He was responding to comments by regular Chronicle columnist Jay Kuten who said that Wanganui could make some progress by developing niche manufacturing, targeting those areas of manufacturing neglected by larger enterprises.
Mr Bennett said a good starting point was the book co-authored by Wanganui born and educated, the late Sir Paul Callaghan called Get off the Grass, which contends that New Zealanders must change the way they do things and see that the source of long-term economic growth is knowledge. And that meant accelerating the transition to higher-value exports.
"That's not to say that we should abandon farming, for obviously there are markets and a hungry world out there. Currently New Zealand produces only 2 per cent of the world's total milk production, and we would struggle to feed even the total requirements of Mexico City.
"But the reality is that, short of raising the prices we sell the farm outputs for, there are obviously no short-term or easy substitutes."
Mr Bennett said most would be surprised to learn that while dairy exports, together with meat and arable farming, create 44 per cent of offshore currencies, New Zealand's biggest single export earner was manufactured goods.
But New Zealand's export manufacturing sector had been seen as a "sunset industry" for the last 20 years.
"Labour productivity in manufacturing is also nearly double that of agriculture and almost three times that of tourism and hospitality industries. And manufacturing industries self-fund research and development spending [in real dollars] nearly four times the level that primary industries do," he said.
Mr Bennett said tourism held little promise of wealth creation where the average return of a job in the tourism industry is only $120,000.
But high-value manufacturing jobs, that are reliant on expensive imported machinery, can generate annual sales per employee of around $400,000.
"More specialised manufacturing that is less dependent on machinery and more on skilled labour or technology tends to create jobs with sales per employee of around $230,000. Many of these jobs are in Christchurch where there is a congregation of technology companies like Tait Electronics."
He said at Pacific Helmets the average sales per production employee is nearly that high. In terms of total annual spend in Wanganui, the company brings $10-$12 million into Wanganui each year and more than $3 million of that is direct wages paid locally.
"The problem is that these jobs do not come easily, and some will have taken generations to create," Mr Bennett said.
"It's 34 years since Pacific Helmets was set up, and during that time we have been through three complete generations of helmet categories. I can think of at least 10 other Wanganui-based companies with similar histories - and some even longer - and each is a speciality manufacturer.
"The real problem for the Wanganui community to reflect on is to ask: How do we keep these businesses in Wanganui?"
He said most of these businesses were family owned and many were owned by pre and post baby-boomers. And while these people wanted to retire some time, they were not finding an easy way to relinquish control and get their savings out.
"This is a very serious issue, and we need to start a conversation about how the transition to new ownership takes place without losing the businesses to the local economy."
Mr Bennett said there was also the question of creating a wealthier Wanganui.
He said Sir Paul Callaghan's book looked extensively at the evidence suggesting that wealth increases in proportion to the size of the urban population.
"The question that the new Wanganui District councillors should be asking themselves is how do we help double the population of Wanganui? Not, I suggest, with a great deal of the thinking (or lack thereof) which goes on inside the district council offices."
He said he was hopeful the council, with the Whanganui Employers' Chamber of Commerce and the investment community, "take up this challenge and start a serious discussion".
"There's much to be considered in this discussion, and I'm not suggesting that finding answers will be easy. But it's a conversation that we should be having now."