Auckland drops 'most liveable city' goal, making jobs the new focus

Monday, 2 July 2018

'Most liveable city' will no longer be the goal for the city's development agency.

Auckland's economic development agency ATEED is to focus on creating quality jobs, dumping its previous goal of 'the world's most liveable city'.

The new strategy will concentrate on boosting employment in the poorer southern and western suburbs, especially in Manukau.

Nick Hill, CEO of Auckland Council's economic development agency ATEED

Nick Hill, who's been ATEED Chief Executive for nine months, said the strategy was not just about any old jobs.

'Jobs that are leading people somewhere. That means they can gain skills and develop, not just going from one fast food chain to another, then back to the dole,' he said.

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'Liveable city' had been the goal in the 2010 vision of the inaugural regionwide mayor Len Brown, leaving council agencies to ensure that whatever they did, fitted the bill.

The new strategy reflects the thinking of both Hill and Mayor Phil Goff to sharpen the focus of the agency, which since its creation in 2010 has been chasing a range of hard-to-nail economic goals, such as lifting the city's OECD ranking for GDP per capita. It was 74th in 2010.

Hill said the shift is not radical, and the agency has yet to decide how would narrow it's range of activities

The scene-setter for the focus on job creation in the poorer areas was the agency's production of a Prosperity Index which highlighted the disparity between Auckland's wealthier and poorer suburbs.

Auckland-wide unemployment is 4.5 per cent.

The figures for NEETs - younger people not in work education or training - underlines the variations in the region.

The overall Auckland percentage is 13.6, but in the poorer southern local board Manurewa it's 21.2 per cent, and Henderson-Massey in the west, is on 22.2 per cent, compared with the wealthy Orakei board area on 7.8 per cent.

Just how the new job creation challenge will be tackled won't be known until early 2019, when ATEED produces a new Economic Development Plan.

The aspiration is spelled out in the freshly-signed Statement of Intent, agreed with the council which provides $52 million annually to the agency.

Hill said the focus might involve supporting skills programmes being run by the council-backed Southern Initiative in Manukau, which helped the hardest-to-employ, into construction work and other trades.

The agency is also involved in revived discussion about Te Papa developing a new facility in Manukau, perhaps with a strong Māori and Pacific Island flavour.

Hill said that could boost creative enterprises in the area.

'Pasifika, Māori, the whole cultural creative piece is something that is very strong and at the centre of what they are about,' he said.

Young entrepreneurs in Manukau have previously argued ATEED had not recognised the economic potential in the area's creative strength.

Separately, councillors from the west have lobbied successfully for a Western Initiative, which has gained seed funding from the council of $5m over the next decade.

They hope it will adapt ideas from the south, to lift the quality of life in the west.

Auckland's unspectacular economic growth has long defied efforts to dramatically lift it.

A group called 'Competitive Auckland' back in 2000, started the first of a series of pushes to boost higher-value, export-focussed industry in the city, rather than depending on servicing Auckland's own growth.

Hill is outlining a similar view.

'Auckland's had good growth since the GFC of 3 per cent a year. Once you strip out migration, the peak of constructions and tourism, the underlying productivity growth is very low,' he said.

'That's a broader story about New Zealand, but particularly the case for Auckland which is going backwards relative to New Zealand in terms of productivity.'

The agency's most tangible work to date has been developing innovation hubs in the Wynyard Quarter to help foster fledgling tech enterprises, but Hill said ATEED's role might change or reduce.

It has sold it's i-Site tourist information service to a private operator, and it would look to support rather than itself organise some other activities.

The agency would also play a bigger role in the Auckland Council family, bringing its economic development focus to the regeneration of areas such as Onehunga - a low-density commercial and residential area, well-connected to the airport and major transport routes.

ATEED's mandate stretches across economic development, major events, and tourism, and most of its activities will continue after being re-assessed against the criteria of boosting job creation.

'ATEED has gone through adolescence, and is now here for the long term,' is how Hill characterised the change.

'What is it that allows us to be more than the fizz in the city? There's a longer game here and we'll look at how we effect some of those deeper outcomes,' he said.