Contact me: lettertomanukau@manukau.govt.nz

Monday, 2 March 2009 - Issue 60

In this update:
Disagreements | The recession | Waste

Disagreements_
During the first 18 months of my time as Mayor of this city, I've had a fairly charmed life in terms of my relationship with the community and enjoying the company of citizens across the city in a, by and large relaxed, enjoyable atmosphere even if people disagreed with me.

For the first time, during this week I've found myself in such a disagreeable disposition with one of our citizens that I very nearly lost my cool and temper.
I've been very fortunate in having been born with an overwhelming sunny and positive nature – both my great strength and worst weakness. It takes a lot to rub me up the wrong way and bring out the Irish in me.
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Unfortunately, I met a person at a recent meeting whose views I disagreed with significantly and despite myself, I could feel my temper lifting and my patience shortening. We had words and in the end I managed to somehow return to some normality of calm. But it reminded me of the importance of accepting that in this job, you're going to please people some of the time, but certainly not all the people. I also realised the importance of accepting that when you find yourself in the situation of being in total disagreement, it is essential just to walk away.

I read some wise words about political leadership once, that you should never disagree with a constituent, and that everyone has an opinion. Being part Irish I find that advice difficult to take at times. But I suspect I'll learn from hard experiences, and I've certainly had one of those this week.

The recession_
The recession is now starting to seriously bite although some of the results out there are still pretty flukey. It's interesting to hear on the news that at least half of the companies in New Zealand are still looking to give their employees wage increases to a rate of inflation and something like 15 per cent beyond that.

I'm in constant communication with businesses around our community, and many are still reporting strong growth, particularly those who are exporting to niche markets overseas. This always happens through recessions. I've been through two significant recessions – the worst in 1987 to 1992 - when the unemployment rates in our city peaked at 10 per cent, and in some communities for example, Otara were at least double that. The situation in those communities and businesses was particularly dire.

I've still not seen that depth of recession at this time and one hopes that we do not. What is essential, especially in light of the job summit, and talking to businesses, is that we don't suffer from a poverty of spirit in these times of increasing financial difficulty.

The one thing I love about our city is the fact that we are eternal optimists and that in business we've always been able to ride through the storms and come out of the recessions because of this positive attitude, determination not to be beaten down and moving quickly to adjust to difficulties.

I've been at one or two business meetings recently and there have been extraordinary numbers at these meetings. Often I think business tend to circulate the wagons in difficult economic times and look to each other, as business leaders and employers, for guidance, support, encouragement and also to rebuild networks. We know that for every up in the cycle, there is a down, and we will come through this downward cycle stronger into the next wave of growth. This has been my experience in the city and I suspect that the next wave will hit stronger, harder and faster than what happened in1992 and what happened in 2001.

Waste_
Half of our waste stream that goes to our landfill is green waste – that is kitchen waste and garden waste. Over the years I've been a strong advocate of the need for us to deal with this green waste stream, take it out of our landfill, minimise our carbon discharges and look to maximise the opportunity of recycling that waste.

As a region we're going through a process at the moment of determining what the options may be with regard to the logistics of taking the green waste stream from the kitchens and gardens and either composting it or using other technology to get rid of it.

There are a number of firms now operating within our region on the basis that we would do an original programme of recycling. I've been amazed by how well our community has taken up the present recycling option of paper, plastic and glass. It's interesting to see the numbers under our new recycling scheme with Auckland City Council and Visy lifting by 15 to 20 per cent. We have also seen a diminishing of waste to the landfill by the same percentage.

I think our community is ready to try the next wave of technology around green waste. My preference is for us to compost this recycling. I'm mindful of what sort of carbon discharge would occur through this process on the basis that much of our work has at its genesis, a desire for us to minimise environmental impact, and the impact of carbon discharge.

There are other options available to us in terms of green and liquid waste stream where we could take green waste as well as sewerage out of the system and look to incinerate. This is still relatively new technology that some environmentalists are nervous about. However it is new technology that is developing rapidly and as we go through the regional discussion in relation to green waste recycling, that we look at the alternative options around combustion and keep an open mind.

These strategies are looking 50 to 100 years into the future and we need to be mindful of what our vision is for minimising the waste stream and managing waste we do get, to our very best environmental advantage.

See you out there,

Len Brown
Mayor of Manukau

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