Gisborne candidate’s vision: A place worth staying and returning to

Gisborne District Council general ward candidate Ian Allan. Photo / Zita Campbell

Gisborne District Council candidate and computing lecturer Ian Allan says you’ve got to fall in love with the problem to find the solution.

Running for the general ward for the first time, Allan said his background in technology solutions always “straddled products and markets”.

“I can’t help but look at everything as a product,” he said.

Speaking with Local Democracy Reporting, Allan said the benefit of this view gave him the ability to deeply understand the audience or market problems to offer solutions.

Falling in love with a solution could result in fixating on the answer “at the expense of getting to the root of the problem,” he said.

“But if you’re deeply attached to the problem, then you go, ‘Gee, that’s good insight. I haven’t looked at it that way. Let’s go back to the drawing board and see what else can be done’.”

An example of this was the Grey St issue, which “I almost dare not raise,” he said.

Design changes to a section of Grey St aimed at slowing down traffic from near the skate park to Childers Rd have been controversial, resulting in a weekly protest against the changes.

“I want to love it... as it addresses underlying problems,” Allan said.

“Streets that you want to spend more time in ... restoring confidence in parents to let their children head out on their own.

“I could see what they were trying to touch on with Grey St, but they fell too much in love with their particular solution and got a bit too wedded to it.

“And it’s come at the expense of practicalities for other people,” he said, noting some changes had been made to resolve the issues.

Allan said one of his campaign “vision statements” was Gisborne being: “A place worth staying in, a place worth returning to”.

After finishing high school, Allan (Gisborne born-and-raised) did “the thing that young people still do” and moved away to study.

He gained a Bachelor of Honours in Computing and Mathematical Sciences from the University of Waikato. Then he moved to Auckland, where he lived for 20 years, gaining experience in designing technology solutions.

In 2021, Allan returned to Gisborne with his wife and children to work as a computing lecturer at Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT).

“It’s funny, now I’m at the EIT, I was like: ‘Stop going off to university.’ How can we figure out why you will leave and not study here? It’s cheaper and you’re closer to family’.”

An idea Allan gave as an example for his vision was for the council to have a facilitator role in bringing together the different groups in the region - education, research, industry, business and public trusts.

“It’s that issue of each of them on their own doing things, but not always ... lining up in support of each other.”

The council should tell the region’s stories about the pathways to useful work to help people understand how they could have a good life here, he said.

“I just imagine a student at the wānanga who ends up at Mātai Research [Institute] because they start lining things up and there’s better connectivity.

“And someone at EIT who ends up doing AI research for LeaderBrand,” he said.

“Just really facilitating and ensuring that those things get joined up because that’s how we will increase incomes.”