things. They’re re-building Christchurch, and their own lives in the process. We should be proud of them, and of the people who helped to make it happen.

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

More potential awaits Aayden sees post-employment support as very important for keeping people in jobs and he believes companies have a role to play in this. EIT has set up a Facebook page for posting messages to trade crusaders. It’s also the means for the crusaders to keep in touch – although they are working for different companies, they socialise together. They have a good culture, Aayden says of these young men. Next year, it’s anticipated 12-15 more crusaders will be heading to Christchurch. It comes back to a resourcing issue in terms of lining up the jobs, matching those up with the trades ‘graduates,’ arranging accommodation and supporting them down there in their new environment. “We could make it as big as we wanted to down there,” Aayden says. “We could have 50 if we wanted to.” At the end of January, EIT will hold a workshop in Christchurch for the trades crusaders. It will be an opportunity for

them to come together, for EIT to offer accreditation and to perhaps take on a community project. Barry Baker, chairman of Te Kaihanga Mãori Trade Co-op in Christchurch, who is helping the graduates as they settle, says: “In 10 years time, these boys will really appreciate the opportunity, effort and support you are giving them. Their lives are changing.” Long term of course, we want to keep young people in Hawke’s Bay. We all need to come together to do that – employers, economic development agencies, the education sector, families and local government. If they do leave for work, we need to be able to attract them back when our own economy recovers by creating the flourishing economic, social and community environment that young people want to live in. There are a lot of people and organisations working on that. Let’s give them our personal and professional support for their endeavours, as they will benefit all of us. In the meantime, let’s also keep sight of the big picture – the vision for education, for training, for adulthood that our young people need to embrace in order to take their rightful place in the world. This is nowhere more aptly demonstrated than in the famous story about Sir Christopher Wren’s rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral after the Great London Fire of 1666. The architect toured the worksite, asking people what they were doing. The men’s replies focused on their specific tasks, or the wages they were earning for their effort. Then, the architect came across a small boy, sweeping dirt and debris. What was he doing? Wren asked. The boy replied, “I’m helping Sir Christopher Wren to build a cathedral.”

Sponsoring insight into smart farming in Hawke’s Bay

Dr Phil Schofield, Abron, checks the Brix

Just Like Children & Snuffles by ~ Phyllis Tichinin Biological Agriculture Consultant

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Hawke’s Bay … home of lovely fruit, scenic rivers, pristine beaches and a commitment to sustainable agriculture. Is this a Tui moment? We say we’re concerned about the environmental footprint of farming. That we’re leading the way with management practices and innovation. That best practice farming is the way forward for the Bay. If we are committed to these, why are we ignoring the science-based, and internationally lauded, regenerative ag practices that are right in front of us? Like not just relying on synthetic nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (NPK) fertilisers, but making sure the full spectrum of mineral elements, especially calcium and trace elements, is added to the soil for productive and nutrient dense

plants. Like using tiny amounts high tech foliar fertilisers to stimulate balanced growth and plant resilience instead of large side dressings of NPK. Like focusing on keeping nutrition available to soil microbes so that they feed the plant what it needs in the ideal natural form for maximum production. Like acknowledging that it is undernourished and sick plants that are attacked by pests, not the high-Brix, robust, deep-rooted plants fed a well-balanced diet of minerals. It’s just like children and snuffles – it’s the kid fed on junk food that tends to get sicker more often. These are all basic concepts of modern plant science and yet our current approach to crop production is to ladle on the NPK and then prop the ailing and vulnerable plant with successive doses of pesticide to ensure the plant lasts long enough to produce. Why do we grow food? We might be able to justify this approach to agriculture except for two crucial facts. We grow food for our nutrition or nourishment, and the vitamin and mineral content of that food is critical for our health. We need all the mineral building blocks to be in our food in order to be well. Those vitamin and mineral levels in

plants have been dropping (on average 60%) over the last 70 years, which is just about how long we’ve been pushing the NPK barrow. Coincidence? I think not. The second fact is that we’re running out of cheap oil, and our current ag approach is based entirely on the use of synthetic, petrochemical inputs. We need to get smart about using a fraction of the oil on our crops and we need to do it real fast or we’re out of the business of even vaguely affordable food production. That’s where biological agriculture comes in. Eco-farming, fusion farming, agro-ecology, smart farming, call it what you will, it all boils down to a focus on farming in such a way that soil humus and nutrient dense food is produced with a minimum of inputs. Creating food with flavour, high levels of minerals and low pesticide use relies on the wonders of the underground microbial workforce – the world beneath our feet. The health of that world totally determines what it’s like for us on the surface. The top six inches of soil is the lungs of the planet and our food larder. We ignore its integrity at our peril. Hammering it with harsh fertilisers and nuking it with pesticides is not conducive to good microbe health and cooperativeness. There is a better way that ticks all the boxes that we say are important to us and our markets. The biological approach produces great, complex flavours. Tuki Vineyard in Havelock North has produced local and national gold medal wines this way. The Russell family of Babylon Station in the HB

LIKE CHILDREN & SNUFFLES

ranges has seen their grass production take off when their soil profiles darkened and deepened with lime and trace elements applications. Kiwifruit producers like Keith Holdom in Bay of Plenty saw impressive and consistent gains in quality scores, yield and earlier harvest when applying biological products to their orchards. And the big bugbear, dairying, has many with biological success stories. On an Intalact dairy monitoring programme with detailed pasture sampling over four seasons, Andrew and Nicky Watt’s Cloverdale dairy in Ashburton shows 50% more grass production when using humic acid granules with a standard urea program. Better still, when they apply a quarter the amount of urea with humic acid, traces and biostimulants as a liquid spray, they get 300% more pasture dry matter than with straight urea. For the uninitiated, these figures are enough to make dairy farmers weep with joy. The Watts’ soil now crumbles easily and there has been a significant reduction in water use. Their animal health costs have halved and profit has increased by 25%. Oh, and in case you’re about to assume that these results are only possible on small dairies – the Watts milk 2,900 cows.

L and wanted

the huge role of soil microbes and views living systems as simple and linear. However, there are highly-trained plant scientists embracing the natural complexity of soil and plant systems. Dr Phillip Schofield, BAgSc (Hons) PhD Plant Science, Massey describes his experiences. “Over the last five years I have become increasingly amazed at the possibilities for agricultural production systems once we adopt practices that work with, rather than against, the millions of interactions that take place between plants, soils and the microbiological environment they create. Our Ag and Hort scientists should urgently research the production possibilities of the powerful biological system we have spent the last half century fighting, when we should actually have been looking deeper at the true causes of the pests and diseases and the natural defence mechanisms that abound in nature.” Hundreds of farmers on hundreds of thousands of hectares in New Zealand are proving we can shift our knowledge base and our results to a much more productive mode. One that delivers premium ag products and a quality environment, so that we really do have the Hawke’s Bay of our imaginations.

