Wise Society Auckland group meeting

Air New Zealand 6 April 2011

Attendees:

Blair Logan
Jean de Bruyne
John Turney
Gaye Stratton
Juanita Theron
Patsy Davies
Edit Horvath
Carl Davies
Janis Grummitt

Summary
Thank you to Patsy for arranging the Head Office of Air New Zealand
for this meeting. It was a great venue and took the pressure off
Juanita who had arranged the venue for the previous three meetings.
We had intended that this meeting would identify and action projects
to achieve our Vision. In the meantime, an opportunity to give a
submission to the new Auckland super council has arisen. We decided
to take it.

‘Auckland Unleashed’ is a consultative document that invites all

residents of Auckland to take part in the vision of making Auckland the
most livable city in the world. It is an opportunity to impact the
thinking for the next 30 years of our society in Auckland and should
not be missed if we are a serious group. It is short term; submissions
need to be in by the end of May after which we can return to our other
project ideas. Submitting suggestions will relate to and demonstrate
all of our values – community, contribution, challenge, collaboration
and respect.

We talked about the submission in general and intend adding detail at

the early May meeting. In the meantime we are grateful to both Leigh
Auton (ex CEO Manukau City Council and Candis Craven (Auckland
Council Investments Board and Auckland Regional Amenities board)
who have offered to give us advice on presentation of the submission.
Councils move in mysterious ways and it is useful to have two people
who understand the system! They are both very busy and rarely able
to attend meetings but prepared to lend their support and thinking.
Our thoughts about the submission

General

• Only those suggestions relevant to the Movement for a Wise

Society would be included in our group submission. We should
each send submissions with our individual views separately.
• We should ‘add to the white space’ of the existing proposal
suggesting or asking questions where we have something to
add.
• We will encourage council to remove impediments to community
building and only supply support where necessary. In other
words – to take the brakes off communities’ ability to achieve
greatness by themselves. We do not believe it is the role of
council to ‘control’ development.

Specific areas for our contribution

We support the strong people focus in the proposal and particularly the
community building aspects. However, it is primarily focused on young
people rather than the whole of society working together. We believe
that a Wise society encourages all generations to work together for the
good of future generations.

So, the most fundamental question we would raise is:

‘How does this plan encourage generations to work together
and utilize the skills, energy and experience of everyone?’

This is particularly important at a time when the population is ageing

and in 20 years time it would be unfortunate to expect young people
to support elders who are not ‘pulling their weight’. Elders should offer
positive stability and support for the energy and new ideas of younger
members of society.

We identified three useful areas for encouraging this intergenerational

working. We need to relate these back into the best existing areas of
the plan before submitting it:
1 Community building – encouraging smaller communities to
develop spontaneously throughout the City. People belong to many
community groups: Work, school, clubs, sports and place of residence.
Meeting and sharing with a diverse range of other people prevents
stereotyping. The Christchurch recovery programme is a great
example of intergenerational cooperation.

2 The workplace – people spend most time at work. There are

thousands of organisations in Auckland and more planned.
Participation of the generations at work could form a cultural backdrop
for the whole society. For example, Patsy noted that people at Air New
Zealand have a thriving work community and also encourage other
groups to use their facilities

3 The ‘built environment’ the way in which our city is built including
access and shared facilities and type of housing is critical for
generations to be able to live and work together. Access to the
environment through local shared facilities fosters better communities.
Leisure centres, parks and local walk/cycle ways are all places where
young and old meet. The planning of housing could also enable
generations to live together more easily.

Conclusion

At the end of the meeting we agreed to go away and re-read the

proposal to form ideas using this initial discussion as a guide. We hope
to encourage more attendees at the next meeting to ‘fill in more white
space’ and I hope that the ‘core group’ that we had at this meeting will
contribute the continuity we need to move forward.

Thanks to all of you who attended. I am considering Tuesday 3rd or

Thursday 5th May for the next meeting. Can you give me feedback if
you are unable to attend either of these dates? If anyone else living in
Auckland would like the opportunity to take part in something that
could affect the next 30 years of your city – please come to the May
meeting. If you are interested, the plan can be found online:
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/AboutCouncil/PlansPoliciesPub
lications/theaucklandplan/Pages/theaucklandplan.aspx