Letter to Manukau - Issue 85

Our Pacific friends

We've seen nature at its most destructive during the week with the earthquake and subsequent tsunami wrecking havoc and tragedy in our neighbouring nations of Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.

There has always been a debate as to the positive value of television as a communication medium, but it was the pictures from Samoa in particular that brought home the brutal nature of the impact the tsunami and in particular the loss of life to so many of the family of our friends and loved ones within the Pacific communities of our city and New Zealand. These pictures and stories generated an outpouring of sympathy, grief and support for our neighbours.

We've come a long way since the days of dawn raids ("not the music label") and if anything, the nature of these losses has highlighted the increasing closeness between our country and those in the Pacific. Some of the first pictures that I saw were of a very good friend, Ben Taufua, being interviewed before he left New Zealand at the Auckland airport. Ben has lost 13 family members in his home village of Lalomanu. His family own the Taufua Beach Fales Resort, which really bore the brunt of the worst devastation. Ben's obvious grief at his family's loss was I'm sure something that we all felt at a very personal level.

The pictures also showed the physical devastation of a landscape that I had only just visited six weeks ago with the trade delegation from our city. We were hosted for a lunch at Sinalei Resort by Tui Annandale. Her body was one of the first recovered after the tsunami and hers was the first funeral, conducted by her loved ones, including the Head of State and the Prime Minister.

This tragedy will have a major impact on Samoa's burgeoning tourism industry; some of the most popular of the tourist resorts are on the south coast which bore the brunt of the big waves.

It has been great to see the help pouring in of financial support and resources from the community and the business community. People have dug deep and where necessary have just got on a plane and gone over to help with the reconstruction and recovery.

We will be a part of commemoration services in the days and weeks ahead. Our council has shown immediate response to these events in support of our friends and family in Tonga, Samoa and American Samoa. In these times I'm proud to be a kiwi - our generosity, our spirit, kindness and preparedness to open our hearts in time of need is a special part of our national spirit.

Strengthening Townships
We are going through a period of significant activity designed to reconstruct and invigorate commercial activity in some of our old townships. This has been a particular focus of mine and was a primary part of my platform when I was elected as mayor.

I've always been impressed with how well Howick and Mangere Bridge have maintained the integrity and vitality of their main streets in the face of really tough commercial competition from our new malls. I'm determined that we see a balance in commercial activity across our region and worry that if we allow our main street townships to degenerate rather than flourish alongside our malls, that does not bode well for the communities around them.

I am particularly focused on Manurewa main street, Hunters Corner, Old Papatoetoe, Dawson Road, Otara Town Centre and Mangere Town Centre. We are addressing this to some extent in the look and the feel of these places through the main street make-over projects. We are close to completing the first in Dawson Road and will move to old Papatoetoe, Mangere and Manurewa. What is required though is more significant structural and commercial investment and we are focusing in particular on Old Papatoetoe around the public transport interchange at the rail station and Mangere town centre.

We've been having a good debate in the council as to how much the council should invest in front-ending and encouraging the development or redevelopment in these communities. In my view, there is a nice philosophical debate but it does not address the reality. There are times in local democracy when a council needs to be on the front foot, needs to be proactive and has to lead by setting the appropriate platform for private investment to flourish.

This means that we will sometimes invest in land to ensure that it can be levered for private, commercial investment to lead to redevelopment. There is no doubt that private sector watch intently investments by local government and tend to follow, particularly, where we invest in roading, public transport and infrastructure around developing commercial centres, an example is what we are doing in the Manukau city centre area within the vicinity of the new rail station that is being built.

Our communities have been built out of hard work and commitment and our people feel a strong pride in their local town centres. That pride is diminished when their town centres do not meet the expectations of their local community. We need therefore to do everything that we can to encourage and reflect pride in our community by regenerating our townships.

Have a good week.

Len Brown
Mayor of Manukau

ENDS

© Scoop Media