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

What is ‘best practice’ farming? Back here in Hawke’s Bay, we’re being pushed to build a massive water project as the answer to increasing our ag production. The Regional Council acknowledges that the dam will force farmers to be ‘super productive’ and use ‘best practice’ farming. But what is the projected gain in production based on? Well, the standard ever-increasing volumes of petroleum-based NPK and pesticides

as recommended by Massey and most other agricultural universities around the world. Some people call it the Moron Approach…if the last lot of fert and chemicals didn’t do the job, just put more on next time. After 50 years of that, we’re hosing on rather a lot of petrochemicals to our soil microbes and food. So what is ‘best practice’ farming? Things get waffley when you ask for definitions, but most ag industry players agree that it means ‘being sustainable in our farming practices’. I think we’re not aiming nearly high enough. The definition of sustainability is to sustain or continue what we are currently doing indefinitely. Given the water pollution, lowered carbon content and collapsed soils, increased pesticide use and poor flavour and storage of our produce, I’d rather not be sustainable. How about trying on an approach that regenerates carbon and humus content in increasingly crumbly soils using a fraction of the petrochemical inputs and water to produce a greater yield of spray-free, tasty food? That’s biological agriculture in a nutshell. It is not only possible but predictable that when we farm biologically we create water and nutrient-holding humus. The more humus, the less water needed to produce high quality crops. That’s what’s needed in Central Hawke’s Bay for starters, as opposed to claiming that more intensive cropping and urea use will help the water quality in the Tukituki. Let’s invest instead in farmer education and incentives for better soil development. “It’s not possible” will be the response from the universities. Perhaps not possible for them. They’re stuck in the petrochemical ag paradigm that ignores

THE BEST YEARS OF

OUR LIVES by ~ K AY BAZZARD

Better be Ready! Imagine a life crisis. Say, one of your 20-something kids is banged up in a Bangkok jail on suspicion of carrying drugs, or you had a stroke that left you paralysed, and you needed cash urgently. What available cash would you use in such an emergency?

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

We all hope such life-changing events won’t occur, but for John and Margaret a few years ago, John’s heart condition put them into a financial panic that had them looking bleakly at their lack of liquid assets. He needed heart surgery that was going to cost a mint – how to fund the surgery, which their health insurance policy did not cover? John and Margaret have lived in their house in Havelock North for over 42 years. They are now 67 and 75 respectively. Margaret is a successful practising artist, John makes beautifully finished kitchen boards from recycled native timbers, supplementing the income from National Super. Not being big spenders they have never worried

about money, but they eat and live well and are happy as a result. One night, dining out with friends, Marg’s eftpos card was rejected for lack of funds. It takes a crisis The combination of this surprising event and the underlying worry of John’s health brought their finances into sharp focus. They knew a conventional loan was not an option as they would be unable to repay a loan, but they had heard about home equity release schemes. With no idea how they worked, they spoke to Sentinel, the company specialising in reverse mortgage schemes and discovered that their

debt-free home would make this an ideal option for them. They discovered they could have immediate access to $100,000. “So,” Marg says, “We thought we’d better take it all out and deposit it safely until it was needed.” Their accountant and lawyer advised them strongly against it due to the impact of compounding interest over that period. They ignored that advice and went ahead anyway. “What other options were there?” asks Marg, “And the relief from anxiety was just fantastic; we could go ahead immediately with the surgery without fear and no pressure to pay back … Sentinel would get back their investment upon sale of the house or our deaths.” The lesson – don’t panic! It all turned out better than they had hoped. John’s surgery did qualify for health insurance after all. He quickly recovered and was able to continue working. In the year that followed, Marg turned 65 and began receiving National Super, so actually, they used far less than they had expected. Nevertheless, the experience cost them $24,000. They have repaid all but $10,000, kept as a buffer against a future emergency.

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Marg reflects, “We would recommend that anyone in our situation not panic themselves into taking out large amounts on a home equity release scheme. Borrow small and only as much as required – it is a very expensive option.” John and Marg’s approach to saving for a rainy day (i.e. not saving) seems typical of many Baby Boomers whose home is their primary asset. With little provision for ‘eventualities’ they are thrown into disarray when the inevitable changes do occur.

josephine it has got all this stuff about our assets and personal circumstances, but we spent all the time, two hours nearly, on ‘what’s important?’ Dave went through it first – ‘Why did he need money?’ He just needed enough money to enjoy and continue to develop our lifestyle block. ‘Why is that important to you?’ There followed lots of talking about his trees, but in the end it finally transpired that for Dave it was a goal – that he would have achieved something by creating a place the children could return too. A place with roots. Then it was my turn. It turned out that for me having money was important as a means to an end. I never want to be beholden to anyone. ‘Why is that?’ he asked, and I replied, ‘It’s the way I was brought up, you always pay your way’, values which I picked up from my parents. I have a huge sense of responsibility for the family because I am the main breadwinner and have been for many years. Then I talked about the children. Having chosen to have them, it was our responsibility, our duty, to be there for them through thick and thin. Looking forward for me, my problem is what to do with myself when I reach 60. We will have sufficient funds to live on but, as I said at the beginning, it is not about ‘things’ but it is about using my brain. So, there is my new challenge, to find something to do that is using my brain.” Josephine’s lesson – avoid debt As she says, “If we could not pay cash for something we did without it. It’s not about how much you’ve got, it’s about how you use your money in a way that makes you happy. And we were happy not to owe money.” The inherited value of ‘paying your way’ out of earnings, not borrowings, and buying property with cash, has resulted in Josephine’s family’s financial security and significant family wealth. We always knew we should have been saving and not spending. But at least lots of us have a Kiwisaver account now.

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Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Living a life on purpose However, this is unlikely to occur with my other Boomer couple, Josephine and David, aged 58 and 63. They are younger than John and Marg and they aren’t big spenders either, but they are big savers. They own a house in town, one in the country and a business property and all are mortgage free. They have investments in a broadly spread financial portfolio and have $100,000 in a term deposit (to cover eventualities). Josephine: “It’s incredible, we have accumulated money and assets and I don’t quite know how we’ve done it, but we’ve never been big spenders; neither of us are into ‘things’. We have always been able to make do, because if we could not pay cash for something we did without it. It’s not about how much you’ve got, it’s about how you use your money in a way that makes you happy. And we were happy not to owe money. My work experience allowed me to progress rapidly and with each step I accelerated up the career ladder, earning more money as I went. When my job moved me to Australia, we kept the house in Auckland, which we rented out. When we came back we kept the rental house and bought another house, and so it went on. But we’ve always paid for everything with cash where possible, or if we did borrow money, the priority was always to pay back debt and reduce our exposure.” Josephine wanted to tell me about a recent meeting conducted by their financial man. She described it as an exercise in communication about their future, between herself and her husband. The financial advisor facilitated the discussion, asking endless ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions. Money was hardly mentioned, but it did reveal to them aspects of themselves and their hopes for the future that they had never fully understood or articulated before. Josephine again: “The financial roadmap was the template he used and

“It’s not about how much you’ve got, it’s about how you use your money in a way that makes you happy. And we were happy not to owe money.”

Shake, Rattle and ... Roll Anthony Vile explores earthquake proneness through the not completely settled dust of the Canterbury Earthquakes and Earthquake Royal Commission enquiry.

tim.co.nz

ANTHONY VILE

Three words have been rolling off the tongues of various building officials, building owners, engineers, insurance agents and developers of late … “Earthquake prone building.”

