By Geoff Vause
It’s never what you’ve got that matters.
It’s your attitude to what you’ve got.
Half-a-dozen council candidates failed to show at a Meet the Candidates outing at Carterton at the weekend, missing a chance to let people get some idea of who they were and what they could bring to the council table.
Most of those who did show talked about things over which they would have little or no control.
As organiser Mick Campbell of Go Carterton said: “Most of them talked about stuff outside their influence”.
They needed to talk about what they would do should they be elected, and there is no shortage of potential.
The bigger issue whether or not to amalgamate councils is a big issue, sure, but it also barely matters and won’t be shaped by any of the council contenders.
The contenders need to look at what councillors can influence, and address those things.
Former Otorohanga mayor Dale Williams showed a visionary mayor can lead a unified council to end youth unemployment.
Before William’s nine-year tenure, unemployment was rife across his district, particularly for school leavers.
Williams and his council inspired industries, schools, families and the young people themselves to achieve zero youth unemployment. Zero.
They did this by taking responsibility for the task at hand and linking employers with the young people while they were still at school. They did it by giving school children a closer look at potential jobs in their immediate area, letting them see what those jobs entailed and shaping choices early on based on ‘real world’ employment.
They created an environment where young people had clear pathways in front of them, where training programmes held relevance for employers, where the shaping of the young people was based on what would be expected of them in the working environment.
They allowed ‘reverse mentoring’ to occur, where the young people told the older generation who hold the jobs and purse strings what they wanted from employers and workmates.
Wairarapa communities are looking for inspiration and vision. They want leadership.
They want councils they can trust with their future and that of their children.
