3. Require former Aucklanders to display a scarlet "A" on their vehicles, which would be prohibited from travelling State Highway 2 to reach the Motherland. "A" cars would have to use the other highway to heaven through the Kaimais. Or fly. Extra revenue for the Tauranga airport.
4. Shun the slickers. Bar them from seeking employment in the Western Bay or setting up a business.
5. Implement new curriculum in schools to teach young learners how to identify and interact with Johnny-Come-Latelies so the Johnnies beg their parents to return whence they came.
6. Prohibit Aucklanders from buying homes in the Western Bay and impose a penalty on anyone who sells a JAFA property.
7. Radio transponders. Monitor the whereabouts of émigrés.
Ridiculous ideas. Just as ridiculous as suggesting anyone who wasn't born and raised in Mauao's shadow doesn't belong here (recognising that tangata whenua do indeed, have a special connection to the land).
Despite global growth of parochialism, whose philosophy insists culture is immutable and some people are more equal than others, the world's inhabitants are increasingly mobile.
Some people are fleeing war and poverty or mass shootings, while other residents in our fair nation are trading two-hour commutes and million-dollar cracker box houses for 45-minute commutes from suburbia into town (here's looking at you, Welcome Bay) and half-million dollar homes with sections so tiny, you could trim the grass with nail clippers.
Give me your tired, your poor - and your energetic, your affluent, your turmeric latte-sipping, Lululemon-wearing hipsters yearning to breathe the stench of sea lettuce in Tauranga's Harbour. Offer $300,000 more than my home's capital value and I'll steam clean the red carpet before rolling it out with my teeth to sell to the highest bidder. I won't care where they're from.
About one-quarter of Kiwis were born outside this country. How many Bay residents moved here from outside the region? We are your neighbours, business owners, employees, volunteers, along with a few ne'er-do-wells and idiots who make driving feel like a vehicular rectal exam, they're that far up your car's bum. Empty Tauranga of transplants and the region would require a giant defibrillator. It might work in the short term, but it's unsustainable for the long haul.
As Rodney King (whose violent arrest in 1992 precipitated the Los Angeles riots) asked, "Can we all get along? Can we get along?"
Of course.
If you're law-abiding, have run the Immigration gauntlet of paperwork and payments, or simply shifted to the Bay from elsewhere, we have space for you.
If you can contribute, participate and embrace the wonderful while decrying rising rates and traffic snarls, we have space for you.
This comes with a caveat: we need to sort our roads. Rather, the people we've elected and the bureaucrats we haven't need to sort the roads. We pay them to craft PowerPoint presentations, slide shows and spread sheets. They attend meetings on our behalf, trying to predict and explain future growth patterns. Entire teams at the region's myriad local councils, plus central government and its agencies need to sort the roads, especially the one neighbours are calling the "bloody road" - SH2. Sort the roads, or stop building new homes.
Those who preach the Scarcity Gospel tell us there's not enough, so we'd best keep what we have to ourselves. I prefer to think the Bay can measure up to its name. We have plenty. People holding the purse strings must do what's necessary to turn our once-was-a-backwater into a more productive, progressive region.
Yes, we need cycle lanes and reliable public transit systems. But to truly be able to welcome more big city shifters to the Bay requires wider, safer highways instead of excuses.