• What is the baseline for structural safety measured as a percentage of the current building code? • Who is going to pay for potential upgrade work? • What is the timeframe for any upgrade work to be carried out? This is obviously of greater significance to those areas straddling shifty plate tectonics with significant collections of older commercial structures – Wellington, Hawke’s Bay, Wairarapa, Canterbury – and of less interest to those in the Northern regions where seismicity is not so much an issue as ‘affordable-city’. Alleviating risk To a certain degree Christchurch has reinforced what we already knew. Un-reinforced masonry, parapets and ornamentation not tied back to a main structure, ‘pounding’ from neighbouring buildings shaking at disparate speeds due to disparate mass and construction technology, building on fill or old river riverbeds – all make for significant danger. Part of the complexity of the issue is that private ownership creates potentially public danger. The Earthquake Prone Building issue in singular terms is about safety and saving lives. It is attempting to address – based on best practice and best outcomes – how a building built prior to 1976 using the

“... heritage can be a value-adding proposition that can sit alongside new development.” knowledge and technology of the time measures up against the current building standards. If it is deficient what are the options for alleviating risk – retrofit or demolition? A building is considered earthquake prone if assessed to be less than 34% of the existing build code. The assessment is based on building age, type of construction, regional seismology and localised geotechnics and performance of structure under a moderate event. It does not apply to residential buildings. Post-Christchurch, owners already stung by increased insurance and building costs, caught in the midst of a slow economy, and threatened with the possibility of structural upgrade work to an unconfirmed target percentage of today’s building code, have reacted cautiously. In this climate, with little clarity in a market suddenly looking for certainty and safety, investors are rightly nervous. Some organisations, risk and cost adverse, have had no choice but to seek safer (read: newer) digs. When employees’ lives and the continuation of business through an event are at risk, then it makes complete sense. Unions tend to agree. What does this mean to Hawke’s Bay? We live in a highly active earthquake zone with urban settlement on large areas of land with a high liquefaction risk, both in Hastings and Napier. Heritage is both an economic generator and part of the city identity, more so in Napier than Hastings. Both councils have earthquake prone policy in place. Hastings since 2006 has been progressing a “policy which actively seeks to identify buildings that are potentially earthquakeprone and allocate them a suitable priority, in order to take appropriate action to ensure they are made safe in reasonable time frames.” Words cloaked with good intention but perhaps no clear outcome. Going above the call of duty there is even an inventory of those currently ‘stickered’ online via HDC’s website, as well as those potentially stickered. The means of ascertaining earthquake proneness has been via a council-contracted desktop review of known information. Any owner can contest the outcome at their own cost. The Hastings policy is under review as part of a five-year review cycle, timely Continued on Page 48

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

These three words have usurped the previously feared monster of “leaky building” to take the throne of most thorny built-environment issue. That is, if you consider housing supply to be an economic issue, retail to be a marketing issue and sustainability to be just too ‘last century’ to even warrant discussion. If you take a holistic view it is easy to see the connections and see that the building industry and the built environment is going through some growing pains; hopefully on its way to becoming a lot more mature, productive and sustainable as a result. Read the Productivity Commission report on the sector and it’s even more apparent. The capacity for the sector to deliver innovation across the board is in question. Leaky buildings, skill shortages, poor planning for growth, developers struggling to solicit capital post-GFC, materials monopolies, architects struggling to retain relevance – it all adds up to a pretty grim picture. Of course the promise of a rebuild in Christchurch and latent demand in Auckland jump starting another boom cycle keeps things positive, as do a few aspirational public projects spotted through the dust and debris post earthquake and GFC. Whyndam quarter in AKL, the urban planning and ongoing temporary and pop-up events in Christchurch, AKL art gallery extension, for example. It is only when threats are directed at personal safety, capital investments and forced spending that ears start flapping and mouths gibbering. EQPB is nothing new to those working in the industry. It has been around at least since 2004 when the Building Act handed the mantle to territorial authorities to have a policy on dangerous, unsanitary and earthquake-prone buildings in place within 18 months. In reality the issue has been around for a lot longer. Architects and engineers have been well aware of the threats posed by un-reinforced masonry buildings and liquefaction for a long time. The 1989 Loma Preita Earthquake in San Francisco is a case in point. Incidentally, the large stock of multi-storey NZ timber-framed townhouses in that city survived the event

unscathed. It is a shame it has taken an event like Christchurch to turn up the heat on both urban design and earthquake safety in this country. Post-Christchurch, with large-scale destruction of a good percentage of older commercial building stock in the CBD, the majority un-reinforced masonry, the earthquake-prone building issue has bubbled to the surface like liquefaction itself. Along with increased insurance costs, renewed demand for newer, safer building stock, and process hiccups, confusion has reigned. The Earthquake Royal Commission post-Christchurch has been charged with independent investigation of the Christchurch event including implications to national policy regarding EQPB and the Building Act 2004. Mapping a strategy for creating safe buildings and urban environments based on knowledge gained via Christchurch so that territorial authorities, the public and building owners have confidence moving forward is no easy task. The strategy addresses some key points:

ANTHONY VILE

25,000 buildings and $1.68 billion bandied about, there is no actual accounting for the economic value heritage might create in a community, nor the stimulation to the economy brought about by the upgrade work. Whatever the final revisions to the Building Act, it is inevitable that some built heritage will be lost. When bean counters become the sole progenitor of urban development we need be worried, especially so if property value is cynically calculated as value of land less cost of demolition. Alternative financial approaches are not hard to find. In San Francisco, the Mills Act is the Salvation Army Hall 1929, Hastings. Demolished citing cost of retrofit.

» given the Earthquake Royal Commission feedback and the district plan review. Napier has been actively engaging with the issue also, revamping its policy this past May. It is clear about what, when and who. The onus is on the building owner:

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

“…every owner of a building of 2 or more stories or single storey buildings with an eave height greater than 4 metres and are classified as a Place of Assembly as defined by the City of Napier District Plan constructed prior to 1976, with the exception of private single detached dwellings, is required to submit a written assessment of the earthquake proneness of their building to the Napier City Council. The assessment must be undertaken and certified by a Chartered Professional Engineer (Structural). This assessment is to be completed within 12 months of this policy becoming operative. The cost of the assessment of the earthquake proneness of the building will be met in full by the building owner. If an assessment report is not submitted within this 12 month period the building will be deemed to be earthquake prone.” Needless to say, engineers in the Bay have been very busy and building owners concerned. Architects have been relatively quiet on the issue locally, but the National Institute (NZIA) has a clear policy on heritage and has been actively contributing to discussion. Realising the threat to the Art Deco Capital, the Art Deco Trust has positively and proactively organised and engaged with experts and the public.

Earthquake Commission steps in Thankfully, the Earthquake Royal Commission has finally delivered its findings in a report – Volume 4 of the Canterbury Earthquake Royal Commission Report – with a total of 36 recommendations. Concurrently, the Department of Buildings through the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment has released its own change proposals for consultation. Its document is titled Building Seismic Performance Proposals to improve the New Zealand earthquake-prone building system. Some certainty is beginning to appear, bearing in mind that in an election year no government is going to drop a bomb of excessive cost-generating policy on their constituents. The government has taken on board many of the Commission’s recommendations, but has chosen longer timeframes and lower minimum standards for strengthening. Local government and the free market have been shoulder tapped as the drivers for change. However, the free market and built heritage have had a terrible record over the years. Think 1980s Auckland. Heritage buildings tell a local story but also a New Zealand story. As a region and nation we have to decide how important built heritage is bottom-line – we need some rationalization of what is valuable from a heritage point of view, from a national perspective, and some system of financial aid must be devised. There are some clear and present threats to heritage in all this. For example, there seems to be some transfer of power from the NZ Historic Places Trust (NZHPT) to local authorities. Without the necessity to consult with the NZHPT on protected buildings, councils and developers would have carte blanch. Although some high-level estimates have been put against the cost of upgrade, with

