But as it turns out, today has been pretty cruisy so far. I even managed to fit in an unplanned scenic flight to Christchurch and back, all by 8.30am.
Now I’m hanging out with several old and new friends in the Koru Lounge.
We can’t control the weather, and today’s delay was due to fog in Christchurch. But I wasn’t trying to get to Christchurch; I was heading to Auckland.
This month, due to Air New Zealand schedule changes, Dunedin’s usual flight to Auckland via Wellington at 6.25am has been cancelled. If you want to get to Auckland before lunchtime, it’s now a 3½-hour commute through Christchurch, and you won’t get a return flight on a business day at a reasonable time within a three-week window for less than $1000.
It's pretty hard to justify my own travel, let alone taking team members with me or sending them to training opportunities. It’s also impacting accessibility for new staff and international prospects — we simply get left off the agenda.
That’s just with my business; imagine what it’s going to be like getting people to the city when we have major conferences, concerts and events on.
I wonder what the value lost today is from Dunedin’s economy? A meeting missed for an early-stage company; university faculty delayed for a meeting in Wellington; a director missing a board meeting in Sydney; several remote-working employees once again apologising to their bosses that they will be late or not able to make it.
Or the students’ parents returning after a long weekend visit, realising how expensive and unreliable it’s going to be to get them back and forth. If they urgently need to get home, it’s not going to be easy or affordable.
How many professionals will get frustrated and move? How many students will choose to study elsewhere?
How many businesses will decide to headquarter themselves out of Dunedin due to inaccessibility and the sheer cost of getting in and out to do business elsewhere?
Yes, there are online meetings, but we all know that they can’t entirely substitute being ‘‘in the market’’. Dunedin is to New Zealand like New Zealand is to the rest of the world.
I’ve referenced before that New Zealand’s economy is less than 1% of the global economy. We cannot survive without access to international trade, nor can Dunedin survive without access to New Zealand’s major cities as a gateway to the world.
Air New Zealand is our national airline — or is it? Because the reality is Air New Zealand is a listed company, and it has a monopoly. As a listed company, its primary duty is to generate returns for shareholders.
As a commercial entity, if I had limited resources and my mandate was to maximise returns for shareholders, I’d be ethically obliged to do everything in my power to achieve that. I can see how optimising supply of aircraft and services alongside the higher demand of busier cities and reducing services to regional areas makes commercial sense.
Do the KPIs need resetting? Have we lost its purpose?
I’m conflicted because, on one hand, I totally agree with commercialisation driving better competition. But when you only have one airline, and it’s underwritten by the government, they kind of have their feet in both camps, don’t they?
Where is the policy to improve competitiveness, or when do we decide that the current model is not working?
It strikes me our little ol’ Dunedin problem isn’t that different from New Zealand’s manufacturing problem.
Back in the ‘90s, the government decided to remove policies that supported manufacturing in New Zealand, seeing a flood of imports and the decimation of the manufacturing industry.
Our bargaining power globally weakened, and so did our accessibility to global markets: if we can’t physically get stuff offshore commercially, there’s no point in making it.
Strategically, the government has realised this isn’t sustainable and that manufacturing exports are critical for improving New Zealand’s productivity and prosperity. So now, as an industry, manufacturing is banding together to advocate for better policy alignment that enables us to invest in technology and talent to increase the value and volume of exports and decrease costs to create competitive global critical mass.
So Dunedin, how do we get critical mass? As businesses, we go where the money is.
We choose to base ourselves here, so what are we going to do about it? Up-sticks and leave? Or put our collective minds together on a strategy to make Dunedin a more commercial destination for Air New Zealand?
In lieu of a new national airline opening up anytime soon, our accessibility to New Zealand and the world is important to our prosperity. But does everyone know it? And how can we make it known?
Don’t we have an economic development unit for the city? I’d like to know what they have planned, apart from business plans for burying rubbish and fixing ageing infrastructure — where’s the vision for growth? Where is the promotion of the incredible companies outside of game developers that are the backbone of our local economy?
I wonder how far the business community could make the landfill budget of $110 million go towards fuelling growth for the city?
• Sarah Ramsay is chief executive of United Machinists.
