“We should also be talking to the community about our aspirations and continually checking the alignment, understanding and any opportunities in the various communities.”
Mr Murphy was responding to a question about two new workstreams for the trust, announced by him and ECT chairman Paul Reynolds in Saturday’s Gisborne Herald, that they said would be “at the core of many future efforts”.
One was to “create a deep and enduring community-led engagement activity, to understand the aspirations and constraints the communities within this region have, and how the trust can best play its role in this”. The second was to “create a community wellbeing and impact measurements framework”.
Mr Murphy said a system of measurements was needed to evaluate the community across a spectrum of social, economic, cultural and environmental indicators, to “show how we are doing and to inform us about our distributions programme”.
“What was the impact from ECT’s 81 distributions last year?
“Intuitively there are great groups, but what was the impact on the community?”
A conversation was needed with the community, he said. What did they want from ECT?
“We are here. The door is always open.
“We are happy to engage with anyone from the community.
“We should be up for the discussion.”
Mr Murphy said ECT needed to talk to the community so it understood what ECT did.
“I’m not sure ECT has always done that.”
Tairawhiti was not one homogenised community, he said.
Asked about the trust’s relationship with Gisborne District Council and the memorandum of understanding (MOU) they signed recently, Mr Murphy said the relationship had improved a lot over the past 18 months.
The council had been briefed on ECT’s wood cluster developments and aspirations, and associated issues such as traffic flows.
That had been done partly through the Tairawhiti Economic Action Plan.
Asked how the council was playing its part in specific economic development opportunities, Mr Murphy said resource consenting and regulation always brought tension between the regulator and the entrepreneur.
“It’s a fact of life,” he said.
“We’re trying to make them understand what we’re trying to do, so they can plan accordingly”
The purpose of the MOU between the two parties was to have a partnership-based relationship around operating activities and regional assets.
“Our ultimate end goal, from a leadership position and as owner of Eastland Group, is that we get the best outcome for Tairawhiti from our activities and assets.
“We need those operations to be efficient and in the right places as much as they can be.
“Given long-term plan constraints, we have to have the best structure to fund in the right areas.
“We need the best approach for Tairawhiti, we need community-owned entities doing the right thing for the right reasons.
“If we are in partnership with the council, we need our subsidiaries, in our case equivalents — Eastland Group — doing the right thing in the right places.”
Mr Murphy said there was a series of assets and activities that were community-owned, and the community desired to keep owning.
“If that’s right, where is the best place for them to be and how are they best owned and operated to get the right things for this community?”
Mr Murphy said the ECT deed referred to both encouraging sustainable economic growth and other community activities.
Neither was prioritised over the other.
‘‘That is the challenge ECT faces — what is the right balance of community funding and stimulating economic growth?”
The MOU was the appropriate mechanism to discuss whether ECT should put money into core council infrastructure and to decide whether established ECT policy should continue or change in a minor way, or fundamentally.