Key recommendations for consultation • There’s no immediate pressure on building owners to upgrade to anything more than the existing 33% of current code – “there is no justification to set the shaking level to be resisted for earthquakeprone structures at greater than one third of the requirements for a new building.” Interestingly, Christchurch has already adopted requirements for buildings to be 67% of code and the ERC made the recommendation buildings should be strengthened to 50% of code. • Un-reinforced masonry buildings rightly get targeted as a real risk – “The external walls of all UMBs should be supported by retrofit including in areas of low seismicity” – which makes retrofit a national issue not localised to high risk areas. • All falling hazards, parapets, ornamentation and the like will need to meet 50% of current code requirements or be removed. • There is, however, a clear time stamp put on proceedings, with local authorities given two years to complete assessment of all UMBs and five years for all other buildings. Any resultant upgrade work will have to be completed within seven years for UMB and 15 years for others. Which means by about 2030 we can stop worrying about being crushed by falling brickwork. • A register of all earthquake-prone buildings would have to be made public within five years of any law change.

ANTHONY VILE

single most important economic incentive in California for historic preservation. Property taxes are reduced – sometimes by 50% or more – in exchange for a tenyear commitment by the owner to make specific improvements to their building. There are many more examples from around the world for funding structures that support the retention of heritage. It is best to think of it as a positive opportunity to not only create more attractive, but also safer and more resilient and useful urban spaces, buildings, cultural stories and cities. Thinking this broadly, we need to understand that heritage can be a value-adding proposition that can sit alongside new development – Napier City, case in point. That an adaptive reuse of an existing building can incorporate structural upgrades as well as environmental upgrades. That reuse of existing structure in the long-term is a far more sustainable, resource-conserving, low carbon path. Rightful consideration also needs to be given to the cultural story that the built heritage tells.

• To redefine the cultural and economic value of heritage buildings nationally. Will a photograph suffice or do we need the real thing? • To explore innovative ways of structural retrofit, both in terms of physical works, funding strategies and financial incentives. • To piggyback energy upgrades and other ‘green’ initiatives on structural upgrade works. • To take the opportunity to reconsider the traditional CBD function in a 21st century environment. • To put people in employment and in training to have the required skills to complete the work and grow the economy. • To plan for future urban growth and open space in a holistic proactive manner.

Wellington City Council, realising the potential, both positive and negative, of the issue, has investigated the prospect of financing through low-interest loans that are tagged to a property rather than a owner. There is potential for local government to bear the cost of upgrade of public facilities of certain age, but in a time of fiscal conservatism this will require, as noted, some creative funding strategies. That said, in the case of public buildings there obviously needs to be rigor around safety; if money needs to be spent to save lives then it should be. The same can be said for urban street spaces – public space put at risk by the actions of private owners whose buildings face them. In Christchurch unreinforced masonry facades falling into the streets were the killer. The feasibility of groups of buildings carrying out upgrade work – as a way to share the load economically as well as physically – has been investigated. Where you draw the line regarding prioritization of upgrade work, and how big a stick councils get, will be two interesting outcomes of the commission report.

Earlier this year Victoria University students, sponsored by Wellington City Council, worked on a project to investigate the opportunities for an integrated approach to dealing with the earthquake prone building issue. They chose Cuba Street mall as the focus of their study working as a group to develop synergies between engineering and architectural solutions as well as between neighbours. They developed concepts reliant on whole block solutions rather than independent building solutions. As well as showcasing the potential of collaboration and fresh talent, the project highlighted a valuable idea; the city is a collective entity. The individual elements contribute to a whole greater than its individual parts and petty politics. It’s an idea that has inspired cultures for thousands of years and forms the basis for a civil and democratic society. NIMBYism becomes ‘Working together for the greater good-ism’. Anthony Vile, a regular contributor to Architecture NZ, is a designer and urbanist. His work ranges from residential architecture, public art and urban design to urban planning and cultural analysis. Completed formal architecture and urban design education in New York. Has taught design at Univ of Auckland School of Architecture and Planning and Unitec.

More from our readers.

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

The opportunities I imagine the report will elicit same old free market vs. protection naysayers debate. Property Council chief executive Connal Townsend has described proposed new standards as “hugely radical”. Whatever the final outcomes, there are important opportunities to consider:

• To investigate design opportunities as well as engineering outcomes, and to advance research and innovation in the sector.

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From the Mar/Apr 2013 issue BayBuzz will only be available on annual subscription or for $5 per issue. Subscribe now at www.baybuzz.co.nz!

TechFocus

Players and fans win with Sportsground technology Keith Newman talks to a money market guru who returned to the Bay to launch a winning hi-tech sports site.

tim.co.nz

Mike Purchas Former money market manager Mike Purchas has swapped codes; rather than providing back-end feeds for trading floors he’s delivering a level playing field for the country’s sports clubs and organisations to get their message out to members and supporters. Sportsground.co.nz, managed from the outskirts of Havelock North, has become one of the country’s largest online sports publishers with millions of page views a week. The owner and the host site, however, remain relatively unknown, as content is mainly served up under the name of local sports clubs or national umbrella groups. Sportsground.co.nz, now behind 40% of all sports clubs and organisations, recently took out second place behind allblacks.com

in the 2012 ESET NetGuide Web Awards for best recreation and sports site, beating Sky and Stuff sport. Subsidiary site, Sporty.co.nz delivers an overview of the range of content going through the system at any time and can be viewed by sport or region including match schedules, cancellations, results and related news. Mike Purchas, a former Hawke’s Bay boy, was until a few years ago based in Australia, where he ran a group of companies aggregating financial market price information, returning to the Bay in 2002 to run his business. A sporting chance Being familiar with aggregating and publishing content on the internet he

began looking for a local opportunity and noticed the sports market was “under serviced and largely neglected because it did not have a lot of money and mostly relied on volunteers.” The ‘heavy lifting’ or initial development to get Sportsground.co.nz robust enough to cope with future growth began in 2007 with three engineers working from a cottage at the Tuki vineyard. “Building something of this scale is not for the faint-hearted; it took three man-years of development before we even attempted to attract a single customer,” says Purchas. It was an opportune time to launch in October 2008 as there was a growing expectation everything should be online including draws, cancellations, results and sports news, and only 30% of clubs had a

SPORTSGROUND TECHNOLOGY

website or a presence on Facebook. Most were struggling with ‘key man syndrome’ where enthusiastic volunteers establish sites which became largely useless and out of date when the knowledge is not passed on to the next generation. Once Sportsground.co.nz was stable, the sales and development teams moved to Auckland where the core technology is hosted at an Albany data centre, which delivers ultra fast access to sports content across the nation. The first task, after identifying every club and school in the country, was a monthlong campaign of 10,000 outbound calls to let people know the new service existed.

