Heading for the sun: Fighting back to stop the brightest and best leaving home

Michael Laws wants to strengthen Wanganui's competitive spirit. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Michael Laws' new mission is to ensure that Wanganui doesn't go the same way as Tonga.

The talkback host and former MP is now the Mayor of Wanganui and visited Tonga recently to take part in a Celebrity Treasure Island show.

The waiters who brought him his meals, and the other Tongans he ran into, gave him the impression of a people who had lost their drive.

"There is no ethos of service," he said. "Everybody in Tonga said all the bright ones have left; we are left with the drones.

"I think provincial New Zealand is facing the Tongan situation. If we don't do something, we won't have the brightest and the best."

Wanganui lost proportionately more jobs than any other district in the 15 years to 2001.

In the last five years alone of that period, the number of its residents in their twenties plunged by 18 per cent. Those in their thirties dropped 13 per cent.

There was a small increase in the 40-plus age group, but it was not enough to prevent an overall 4 per cent population decline.

Wanganui is not alone. Of the 39 district councils (not city councils) southwest of a line from Kawhia through Mt Ruapehu to Waipukurau, plus Gisborne and Wairoa, 26 lost people between 1986 and 2001.

The 13 exceptions were around Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson-Marlborough, Christchurch and Queenstown.

"What happens is you get a narrowness of views, a stagnating of intellect, a lack of stimuli," Mr Laws says. "That materially affects the quality of life.

"The moment a provincial town or city loses its competitive instinct, the moment it stops trying, it surrenders itself to whatever the trends are out there. It makes its own fate inevitable."

Mr Laws believes a key to countering decline is technology.

People can reach national and global customers through the internet, phone and radio just as easily from Wanganui as they can sitting in an office in Queen St.

The second step is "cultural". Mr Laws aims to lift Wanganui's aspirations with constant new projects and an average of one big event a month to draw in people from outside, such as the planned January 24 premiere of River Queen.

"You have to constantly try to upgrade your facilities," he said. "You'll create an ambience that people want to come back to."

And he believes he's already winning. Statistics NZ estimates that Wanganui has lost a further 1100 people since the 2001 census, including 300 in the year since Mr Laws came to power. He's not convinced.

"The Department of Statistics are f****wits," he says. "F****wits. Quote that! They haven't come to Wanganui. They haven't assessed our school roll growth or building consents or business development or new rating valuations.

"They are morons. They sit in Wellington and simply extrapolate the 1996-2001 trends. You'd have to be a moron to say that this region is going to decline in population."