Carisbrook fan drives his point home

Having good service industries is a great thing - we all like nice cafes, good restaurants. We have lawyers and accountants who would like to keep working here, people who work in shops selling things, movie theaters and yes even professional rugby - they're all service industries. They don't create wealth - they move it around and each take their cut, but they don't make it.

For our economy to continue to work well we either need to create wealth locally or get it from somewhere else - that means adding value to something (raw materials - wood, metal, grass) by making it into something worth more (manufactured products, meat, wool, carpets, etc), creating something from 'nothing' (IT stuff, art, working on the internet - why we need fibre everywhere) - or persuading other people to bring their money here and leave it (tourism).

Sitting around and waiting for other people to come here and make new businesses isn't going to work, a stadium wont bring new wealth to Otago, it will just move it around - we need to make new local businesses - in particular primary industries that create wealth or bring new wealth into the economy.

Spending city money supporting new service industries is a waste - if there isn't the money moving around in the economy to support them - developing the wharves with new restaurants will just suck patrons from existing restaurants unless there are more patrons to go around. But if we work to grow our primary sector so there's more wealth in circulation the service sector will grow itself without help.

Someone on this thread, 'MikeStk' I think, mentioned Dunedin's shrinking industrial capacity. It is from sources such as ours, or rather what pitiful amount is left of it, that our future prosperity will come, not from wanky bars, cafes and yuppy-accommodation on the foreshore. This will probably come as a blinding revelation to our city fathers, but unless there is gainful employment on-offer in the city, the yuppies are unlikely to quit Ponsonby, and look further south. If, after they get used to a microclimate which could only be likened  to 'stepmother's breath' on the foreshore, they still deign to honour us with their presences, they will expect fulfilling employment and the commensurate rewards, or they will be off back again, in a shower of dust and small-stones, to the points from whence they came, leaving a host of under-employed baristas, barmen and wine-waiters in their wake(s).I have had it recently pointed out to me that, increasingly, Dunedin fails to provide engineering and similar services to even its own hinterland, and that such opportunities have gone begging for the last several decades to Southland, while successive Dunedin Councils have sat on their hands and done nothing realistic to reverse the trend. It seems, from its hostile attitude towards the few marine-servicing industries located in the corner of the harbour it coveted for its monument to waste and stupidity, that the ORC shares this mind-set. Dunedin's future prosperity will revolve around doing the 'basics' well and ignoring those industries which call for mass consumer mobility between countries and continents, as these will disappear along with cheap hydrocarbons. In case you think this is alarmist, it's a train of events which is already underway at the petrol-pumps. In the scramble for the last of the world-oil, New Zealand will fare badly, as it has no international political clout. Think, then, that as the 'last Stop before Antarctica' how we will fare, unless we have developed the capacity to survive on the basis of our own resources. The World order is changing, and we must change with it. I don't really feel that droves of 'baristas', wine-waiters etc are the answer; any more than it's likely to be accountants, business-managers and lawyers emerging from the sausage-machine environment of the University, only to find there are no industries left to employ them.

I suspect you missed the sarcasm dripping from what I wrote .... however my point still stands: the university doesn't have the space or money to grow appreciably and spending $340m on something that will attract a only few more students is, as I said, clutching at straws - it's not like the country has a desperate need for lots more trained sports administrators.

What we do need in Dunedin is new primary industry - we need to start new companies - lots of them - investing that $340m in creating companies that revitalise our sagging economy will pay off in ways that building an edifice like the stadium won't - in fact I'd hazard to guess that if we did rebuild our economy then the private sector would be able to afford to build the stadium just as Mr Farry originally promised us.

Remember most of us are not against a stadium per-se, just about how it's being paid for, I had no problem with Mr Farry's promise of a privately funded stadium - I think the current plan will be terribly damaging to our local economy in the medium to long term

You are reading Wingy's comments all wrong, and no he's not suggesting that we reward the university with a stadium. Who cares if the Uni doesn't pay rates, it brings in $1B into the local economy every year, that's better than any rates. Try reading what the young man has to say instead of layering your misconceptions upon his comments.

You're proposing that we're building the stadium to somehow reward the University for its existence? Honestly you're clutching at straws. If you want to reward the university's existence use your $200m to set up an endowment to endorse some chairs and support research. If your real goal had been to lure more students to the university to make it bigger then you would have set aside some of your $200m to build new halls of residence for them to live in and to build new lecture theatres for them to be taught in, offices for the new lecturers they will need I bring in more money to the city than I pay in rates - otherwise I couldn't afford to pay my rates - (the university doesn't pay rates) - but I do take your point - the University should have paid to build the stadium rather than the DCC.

In reply to Ian Smith, I think you have totally missed the point here. The university brings in more money to Dunedin each year than rates do. Students also pay rates through their rent to their landlord who also on pays this to the council. The university is also the largest employer in the South Island. I think 200million is a small price to pay for the financial benefit Dunedin has received from the university over the years.

Perhaps, instead of castigating 'Wayne' for his failure to pay rates, 'Wingy1234' might consider showing a bit of consistency and tackle the University, the chief beneficiary in all of this by far, for not paying rates as well.

The comments of 'Mike123' and 'Wingy1234' interest me. 'Wayne' watches daily, with occasional other spectators, a process which must be about as interesting as watching grass grow; (I'd better keep off the subject of 'grass', and 'growing'). But since when, has one person watching in isolation constituted a 'group' I ask myself? Or is 'Wayne' about to become yet another of those 'phantom' members assumed, quite incorrectly, to belong to Stop-The-Stadium?

It appears that some stadium supporters are uncomfortable when their pet project undergoes a little scrutiny. This is still a free country - isn't it? Dunedin ratepayers would be a lot happier if this fiasco had received more scrutiny and genuine due diligence from day one. (Of course it's not doomed, mike123. We all know how carefully researched and thought through it has been)

C'mon guys Wayne is feeling the "feel good" factor, even in the foundation stages. It's a fabulous human interest story on all sorts of levels. It sums up the stadium debate in real time. Even those unhappy with it have to concede that this is Dunedin's largest project for this century and as it grows it will become compulsive viewing for everyone in Dunedin and those who visit. We are setting the pace and it's all happening right here, right now.

Wayne's attitude is that this project is already doomed, (which it is not), this just shows the tactics a minority group is willing to go to when they don't get their way.

How about Wayne goes and gets a job instead of sitting watching the stadium getting built. By the sounds of it he isn't paying any rates towards our new stadium, so maybe he should keep out of it.