NZRFU registration Purchas’s company is using the same technology to deliver the New Zealand Rugby Union’s new online registration system. It was trialled during the lead-up to the 2012 rugby season by Hawke’s Bay’s Hereworth School, Lindisfarne College, Havelock North Junior Rugby Club and others. It’s now being used by every rugby club and school in the country. A number of other sports bodies are likely to follow suit. While Purchas says the NZRFU is one of the most organised sports bodies in the country, with its own customer relationship management system (CRM), it was still generating and managing pallet loads of paper every year. Every player from five years old is given a registration number for life, so the union can engage with, support and identify talent and make decisions around the game. That saw 160,000 pre-printed forms being sent to the unions, who then mailed them to clubs and schools so each player could mark changes before mailing them back for manual data entry. That huge effort was prone to human error, security issues and a raft of other challenges. “We’ve provided a system that shifts all of that work to a secure link where clubs and schools can register and re-register for each season online.” Mobile apps ahead Sportsground.co.nz continues to develop its services, although it’s not into re-inventing the wheel. For example, there was no point in developing a calendar system when Google Calendar had everything needed, or to create video codec handling when YouTube is the perfect video streaming partner. More flexible payment options are being developed, including direct debit and time-payment for fee collection, along with new social networking links and more interactive apps for smartphones. Every February the Sportsground.co.nz training team runs workshops around the country to keep people informed and to gather feedback for future product development. “At any point we’re usually about nine months of development hours into the next things on the wish list and

“The kind of thinking that creates parochial pride around sport is fantastic because it draws communities together.” mike purchas what’s most important usually bubbles its way to the top,” says Purchas. He says the company is going through a continual learning curve dealing with feedback from about 5,000 site editors who administer and update content. “We certainly know pretty quickly if we’ve got it wrong when we make enhancements and changes.” Purchas says great things are happening in sport all across Hawke’s Bay and a lot of that is down to the C’mon the Bay initiative and the work of the Sport Hawke’s Bay trust, on which he is a trustee. “The kind of thinking that creates parochial pride around sport is fantastic because it draws communities together.” He says working with schools is similar to sporting organisations, although subsidiary site Schoolground.co.nz has been slower to gain momentum. Every school can have a website with sub-pages for each class with a photo and video gallery. This allows teachers and parents to have a higher level of engagement with the children. For example when BayBuzz called, Purchas was uncertain whether his daughter’s ‘out of classroom activities’ involved fishing or swimming. “With a classroom page, parents could log in and see what was going on. From a parental point of view that would be fantastic.”

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Filling in the blanks Subscribers can create their own web site with 100 pages of content, group email, online payment options, tools to drive fundraising, an e-newsletter module, a photo and video gallery, and a secure document storage archive. “Typically the minutes of meetings, employment agreements, registration forms, member’s lists, newsletters and the like are stored on some volunteer’s home PC and often get lost. Now they can store everything online in a secure database,” says Purchas. Users can upload news items, sports results and cancellations. “Newstalk ZB has been trying hard to push people to look online for some time; in Auckland, cancellations ran to one hour of a commentator talking very fast. It’s just not practical.” Purchas refers to the hosting model as ‘freemium’; a free service with users charged for additional components, so far 95% get everything free. Clubs and organisations who add value can customise the look and feel to align with their own

branding and marketing. “Once the content is on our servers we can serve it however they want.” Premium local users include Sports Park Hawke’s Bay (www.sportspark.co.nz), Sport Hawke’s Bay (www.sporthb.net.nz), HB Magpies (www.hbmagpies.co.nz) and Pettigrew Green Arena (www.pgarena.co.nz).

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Let’s Dance by ~ KAY BAZZARD

S N O I S R E DIV Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

I look at my life in Hawke’s Bay, evenings spent in front of the television night after night, a glass of wine and then off to bed at 10.30, and I dream of something different. The highlight of the week is a night out at Cinema Gold taking in a movie, followed by a pizza at Pipi’s. And that’s great, but …

What if over the long summer evenings in the town squares of Havelock North, Napier, Hastings or Taradale we were all dancing – music, laughter, wine, food, knowing everyone out there, all age groups with the gorgeous girls and guys showing off with their sexy dance moves swinging and jiving? In Tivoli, in the hills one hour from Rome, this is what happens Monday to Sunday at the end of the hot day when it cools off enough to get out and stroll through the streets. No one in Tivoli is at home sitting in front of the telly. The girls are wearing their pretty dresses and going through their line dancing routines, and this includes grandmothers and children, the guys few in this lineup, but not unwelcome. One or two couples dance in a loose embrace moving between and around them. Those who aren’t dancing are sitting at tables drinking an aperitif or a beer, the old guys talking and boasting … when they’re not eyeing up the pretty girls. In the town square under a canopy the musicians gig every night, accordion,

saxophone, guitar, drums playing their swinging stuff. Kids run about until after dark when their parents take them home happy. No one is drunk but everyone is having a great time. Of course, it doesn’t happen here, but why not? Are we so hooked on crappy television that we prefer to be isolated in our own homes in the long summer evenings? Hastings already has its new town squares, Napier its paved piazzas in the centre of town, and in the Havelock village we could remove the car parking in Middle Road, pave the whole area in front of the shops, give the cafes and bars the space to set up tables and we could dance! Are we just too dull, lazy and unsociable to enjoy this beautiful way to spend a summer evening? BayBuzz readers … Are you bored? Do you have a new ‘Diversion’ to propose for Hawke’s Bay? We’d be happy to publish it and trial balloon your idea with our other readers. Email to: editors@baybuzz.co.nz

Pastorale, Geoffrey Fuller, 1971 (71/74) Collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Ta-u-rangi

Afternoons in the sun by ~ DOUGLAS LLOYD JENKINS

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

I’ve been asked to write about what the Hawke’s Bay arts and cultural sector most needs. At the same time I’ve been given instruction that I’m not to mention the Hawke’s Bay Museum & Art Gallery.

a great boon to local business. A big glossy international art museum would transform Hawke’s Bay the same way it has both Bilbao and Hobart (via MONA). However what the local sector most requires doesn’t require funding but something far more difficult to achieve – a radical change of attitude. I would like to suggest that a little grassroots rebuild of the way we think about the arts might be the first step to achieving some of our more visionary projects.

Setting my mind to the task, I can think through a whole list of events or new institutions that would bring something new and dynamic to the Bay experience. Some of these have been mentioned before, or are in development – a locally based dance company, a dedicated Hastings Museum, a showcase contemporary Marae, a Ngãti Kahungunu Cultural Centre, a big allembracing Hawke’s Bay Art Festival or a branch Guggenheim at Te Awanga. Although all of these might be good ideas, the question remains where would the initial funding come? Whose pot of money would be required to make these projects real? Sure a serious arts festival to the late summer calendar would be

1. ‘Sunshine breeds complacency’ – I’ve written that line before in reference to local creative production. We all know that in the sun it is easier to avoid any serious work. What draws people to life in Hawke’s Bay is climate and this means we need to work doubly hard at the requirements of art and culture making. Why? Great creativity, and therefore great art, tends to come from sources that are less than sunlit. Cities similar in climate to Napier or Hastings (Brisbane or Los Angles come to mind) have to work hard to maintain a presence in the global world of ideas. They’ve done this by inventing events and institutions that draw the attention

of the world and by ensuring their artists remain exposed to the rigors of this wider world. So, how hard are local artists working on resisting an afternoon spent sitting in the sun? How well are they doing maintaining a presence in the global world of ideas? How well are we doing at monitoring outputs and where necessary offering the right type of support? EAST 2012, currently on show at Hastings Art Gallery is a fine wellexecuted project delivering exactly what it sets out to do – providing a showcase for local artists – something art galleries have done for years. At the same time the exhibition is a little suffocating, because the conversational and intellect routes it traverses are simply too well travelled. There is too much that has been predigested and packaged and too little that innovates or experiments. Then without intending to, iShowcase1, in the gallery next door, sets students up with the same map to the same destination – a trip to the cul-de-sac of local art. As I said before, EAST 2012 represents something provincial art galleries have been doing for years – supporting local artists by putting them in front of local audiences.

