The hyperbole surrounding this situation is amazing, with Mercury energy and it’s contractor being called murderers and calls for knee jerk changes to avoid situations like this in the future.
DPF has, as usual, a great analysis of this situation over on his blog. But from my own perspective;
1) We don’t know the cause of death (and as a qualified paramedic it would surprise me if the removal of the oxygen backup machine caused sufficient damage to lead to death), finding the cause is the job of the coroner, not the media
2) The family were in fact in arrears on their power bill
3) It would appear that Mercury energy fulfilled their own process for advising the family of impending termination of supply
4) In this country there are a plethora of community groups who would help in this sort of situation – it appears none were informed of what was occurring
In any case, until the police and coroner have done their work, Mercury and the contractor have a right to due process and we should avoid making hasty, and uninformed, judgements.
The right wing amongst us would say that Mercury energy is a business and as such has no place subsidising the electricity supply of those unable or unwilling to pay. Perhaps a little too Adam Smith for modern society but some of the hyperbole surrounding this debate is a little too Karl Marx for modern society as well.
Last night I got to wear three hats. The first was as a board member of Enterprise North Canterbury, the second was as chair of the Waipara District Residents Association, while the third was as a landowner and resident of the Waipara Valley.
I was attending an Alpine Pacific Triangle update meeting. At the meeting the long expected announcement was made that Accor Hotels have signed an agreement to manage the Waipara Wine Village and Day Spa. For those of you unaware of the Waipara Valley, it is one of the fastest growing wine areas in the country and Latitude Group, taking confidence in this growth has launched the aforementioned project.
Bear in mind that the project will see the Waipara Village (population currently 200 people, 80 vineyards and 800 hectares of planted grapes) gain what Latitude group descirbes as;
…[a development which] will include a four-and-a-half-star quality hotel complex, offering a total of 132 rooms in 40 hotel suites and 40 villas. The village will also feature full conference facilities, food and wine appreciation courses, a restaurant and wine bar, an international alehouse, a luxury day spa, and interactive wine-tasting facilities. The day spa will feature vinotherapy, a series of treatments fashionable overseas, using grape and vine-based products for health and beauty treatments.
As I see it, my role in all of this. bearing in mind I am involved in organisations that both support the interests of the local community, and also further economic development, is to act as a conduit between the developers and the community. All too often in situations like this the community has the perception that it is being ridden roughshod over, while the developers have the perception that the community is at best disinterested and at worst negative about the project. A case in point is the currentsituation regarding resource consents for the development. As spokesperson for the residents I need to ensure their interests are protected, while at the same time doing everything to facilitate the development occurring. In this case we are lucky that the developer is anticipating a long term play and as such is willing to listen and respond to local feeling.
I for one think the project is huge, and have often stated that I see it creating the “tipping point” for our community, which can, if managed well, take us to the level of a Barossa, a Napa or better.
Ken Wimsett and Clint Greaves of Latitiude group are doing a text book job of not coming across as swarmy Auckland developers but pushing the “we’re part of this community” line. A canny strategy to achieve a higher level of buy in from the locals. It’s also a strategy that other businesses, wanting to develop in rural locations, should emulate.
Anyway – congratulations Latitude Group, Accor and the greater Waipara area – I look forward to raising a glass of Pinot at the opening early in 2009.
Great post over here by Dan about his early stage reflection on the pros and cons of the change to self employment.
It is a recommended read for anyone considering the shift from being an employee – too often we either see all the benefits or all of the pitfalls. It’s great to see both sides clearly articulated by someone who is actually doing it.
His experiences mirrors mine when I made the shift 10 or so years ago from a very insulated (but pretty unhappy) employee to a fully exposed (but feeling very empowered) business person.
My journey since then has been fantastic and it would not, and could not have occurred without the initial leap of faith – well done Dan.
Bishop Brian Tamaki, head of the New Zealand Fascist Party Destiny Church has now come out swinging, saying that New Zealand is a Christian country and as such immigrants of other faiths should not be permitted to practice their faith in schools or perform certain actions that they are permitted to perform in their homelands.
