"The fact that you have forestry and tourism in such different areas of the economy helps. But, I see national business confidence has dipped to the lowest point since the Global Financial Crisis ... but it's good to hear the local economy here has not seen that drop as much."
But, she said the district had not taken advantage of some opportunities in forestry and dairy. "The lack of value-add is a real missed opportunity and shipping raw unprocessed logs out of our ports is such a waste. "I think the same opportunities exist in dairy with value-add. We can't get growth in dairy just through expansion - which has flow-on effects for the environment ... it will be around the incentivisation of research and development and the mitigation some of those environmental factors around agriculture. We keep looking at it like a burden, whereas I see it as a massive opportunity for New Zealand to innovate and lead the way to reduce the environmental impacts of dairy and agriculture generally. There are a lot of other countries that need those solutions too and I can't see why we can't be the ones producing them."
Ms Ardern said the Government was also not doing enough for the small business community and that it could help a lot more by providing capital assistance for new businesses, alongside local councils that could help by removing red tape and being more positive, rather than rule-bound and hard to deal with.
Keys to regional economic growth
* Diversification
* Investment in small business
* Less red tape from local government
* More assistance from central government