SUNSHINE BREEDS COMPLACENCY

However, although local artists producing for local markets is a concept that might work well on artisan food stalls, it can have a devastating effect on the visual and performing arts, because it eventually produces a certain oppressive airlessness which stifles innovation. The artists in EAST 2012 divide into those that live here and those who left Hawke’s Bay after a formative period. This second group gets an invite because in their absence they were able to establish themselves as artists with national reputations. Although an inherently generous gesture, this invitation presents a problem. Although some artists are required to have met the national criteria, the other half gets a pass (at least to the selection process) based solely on their address. The end result is that two different criteria are in operation. This is partially moderated by the guest selector – but no selector with a large gallery to fill ever gets to make the reductive choices they’d really like to make. 2.

douglas lloyd jenkins front of a bad painting, and as time passes the decision seems weaker still. Building a culture requires some tough decisions and some even tougher omissions. 3. In the days when representational landscape painting dominated galleries, a local artist was almost defined as someone who painted local scenes. There was an argument then for regional art. Geoffrey Fuller’s Pastorale (1971) is a stylish, ironic and representative image of the region. It is in its own small way great art – illustrated by its frequent use and appearance. However, this type of art belongs to a particular period. In the early 21st century the demand for works of this sort has now largely evaporated. No one outside the regions talks about ‘regional art’ much anymore. However, art changes. Indeed it is constantly changing. The one thing that doesn’t change is that the production of good art is extraordinarily hard work. The question we need to ask ourselves is, if the term ‘local artist’ simply exists as a free pass, then what would we lose by eliminating the term from our lexicon? What if we expected resident artists to prove their relevance both locally and nationally? Writers are called writers because the language they work in is universal. New Zealand writers are called so because that is the literary culture they reflect. The term local writer – means something unconnected in anyway to notions of reach, impact or quality that you would expect of a New Zealand writer. The term local writer should always set off alarm bells in any serious reader. A local writer can transition into the next group, but it means sitting a test in which the examination paper is set externally. As it stands we are setting our sights too low, we are too ready to make excuses and to provide publicity for any local artist or performer. We are still happy that artists are willing to ‘have a go’ and pleased just to be able to say we have a ‘creative sector.’ The irony of EAST 2012 is that it illustrates that any Hawke’s Bay artist has to step outside, at least for a while, in order to best reflect the creative potential of the region.

So, why should you subscribe to BayBuzz? Well, if you’ve read this far, we must be offering something you value! Now YOU decide that value. And that’s the price you pay to subscribe to BayBuzz! From the Mar/Apr 2013 issue BayBuzz will only be available on annual subscription or for $5 per issue. Subscribe now at www.baybuzz.co.nz!

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

This is not a review of EAST 2012, nor a critique of the practices of Hastings City Art Gallery which I admire. It is simply that EAST 2012 provides the current illustration that the local art scene is not as strong as we’d like to believe. This occurs in part because too many Hawke’s Bay artists are choosing to occupy the seemingly privileged but ultimately destructive position defined by the term ‘local artist,’ rather than pushing on to the next level of practice. Hawke’s Bay audiences, on the other hand, are still operating in a mode where participation in the arts at any level seems in itself somehow interesting. The closer to hand that artist might be, the more deserving of our support. This is not a healthy relationship. It doesn’t encourage artists to look outside their own geographical communities for inspiration or support. It allows too many artists to spend their afternoons in the sun. Participation and contribution are two different things. Support for the arts is most effective when delivered into the broader culture, by exposing both the maker and the audience to ideas, than it is when delivered to individual artists in the form of personal publicity. It is hard for many to see, but a local artist should have no more expectation of seeing their work hung in the city gallery or purchased for a public collection, than the local plumber has to expect to fix the art gallery’s pipes. That an artist lived at a particular time at a particular address doesn’t stand up well when standing in

“Great creativity, and therefore great art, tends to come from sources that are less than sunlit.”

TAONGA

MAORI connecting to place & past

Hawke’s Bay’s nationally-recognised collection of taonga Mãori will spread its wings when the new museum opens in September, as Lizzie Russell reports.

TAONGA MÃORI 119, Hei Tiki Pounamu from the Ebbett Collection Collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Ta-u-rangi

“Our local taonga collection is probably the finest and most significant outside the major museums in Wellington and Auckland.”

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

Beyond what visitors will see in the exhibition spaces, there’s much more to any museum, in particular our museum. The team at Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery is on the home straight. Doors to the new museum are on track to open in September, and after nearly two-and-a-half years closed to the public, the pressure is now coming on to excite, engage and satisfy us with the new design, branding, gallery spaces, exhibitions and direction. Since the museum closed to the public in July 2010 for the enormous task of Opening image on p56-57 909, Heru Rãkau from the J.N. Williams Memorial Trust Collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Ta-u-rangi

packing and moving the collection to the off-site temporary storage and work space, the staff of around 30 has been working tirelessly to design and prepare for the opening exhibition programme. The fact that work has continued behind the closed doors, while the $18 million building project has been underway, is a timely reminder of what a museum really does. Not just a place for locals and tourists to visit to learn more about our history, our art, our heritage objects and our regional identity, a museum is also charged with being the home for our taonga, and for acting as a research base where specialist professionals explore and study this material and the stories or provenance that relate to it. Only a tiny percentage of the art and artefacts held in most museums is ever on display to the public, so the collection stores are veritable Aladdin’s caves of strange and wonderful remnants from our collective past. Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery

is no exception, with a holding of approximately 100,000 items, including archival material. HBMAG Access team leader, Sara Browne estimates that in recent times, between 5% and 10% of the collection was on show. This is in line with most other New Zealand museums, she says. What we’ll see in the new museum is an increase in this percentage, due to a new approach of changing exhibitions over more regularly, and changing art and objects within the show more often too, giving the public the opportunity to see more of that material culture and fine art which helps to define our regional character. Access through the web will also increase, Sara tells me. Members of the team have been busy photographing and documenting collection items, and we’ll see the benefits of their labour when the new museum website is launched next year, with around 7,000 images of art and artefacts viewable online, as well as details of the items held in the extensive archives collection. The HBMAG redevelopment has been sold to the public as “repackaging the exterior to match the wealth within”. What the marketing speak is getting at is the incredible depth, breadth and strength of the collection which is governed by the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust. Taonga Mãori Probably the most significant collection within the overall is that of taonga Mãori. Hawke’s Bay is home to New Zealand’s third largest iwi, Ngãti Kahungunu, and HBMAG is home to one of the country’s largest collections of taonga Mãori. The collecting of taonga Mãori began in earnest in the middle of the 19th century, as members of the museum, then known as the Athenaeum, pursued their interests in all things indigenous and relating to the natural history of these islands. It is widely known within the heritage sector – especially by those who have worked at or are working at HBMAG – that our local taonga collection is probably the finest and most significant outside the major museums in Wellington and Auckland. As in the previous museum, the

TAONGA MÃORI Left to right: Migoto Eria, Tryphena Cracknell, Desna Whaanga- Schollum tim.co.nz

“Wouldn’t it be great ... to have one website where all the cultural, artistic and community events were listed together, and that was updated continuously?” john schiff

