What the Prime Minister said . . .

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

“It's about leadership,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week as she announced that she and her Ministers along with public service CEOs and the leader of the Opposition will take a 20 percent pay cut for six months.

This move from those at the heart of our national response to Covid-19 was to acknowledge New Zealanders who have lost jobs, taken pay cuts or who were reliant on wage subsidies during this crisis. She added: “If there was ever a time to close the gap between different positions, it is now.”

The locking down of our country and its economy comes at huge cost, on top of the global economic impacts of this pandemic. We are at the start of a recession the International Monetary Fund this week described as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

While our Government has turned its financial hose up to full bore and is doing its best to alleviate the hardships, many households and businesses are and will suffer badly over coming months.

Gisborne District Council held a private workshop this week on whether and how it could forgo or reduce its planned 4.87 percent overall rates rise for the next financial year starting in July.

Replying to a question, Mayor Rehette Stoltz said the council would also consider voluntary pay cuts for councillors at its extraordinary meeting via Zoom on Thursday (from 9am) next week, where a decision will be made on the rates-rise question.

No doubt similar discussions will be being held around the virtual board tables of community-owned Trust Tairawhiti, Eastland Group and Gisborne Holdings Ltd, with their chief executives part of the korero.

While these matters stray into the private, the outcome of such discussions is of high public interest. This is an opportunity to show regional leadership alongside that being exhibited in Wellington, and would also be noted as the Government considers the infrastructure projects it will fund to help get the construction industry, and national and regional economies, back up and running.

On April 1 the Government called for information on large ($10m-plus) infrastructure projects that are “shovel-ready” or could be started within the next six months, funding for which will be in addition to its recently-announced $12 billion infrastructure programme. Decisions are expected in early May.

The Herald will be able to report the projects put forward from this region early next week.