Job Summit Ideas to Help Hawkes Bay

Ideas generated by Friday’s Job Summit will have a positive impact on Hawke’s Bay, says Hastings Mayor Lawrence Yule.

In his role as Local Government New Zealand president, Mr Yule chaired the Local Government committee at Job Summit – aimed at stimulating the economy during the recession.

“While the nine day fortnight dominated media coverage, changes to seasonal work markets, better use of iwi assets and aggregation of local authority debt offer significant opportunities to assist in the current recession,” Mr Yule says.

“The message from the business sector has been clear - a reduction in compliance costs and red tape would strengthen the ability of small businesses to weather the current economic storm.”

Mr Yule was also pleased to see a moratorium on air quality and water quality standards come out of Friday’s summit.

“Both standards are nice to have but they add a cost of a billion dollars to the economy over the next five years. In the current recessionary environment that money could be better directed to job rich projects.”

Two other initiatives came out of the summit which will benefit the Bay;

A 1400km cycleway will be built from Cape Reinga to Bluff, creating 3700 jobs and costing $40 million.

A $60m Government fund, run in partnership with the private sector, will promote and develop tourism.