Media in Wellington, while Desna has worked as a designer and branding specialist and is Co-chair of Ngã Aho, Mãori Design Professionals Society, and Tryphena, from an education and museums background, has focused for the last two years on research and collection care, establishing and strengthening iwi relationships. All three whakapapa to Hawke’s Bay hapu, and so have a very direct connection to the treasures they are charged with looking after. When BayBuzz visited Migoto and Desna at the temporary museum base in Napier in November, they were keen to explain the shift in direction signalled by their recent arrival. Whereas in the past, the museum’s relationship has mainly been with local iwi as an external entity, the establishment of the taonga Mãori team - committed professionals who are of this place – creates a more seamless Mãori presence within the museum. This is augmented by HBMAG’s ongoing consultation with two formal local iwi groups - the Mãori Consultancy Committee of the Napier City Council and Te Rõpã Kaiãwhina Taonga, a group that advises on spiritual matters (tikanga) relating to the taonga Mãori collection. Ukaipo So what can the public expect from this new focus? An engaging new taonga

exhibition, for a start. While the previous show was made up of significant treasures representing Ngãti Kahungunu, between 70% and 80% of that on display was not actually part of the collection. Migoto notes that the new exhibition will have much more focus on what HBMAG actually holds in the collection. Her major challenge as curator she says, is to bring about a show which combines fresh insight with a truthful connection and understanding of iwi and the wider audience. Part of that connection will come from using the exhibition of art and artefacts to educate and explain the different value system Mãori use to place importance on their treasures. During our visit, we discussed the abstract nature of differing cultural backgrounds and how they dictate the way we see and value things. Both Desna (from a design point of view) and Migoto see the role of their exhibition as educating about a holistic Mãori approach to presenting and viewing taonga, as well as telling the stories of the objects themselves. The new taonga Mãori exhibition will be called Ukaipo. The term can have various translations including true home, origin, mother, to breastfeed. In this case it suggests a space where iwi can connect to their place, their past and their Mãori, regional and tribal identities. The exhibition will run for 12 months before it changes over, and in that time Continued on Page 60

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

upgraded HBMAG will feature a taonga Mãori gallery. The last exhibition – Ngã Tukemata – The Awakening – which was curated by Sandy Adsett in 1986 came hot on the heels of Te Mãori, the internationally toured exhibition of New Zealand’s indigenous art. This not only put historical Mãori art on the global map, but also presented the work as fine art, rather than ethnic curiosity as it had been seen by the wider world in the past. Representative of a significant and specific era in terms of how New Zealand and the world regarded Mãori art, the HBMAG exhibition and its space remained largely unaltered – aside from a revitalisation by Jacob Scott in the 90s – for 24 years. Following up Ngã Tukemata with a new exhibition for this era is now in the hands of the new taonga Mãori team at HBMAG. Curator Migoto Eria (Ngãti Pahauwera), designer Desna WhaangaSchollum (Ngai Tahu Matawhaiti) and kaitiaki (collection manager/guardian) Tryphena Cracknell (Ngãti Hikairo, Hinewhata), have all come on board during the last year or so in a move that suggests a major shift towards placing increased permanent importance on this special collection. All three are young, professional and passionate about the future of the collection. Migoto has a background in Mãori publishing, working at Learning

TAONGA MÃORI 783, Kete Collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Ta-u-rangi

there will be rotations of taonga so that

» more of the collection can be seen by the

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

public, and the taonga can be cared for in the best way possible. Ukaipo. will be one of the most significant opening exhibitions. I asked Migoto if there were any major ‘stars’ of the new taonga exhibition, and again it raised the notion that the importance of specific items is not drawn from monetary or even aesthetic bases, but from ancestral connections, and iwi provenance. In saying that, there are four familiar and well-loved items we will be seeing again in this exhibition. The four poutokomanawa (ancestor figures which traditionally act as support posts in a wharenui /meeting house) who graced Ngã Tukemata will return in Ukaipo. and be part of a show which will include taonga unseen by the public for decades, presented in a way that promises to engage the audience to think about the work in an entirely new way. Sections of the exhibition include a look into the domestic sphere, and into childhood and upbringing along with space that is focused on learning experiences for children and their families. The show will also have a focus on the changing world and the place of Mãori in it. Of course, as mentioned earlier, a museum is more than a collection of exhibitions; it’s a store and a home for further collection items. It’s also often the best place for historical items to be cared for and protected, as well as researched. The taonga team has been

working hard on an access and outreach programme, whereby iwi and the wider community are able to explore and reconnect with taonga not on display. This year taonga have been taken to several marae by staff, who consider relationships between people and taonga to be an essential part of the spiritual care of the collection. The team of Migoto, Desna and Tryphena acts as the access point for the taonga collection, and they’re keen to engage further with interested parties as the weeks roll by towards the reopening. With all these changes and the new approaches to exhibiting at HBMAG, we can be reassured that we’ll still be

2255, Heru Collection of the Hawke’s Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Ta-u-rangi

able to experience well-known and loved aspects of the predecessor. Sara Browne mentions that yes, there will be an engaging earthquake exhibition, and the museum will still produce the great design-focused exhibitions from the collection that the former museum was celebrated for. If you’d like to learn more about the HBMAG redevelopment programme, including checking out a timeline and seeing the design plans so you can visualise how much better Marine Parade will soon be looking, visit www.forus.co.nz. Marketing team leader Pam Joyce predicts the new website will be up and running from late March, and at that time, HBMAG will leave its current moniker behind and become known as MTG Hawke’s Bay (the acronym stands for Museum Theatre Gallery). That’s when we’ll all be able to whet our appetites for the new exhibitions by checking out thousands of fascinating collection items online. In the meantime, if you’re interested in reading about what goes on behind closed doors as the staff work towards September’s big re-opening, take a look at the museum’s blog: www.hbmagblog.wordpress.com The blog presents some fascinating provenance stories relating to art and objects from right across the vast collection, and great insights into the collection and the upgrade – hopefully enough to keep us all going until September!

Wayne Kirk Mitsubishi 19 Thackeray St, Napier 06 835 5269

Cnr Karamu Road & Alexandra St Hastings 06 8733077

Eccentric, Eclectic & Egalitarian by ~ ROY DUNNINGHAM / photos ~ BILL KEARNS

As a showcase for the very best of art in the region, the Hastings City Art Gallery is our jewel in the crown, but in some ways the creative heart of Hastings can be found in the Hastings Community Arts Centre in Russell Street. Exhibitions change there every fortnight as local artists display their paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, ceramics, wood turning, fabric art and jewellery. Even the Live Poets perform there every month. The number of local people who create things and show them here each year must be well up in the hundreds. Last Septemberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Humanities Art Classes exhibition alone showed the work of more than seventy artists and there would have been over 300 people at the opening

of this show. Exhibiting work is no small deal and it takes some courage to expose your best efforts to the critical gaze of the general public Yes, the standard is hugely variable. I have seen some wonderful works at Russell Street and some at the other end of the scale, but that is not the point. These are extraordinary ordinary people, doing things and extending themselves. They enrich our community. In fact, part of the appeal of Russell St is that you never know what to expect there and you can be surprised and delighted by what you find. Highlight of the year for me was Alan Baldwinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s marvellous Urewera photographs, taken some 50 years ago of some of the last kuia to wear traditionally

done moko; truly a touchstone with our past. The Centre also functions as a proving ground for emerging artists who are serious about advancing themselves on a wider stage. The Community Arts Centre is eccentric, eclectic and egalitarian. It is a community treasure. Sheer numbers make the Humanities Art Classes exhibition the biggest event of the year there and the driving force behind them is their inspirational tutor, Helen Kerridge. Her success as a teacher should not, however, overshadow her achievements as one of the better painters in our region, certainly one of my favourites. It would be easy to underrate the paintings of Helen Kerridge because they are so technically proficient. By this I mean

