Hawke’s Bay leaders, particularly in local government, want you to believe that as a region they’re united and working hard advocating for the Bay when in fact they’ve been elected to represent different constituencies with very different needs.

And while those same leaders talk a big regional game, it begs the question: is Hawke’s Bay really one that’s united and working together, or just a collection of very different communities competing against one another? 

After all, what does it mean to be a region?

Because, like the word ‘community’ (particularly when local politicians attach the possessive and somewhat patronising ‘our’ to it), the term ‘region’ is reductive: it makes assumptions about us based only on the fact that we choose to live here, nothing else.

Achieving progress regionally is extremely difficult largely because of the conga-line of players that need to be congruent with each other; this includes local government, central government, iwi, business, and even, sometimes, residents. Some of those players have much more power than others and exert it accordingly.

History, both recent and ancient, has shown that acting in the interests of a combined ‘we’ is often at the expense of the many different ‘me’s’.

For a start, there’ve been two failed attempts at local government amalgamation, one in 1999 when more than 67% of Hastings people voted in favour of it but 74% of Napier citizens voted against it. Then, more recently, in 2015 when a Local Government Commission proposal to amalgamate the five local councils received a resounding ‘no’ with 66.18% not wanting it and 33.55% who did.

If voters were exasperated at the alarming drop in representation back then there’s no reason to believe they’ll be assuaged by it now. Hastings District Councillor Damon Harvey has raised the issue again claiming that there’s a lot more appetite from Napier folk, who’ve previously been staunchly against it, but his seems to be a lone voice in the wilderness.

And while amalgamation is still a dirty word in Hawke’s Bay, its elected representatives will no doubt protest at this depiction of the region working against its best interests by claiming that they’ve worked together now more collaboratively than ever before.

The two largest local authorities, Hastings District and Napier City Councils will tell you that they already share joint waste management services, they jointly own the airport and the landfill. Napier City also provides IT services and administers all websites on behalf of all Hawke’s Bay councils while they also worked together on geographic information systems (GIS).

If the cause of that collaboration, Cyclone Gabrielle, has brought them together, then the dangling fiscal carrot of the Government’s regional deals will ensure they stay there. For the moment at least. 

No doubt our local authorities are now busy sharpening their pens proving that since Cyclone Gabrielle they’ve worked collaboratively and deserve to be one of the five regions to secure a deal that will see them work with central government on economic growth, infrastructure, and quality housing. 

But the question remains; what took you so bloody long? 

Because the list of dust ups between authorities is longer than any collaborations they may have had; from the five councils deciding to close Business Hawke’s Bay to Hastings District Council grabbing the Business Hub off Napier, to Wairoa Mayor Craig Little going to war with the Hawke’s Bay Regional Council in the wake of the June floods, to Hawke’s Bay Tourism’s uncertain future due to a lack of funding, our councils are less united and more divisive than ever. 

The reasons behind this lies in the yawning gap of inequity that lies between each city and town. A quantitative study that economic consultancy Infometrics recently completed for the Hawke’s Bay Regional Economic Development Agency highlights the gaps. 

When it came to wellbeing, Infometrics used nine markers which included safety, income and consumption, environment, social connections, housing, health, civic engagement and governance, jobs and earnings, and knowledge and skills. 

The district outperformed the rest of the country in only two – housing and civil engagement. And while the wellbeing framework tossed up troublesome issues such as a much higher workplace injury rate and crime rate with significantly lower earnings and a higher suicide rate, the disparities between the territorial authorities painted their own unequal picture. 

Napier City performed the best amongst them, exceeding the national average for knowledge and skills and civic engagement and is very close for health and housing. Hastings outperformed the national average in housing but fell short in all other areas, particularly safety due to its high crime rate and workplace injury rate. 

Central Hawke’s Bay performed well in civic engagement and housing but fell well short in social connections, income, safety, jobs and earnings, environment, and skills. 

Wairoa has the lowest wellbeing results of all the five authorities, falling short of the national average in most areas. But its high local election turnout does see it do better than the national average in civic engagement and governance. 

That disparity is broken down even more when you compare the GDP per capita that each local authority earns according to Dot Loves Data Community Compass database. Hastings is $75,400 and is an 0.65% increase on the previous year, Napier City is $60,500 and a 1.6% decrease annually, while Central Hawke’s Bay is $43,500, a decrease of 5.8% and Wairoa is $36,300, a 3.3% decrease. 

And even within those towns and cities lies increasing disparity where median house prices display the real inequity; from Napier’s Bluff Hill with an average sale price of $760,000 to Maraenui where the median is $507,000. In Hastings the average price of a home in central Havelock North is $1.08 million while in Flaxmere West the median sale price is $439,000. And in Central Hawke’s Bay’s Waipawa it’s $484,000 while in Wairoa it’s $337,000. 

These are very different suburbs with specific needs which are increasingly ignored while regional entity after regional entity comes and goes. 

If Hawke’s Bay’s local government leaders were really concerned about them, they’d work together to lower their soaring rates while continuing to provide shared services. 

Which makes any blandishment about ‘working together as a region’ and ‘collaboration’ simply a sad veneer.

The Hawke’s Bay Regional Economic Development Agency is hosting a regular column to stimulate conversation about our economy. We will share pieces of work and research that we are involved in and at times will open up this column space for guest writers. 

Janet Wilson has been a journalist in print, radio and TV for the past 35 years. For the past 17 years she has run a small communications company which has provided advice to private sector clients and politicians at both local and central government level.