Matt Cowley Tauranga City Councillor

The Government's recent economic growth study told us what we already knew – as a region, we are good at growing stuff, building stuff, and moving stuff around.

Our workforce has qualification levels below than the NZ average and we also score low on productivity rankings.

New Zealand is isolated at the bottom of the world and risks losing work to low-cost labour overseas.

We need to innovate to increase our productivity, and therefore, our prosperity.

Tauranga City Council supports the economy by creating the right environment for businesses to flourish. At a basic level, this includes fit for purpose infrastructure, zoning of business land, and regulation.

Council also raises funds from our targeted rate on commercial properties to invest in key projects to support job creation and business growth.

Our commercial targeted rate collects $2.5 million per year, which is less than similar cities on a per capita basis. We're reviewing how this funding is invested. We'll make any changes during next year's budget.

The Government's growth study aims to unite all parties together to tackle our shared challenges, as well as grasping new opportunities.

Some of our challenges can become opportunities. For instance, our ageing population invites specialist healthcare research and investment, supplies more mentors for local businesses and young professionals, and it increases the number of business investors.

Some local businesses have been using technology to perform internationally. But we need to work together to develop scale to: support entrepreneurs; make it easier to retain a skilled workforce; and have the ear of government agencies.

Tauranga is growing the right ingredients to become NZ's most innovative city, but statistics show our dream is still quite far away – we have work to do!

As a side note, technology has been changing low-skilled workers jobs since the industrial revolution. Technology enables lower skilled workers to perform tasks that could previously only be done by expensive, highly skilled workers. Technology does remove routinised jobs, but it also creates new jobs.

Feel free to email me your thoughts (matt.cowley@tauranga.govt.nz), call/text me on 027 6989 548, and follow me at www.facebook.com/a.younger.voice.