Jason Ponders the Length of a Piece of String, by Helen Kerridge

that one could read them as no more than skilfully rendered pieces of representation, but with Kerridge there is always another layer of meaning, hinting at issues beyond the objects shown. For example, her This is Not a Wine Glass painting in the East 2012 exhibition was prompted by empty shops and failing businesses in Hastings as local lives and hopes are affected by global failures beyond our control. It reprises a symbol from 17th and 18th century Dutch still life painters like Willem Heda in whose paintings the minor disaster of a spilled wine glass spoke of greater disasters and mortality. These pictures are better than they look! The wineglass is also a potent local marketing image and Kerridge has made tongue in

cheek references in other works to Dick Frizzell’s marketing of art and wine. Frizzell, himself a master of tongue in cheek, apparently gave her a nod of approval. Two hundred years ago the Spanish artist, Goya, made an intensely moving series of etchings and paintings portraying the violence, corruption and superstition rife in Spain at that time. Kerridge was struck by the parallels between Goya’s Spain and contemporary news events and she references his images in several works. Her painting Jason Ponders the Length of a Piece of String adapts the nightmare images of a Goya etching and the infant Romulus and Remus of a Reubens painting to respond to some of the early ethical abuses of genetic engineering. The bemused little

boy watching all of this also comes from a Goya painting, but Kerridge has kiwified him from a Spanish prince into the son of one of her friends. While Kerridge contends that the ideas behind her works are all-important, she shows a fascination with images for their own sake. Subtle nuances of light and shadow are carefully reproduced and her compositions are meticulously organised. Even the newspaper clippings shown in some works are painstakingly painted. She declines to use collage because the act of painting them provides a special point of difference. Like most good artists Kerridge has a stubborn streak. When she studied at EIT she says “they tried to loosen me up but the Continued on Page 64

THE ARTS This Is Not a Wine Glass, by Helen Kerridge

Helen Kerridge

» more they tried the tighter I became.” So is

there a danger that the stream of ideas will dry up? “No,” she says, “I just have to look in the newspaper.” In my review of East 2012 last issue, I suggested that you could make a very decent exhibition from local artists who were not in that show. Well, off the top of my head, here are a few names that come to mind of other artists I have seen locally in the last year or so: Jill Webster, Michael Hawksworth, Ricks Terstappen, Paula Taafe, Anthony Chiappin, Ben Pearce, Chris Bryant-Toi, Sandy Adsett, Gary Waldrom, William Jamieson, Deborah Smith, Mark Smith, Freeman White, Leslie Falls and Grant Beran. Some of these were not selected and others didn’t apply for entry and you could probably never get them all together in the same place. But it does have a healthy look about it, doesn’t it? It also suggests that the credibility achieved by East 2012 could attract even wider participation from locally-connected artists in East 2014, which could raise it to one of the more nationally significant art events of the year. ®

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

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Giving a Dam

Bee in the know ~ jan/ feb 2013

The muffled drumming of horses’ hooves echoed around the hillsides, drowning out the gentle murmur of the river as it threaded its way through drifts of grey gravel streaking the valley floor. The small army of horsemen, brandishing powerful bows and long lances, clattered to the top of a rise. Their leader raised his hand and the horsemen came to a halt. Nobody spoke as silence again descended on the peaceful valley. The leader’s cold eyes surveyed the land ahead. It was green and lush, unlike the vast dry lands of his legendary ancestor, Genghis Khan. “Are you sure this is the place?” growled General Kung Kong, his careful gaze taking in the contours of the valley. His second-in-command, Dim Sim, coughed gently. “According to our charts, O Leader, this area is known to the people of the land as the Central Bay of Hawks.” General Kong frowned. “And you are certain that they are talking about building a dam here?” Dim Sim consulted his parchment map. They had been riding for two days after anchoring their ships off the northern sweep of the Bay of Hawks. The horsemen had skirted a port town perched on a bluff and headed inland at dusk, observing the glow of fires on the walls of the walled town known as Hustings, home to the Roman provincial ruler, Lawrencus Yulus. General Kong had considered calling on Lawrencus, but changed his mind after hearing rumours of sheep worship and bacchanalian wine festivals in the town. A spy had told him Lawrencus was plotting to overthrow the rival town of Napierion, but hadn’t decided on an outfit to wear. The horsemen had camped on the Plain of the Two Dragons before setting out at sunrise for the dam site. Dim Sim nodded at his general. This was indeed the valley where the dam would be built. General Kong looked at the thin stream of water and gave a snort of derision. “Not exactly The Three Gorges,” he said. “Looks more like the mountain giant relieving himself.” His troops looked at each other then laughed nervously. The general slowly shook his head in puzzlement. “But a dam in this area will still be very costly. I have seen very few people here so how will they pay for such a structure?” Dim Sim shrugged his shoulders. “Nobody has thought about that,” he replied.

The general scratched his chin. This land of low cloud was indeed shrouded in mystery. He had heard stories of wizards and tiny creatures called hobbits living in houses built into hillsides. He glanced at the hills around him. A sheep stared back. It reminded him that Lawrencus Yulus had statues of sheep in the centre of his town. He flinched uncomfortably at the thought. “Perhaps the region’s rulers have gathered all the wealth for themselves,” he mused. “I saw a great stadium near Hustings. Does this Lawrencus have great wealth in his town’s coffers?” “Our spies tell us he has only a piece of paper in a large box with the letters IOU on it,” said Dim Sim. “What does that mean?” murmured General Kong. “Each letter represents a word or group of words, like a code,” replied Dim. “The I means ‘I have borrowed much money'. The O means ‘I am over my head in debt’ and the U means ‘my people have to underwrite my debts’.” General Kong shook his head slowly. “Borrowed money disappears through a borrower’s hands like water from a cheaply built dam,” he said. His men nodded in unison. They knew he was wise and that it was even wiser to agree with him. Dim Sim thought for a moment. “The dam will store water when the winter rains are plentiful so farmers can irrigate their land and graze many cows,” he

General Kung Kong said. “That shows great wisdom. Isn’t that what we have done with the mighty Three Gorges dam?” “Indeed but our rulers have ensured that our country is wealthy enough to build many dams and factories without being distracted by unnecessary investigations into funding and engineering issues. Some villages are now 60 metres under water but I did not hear a word of complaint,” said the general, “and yet everyone here moans about leaky homes.” He looked at the empty landscape around him. The sheep seemed no longer interested in him. He relaxed slightly and mused aloud. “How will these farmers pay for such a dam? It is clear they will have to come to us for help. And when it is built, they will struggle to meet their share of its cost. So then they will have to sell their land and leave.” Dim Sim was silent for a moment. “But if they are foolish enough to build a dam they can’t afford and eventually have to leave their farms, who will buy their lands and all of those cows?” The general looked at him and slowly smiled. He waved his arm and the valley again echoed to the drumming of hooves as the horsemen headed for the coast.

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