Editorial: Magill fine example for city to follow

Pat Magill

It was a last line in a media release, but hopefully not the last word.

That was an announcement that tomorrow's Napier Pilot City Awards will be the last. The organisers are retiring.

They've been a pet-child of the Napier Pilot City Trust, itself a pet-child of Pat Magill, a retired businessman and 1960s Ranfurly Shield-era Hawke's Bay Rugby Union president who morphed into as strong a social justice campaigner as one could imagine.

It is ironic, then, that the man with perhaps the strongest claim to a Pilot City Award has not been among the 150-plus recipients since he and his trust conceived the awards about 20 years ago.

He was, however, a New Zealander of the Year senior category finalist in 2012. And in 1978 he was made an OBE, which represented mainly his commitment to the YMCA, where he was heavily involved in 1977 when the Social Development Council of New Zealand suggested that Napier, a city of around 60,000 population, was not "yet" too large to learn about itself.

In 1983 the Department of Internal Affairs funded a study which three years later, resulted in Napier being designated - by then Labour Government Police and Social Welfare Minister Ann Hercus - a Pilot City for the study and implementation of positive alternatives to violence.

Now 88, Pat Magill deserves to retire, although he must wonder just how many victories the mission has achieved.

It is probable the biggest victory will come once he puts his toes up in front of the fire. Surely the awards will be revived, by a new legion determined that those who volunteer to help their communities, often against the odds, are recognised for jobs so second nature they often do not acknowledge the input themselves.