As a (very much lapsed but still somewhat identifying) Jew, it disturbs me to hear these comments. Similarly however it should disturb all rational New Zealanders.
New Zealand is a secular, egalitarian society that embraces (or should) diversity in all its forms – be they religious, cultural or yes, even the diversity to show a propensity for wearing black T-shirts and marching en-masse waving your fist in the air. Tamaki’s comments, while designed to shock and polarise, are in a similar vein to Robert Mugabe’s and not entirely dissimilar from those of the KKK.
Given the results of the last census when almost a majority of New Zealanders described themselves as secular, and Christianity was in no way a majority faith, Bishop Tamaki’s claims that New Zealand was, is and always will be a Christian nation are somewhat confusing.
Succession planning… The ANZ bank has identified something which, with a bit of thought was probably obvious anyway. The current generation of SME owners are disproportionately represented by baby boomers. Given the slump in proportionate numbers of successive generations, this creates a bit of a problem when it comes to exiting their businesses. The pool of potential successors is smaller than the pool of business people wishing to exit.
There’s simply no cure for the demographic issue however one solution for the vast numbers of micro enterprises is something that I wrote about in an applied management paper about 8 years ago; a move towards organic business.
My premise at the time was that the next few decades will see a huge increase in collaborative business models, where multiple micro enterprises get together and, while retaining autonomy, JV to achieve more in total than the sum of the parts. while this, of itself does not solve the demographic problem, when coupled with some developments in service offerings we could see a real change in paradigms.
What with a whole host of services now able to be outsourced, be it SaaS, small service providers or whatever, we will achieve a situation where the micro enterprise of tomorrow will be so much more productive that it should be able fulfil subsume the roles of several micro businesses. With accounting, marketing, planning, project management, CRM and other services farmed out, the micro enterprise principal can concentrate on his/her core business and competency.
A lovely situation where technology can be applied to a societal problem to create an end result which is better than before.
The next election is going to be a cracker. John Key has been playing some fantastic strategic cards. His comments today about not committing to keeping KiwiSaver are a text book “it’s too far from election day to show my hand now so I’ll be non-committal” maneuver.
It is interesting to contrast this with my post relating to what Matthew Hooton said about Michael Cullen recently. The gist of what Hooton was saying was that Michael Cullen is in no position to know the impact of his legislation on business. Hooton’s point was that Cullen went from school to university to academia and on to politics. He has never been self employed, hired staff or dealt with the compliance issues of being in business. He has never taken a risk in the way that business people take risks on a daily basis.
All this is particular relevant when we look at John Key who (as anyone who has been reading the spin will know) is a self-made businessman with significant real world experience.
What labour needs to do is find someone who doesn’t come from either an academic or a union background and put them up head to head with Key.
Until they do – it looks like we’ll be getting a New PM come 2008.
In her opinion piece in yesterday’s Sunday Star Times, CEO of the New Zealand Institute of Directors Nicky Crauford calls for SME’s to embrace the formation of independant Boards of Directors to build their own capability and vision. She states that “we need to set aspirational goals and pursue them with vigour, focus and concentrated effort”. I absolutely concur with Nicky’s comments and have been pushing this theme in my own writing recently.
It’s great to see an organisation as austere as the IOD identifying SME governance as being important for wealth creation.
I see (well actually read) that Xero is competing in a competition to win a place in a technology park in Wales.
Now I don’t want to sound sour but wasn’t it just last week that we were getting all excited that a tech start up would be scaling worldwide from a Kiwi base. Maybe the exposure of winning the competition is sufficient or they just want to put a sales office in Europe or something, but if the development happens overseas, the company is registered overseas (which i assume would be the case), where is the pay back for New Zealand?
You’ll also note that interspersed with a number of Xero related posts I do actually post on other subjects! It’s just that Xero is particularly topical at the moment!
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